Inspirational bits for myself and maybe for you as well.

A reminder to myself-

John Cosgrove, editor of Photo i:
"Make sure you remember your basic reason for takin that photograph - a willingness to share your photographic vision as a means of story telling.... we all buy a camera to share our viosion of the world and to tell sotries about where we have been and what we have seen. Where it starts to go a wee bit pear shapred is when people take photos for no reason what so ever and then try and convince us that it's art.

Sadly we are becoming conditioned to accepting anything different as new and exciting, what we have to remember is that to succeed as a photographer first and foremost you must get people to stop and look at your images. If they walk right past your images without a second glance, it's not because they are ignorant of your art, it's because they just don't see it. You haven't made your picture appealing enough, you haven't told them a story, you haven't shown them something they haven't seen before - in other words, ou haven't wowed them."

Steve Jobs, CEO Apple on Death made on June 12 2005 at Stanford University's 114 Graduation Ceremony:
"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: 'If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right.'

Since then for the last 33 years, he had looked into the mirror every morningn and asked himself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' Whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Becase almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - therese things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

...."death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die..

"And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escapred it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new"

(note, this was from Digital Life 5th July 2005 and was compiled by Hellen Tan)

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Let's not forget something from Batman Begins as well.. where Bruce Wayne was constantly reminded:

"Why do we fall?"

"So that we might better learn to pick ourselves up"

Also, Rachel (Katie Holmes) said to Bruce Wayne when they met years later:

"Deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you."