While my family is close by and all a bit technologically challenged, I know many people whose families live great distances away. The introduction to the long dreamt of invention video conferencing changed how families could keep in touch. The face to face contact is a wholly different experience than voice alone. You can meet new family members, watch nieces and nephews grow up and get to know them, even though they live a world away. Also, the cost is so much lower than a phone call. I used video face time  for the first time while in Italy and honestly became really homesick after seeing and talking to the person I wanted there with me, who I wanted to be home with.

Inspired by the tradition in Singaporean families to have portraits taken during family celebrations and gatherings, artist John Chang cam up with an idea of how to recreate that experience despite the long distances between family.

The growing tendency of younger family members to take jobs abroad.. has left many modern portraits missing a relation or two. … Those in Singapore stood before their webcam-enabled computers and called their distant relatives on Skype… Clang projected the Skype image onto a wall and then photographed the callers together with their flesh-and- blood kin. No Photoshop was needed, and the entire process is simple enough for people everywhere to take advantage of in migratory times. ‘‘It bridges the gap between the two families that are apart,’’ Clang says.

- via the New York Times