Upon completing their ‘Focus on the Good’ photography competition, the folks at Alnowair were absolutely blown away by the overwhelming amount of amazing entries that simply, yet powerfully, inspire to focus on the good in life. Instead of discarding those photos, they chose to celebrate the message behind each entrant’s efforts by creating a spectacular display at Marina Crescent. Bold cut out letters spelled the words Focus in both English and Arabic, each letter adorned with over 1500 pictures submitted by entrants from the photography competition.

If you happened to pass by the beautiful crescent last month, then you would have surely encountered their magnificent art installation that was built by moments, a lot of hard work, love, hope and positivity. Each picture has been dipped in love (read glue) and pasted one by one on the letters by hand (hard work), to create a collage of what they like to call “Focus on the Good.” Here’s a small note from Alnowair’s team on how this brilliant idea came together:

“You might think, why the word Focus? Science tells us that our focus has a lot of power, when we focus on abundance, our life feels abundant; when we focus on lack, our life feels lacking.

We want to ask people to make a decision to feel differently when negativity takes over, to make an effort and focus on the positive elements, because perspective is 99% of everything. We can focus on what’s wrong in our lives or we can focus on what’s right. The choice is all ours.

To spread this message we held a photography competition called “Focus on the Good” where we asked people to send in pictures of what they thought was goodness to them; the response in one word was amazing. Hundreds of pictures came pouring in, all but crashing our Internet. These pictures were of moments, of people and of things that meant goodness to different individuals. At Mall 360, we exhibited the top 3 and another 20 shortlisted from the 270 odd pictures we received. But surely that wasn’t enough.

During the competition we realized that while each picture we received was unique from the next, they all had one thing in common, they all inspired us to focus on the good in our lives, and we wanted to share this inspiration with the world. So go ahead, peep into the goodness of someone else’s life and find in it your own. Different people, different moments, the emotions however remain the same, the smiles may be different but the reasons behind them remain the same.

We hope you enjoy the pictures.

Love and a big warm hug,

Alnowair”

Although 2013 has brought much joy to many, the bitterness of suffering continues into the New Year. We could easily shrug our shoulders and deem that, such is life, and while many are busy keeping to their New Year resolutions, we at bazaar believe that focusing on the good shouldn’t be a hard resolution to maintain and proudly uphold. Once we are truly capable of doing so, then, and only then, will we be able to improve our lives and more importantly, the lives of those around us. A message of hope, to focus on the good, may have inspired those who happened to leisurely stroll by the crescent area, yet our hope is to propagate this message through this article in support of Alnowair’s commendable efforts.

Follow Alnowair on Instagram @al_nowair and on Facebook: Al_Nowair or visit www.alnowair.com.