Convergence

Don’t you just love it when things come together? I have been thinking about convergence all weekend. It started with my drive home to my folk’s place in Forest. I try to take the back roads as often as possible – it is why the Jeep was invented!  On my well-loved route I pass by the two trees pictured above. I have puzzled about them many times but have never stopped to take a picture. Today I did.  When you first see the trees at a distance, they appear to be one tree. It is only when you get quite close that two separate trunks are revealed and then it is the wow moment (at least for me). I love the fact that the two trees grew together, each accommodating the other so that the branches seem to form one tree. Convergence.

I also thought about convergence as I multi-tasked my way home with my favourite piece of geekery, my iPhone. With this marvel I listened to music (I cannot remember when I last used my iPod); I found new side roads to explore (my Back Roads of Ontario map book is somewhere in the Jeep but I’ve forgotten where); I took fun snaps (traveling light, I left my “serious” camera, my 7D at home), and shared my photos instantly across my favourite social networks (I also left my MacBook Pro at home). Oh yes… and this gadget is also a phone. I’m sure there are other stand-alone gadgets that are also represented in the iPhone, but these were the ones that, in the space of one 3-hour drive home, made me stop to wonder just how many more gadgets, products, and tools can be combined and converged to make our lives easier? Will we remember what it was like to have an iPod? Cell phones? Pay phones? Point and shoot cameras? Banks? Road maps? Hmmmm….

While I will always love and strive for fabulous shots taken with my “serious” camera, especially here on this blog, I do appreciate the immediacy of capturing a moment in time with my new gadget du jour. You will be able to find these raw, funky, crazily-processed snippets of art on my “daily” Tumblr blog here, or… please visit my “iPhonography Gallery” here. And if you are curious, I took the snap above with a new iPhone app by the folks who host my gallery, SmugMug, and it is called Camera Awesome. You can find an insightful review of the app here.

May great things converge on you this week!