More on flow and photography

I noticed some time ago that photography, which started for me as a hobby, rapidly lost it’s appeal when I began treating it as a business. This phenomenon is not unique to me, of course. Many photographers say that becoming a pro is a sure way to kill a perfectly fine hobby. It is not surprising either, since any job, no matter how fun it is, has some dreadful elements, buy definition of a job. These are things like deadlines and, more generally, the obligation to meet external expectations.

Lately, I’ve been listening to an audiobook called “Flow: living at the peak of your abilities” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is a collection of audio recordings of his lectures or seminars. It is not to be confused with the earlier-released book called “Flow: the psychology of optimal performance“. This earlier book, by the way, is one of my all-time favourites in the non-fiction genre. In the book am listening to now, I’ve come across another plausible explanation of why photography loses its appeal when it becomes a business. According to the “flow” theory, from an amateur’s standpoint, photography is an autotelic pursuit. That is, the activity itself constitutes its own reward and meaning. An amateur photographer takes pictures simply because it’s fun to do. It is exciting to learn new techniques and play with new gear. Even the process of transitioning to becoming a pro is initially fun, because it presents new challenges to overcome and things to learn. However, professional photography immediately introduces an additional set of goals , namely, making money and increasing the efficiency of the workflow. These business-related goals conflict with the original, creative goals of the photographer. The conflict can be subtle. For example, as I post-process a particular image and decide to learn some technique that I haven’t tried before, I might have a thought on the back on my mind: “Is this the best use of my time at this time? My processing workflow is good enough. Maybe, it would be better to plow though the rest of the images in this photoshoot., rather than fiddling with this one picture.” This is precisely the flow-breaking point. Instead of being fully concentrating on the creative task, which is learning new technique and increasing the complexity of my activity, my attention becomes split between what I am doing right now and what I could have been doing instead. I also become self-conscious, in the sense of starting to consider how what I do affects my image as a photographer.

The good news is that, according to Csikszentmihalyi, it is totally in my power to maintain flow, or at least maximize the amount of time spent in the flow state. After all, the attention split between the conflicting objectives happens entirely in my head. The trick, for the lack of a better word, is to convince myself to take interest in what needs to be done and to apply mental energy in order to increase the complexity of the activity at hand. For example, if a business-related task requires attention, it would be wise to make that the focus of the activity and strive to become really good at it. Conversely, it helps to recognize that the necessary attribute of an autotelic activity is that it needs to be done without any expectation of an external reward or future utility. It is certainly easier said than done, at least for me personally, but it does help to be reminded that “wasting time” on fun things is, upon consideration, not wasteful at all. In fact, it is often the best possible thing I can do.

Travel photos

This summer, we took or first post-COVID long-distance trip. I had a conference in France, and my wife and daughter joined me. Afterwards, we followed up the conference with a few days of family vacation in Antibes. It was a great trip overall, and it reminded us how much we missed travelling. Looking back at my photos, though, I realize that it has always been a bit of challenge for me to enjoy the experience of the foreign locale at the moment. Interestingly, my photography interest is both the reason and the cure for this difficulty.

This disconnect with reality is described by Anthony De Mello in his book “Awareness” (the book has been largely a disappointment, but that is a different topic). He says that most people plan their vacations, book flights an, but when they get there, they immediately start worrying about their flight back home. So they are not fully present to experience their travel destination. They take pictures, but they miss the smells, the tastes, the sense of the place. So people bring back pictures of the places they didn’t actually see.

On the other hand, taking photos gives me focus by providing motivation for visiting specific sites, waiting for a certain time, when the sun hits the subject with the golden light. These are the moments that I tend to remember afterwards. During this trip, for example, we were having dinner at a street-side restaurant just steps from the Eiffel Tower, and I kept popping out from the table to peek across the corner to see if the setting sun had hit the tower.

Live audience

Last week, I had a chance to photograph the first live-audience performance of my daughter’s dance company in more than two years. In my role as a photographer, I’ve always been lucky to have a behind-the-curtains insight into how the incredible performance pieces that other parents can see only at the year-end shows take shape. The amount of work that the dancers and the teachers put into it is simply astonishing. When I first saw it ten years ago, even though I knew next to nothing about dance as an art form, I immediately sensed by the level of work ethics and dedication that even the very young dancers were demonstrating that this was something that simply could not be faked. At that point, I somehow realized that I wanted my daughter to experience that when she would be old enough. It was a world from which one could obviously learn a lot. Fortunately, she has been keen to dance, even from the earliest age.

It was therefore ironic and quite disappointing that this year in particular, when everybody was so looking forward to the first live-audience show since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, my daughter had to sit the performance out. Late last year, she suffered a growth-related injury to both of her knees, which forced her to take a break from dance for the rest of the season. To say the least, it has been quite hard for her to process. Still, she received a boost of positive emotions when she visited her teammates backstage to wish them luck backstage before the show. I am not sure if the traditional wishing of breaking legs was involved; it it was, it must have been almost too funny.

From my side, it is once again fascinating to see through my photos the incredible progress from the training sessions, where everyone was still waring masks, and where the kinks in the choreography were still being ironed out, to the finished performance pieces of the live show. I think we are all looking forward to more of those, once things hopefully return to a more normal state, both at the personal and the community levels.

Photo vs. video

As I’ve been working on my video-making skills during the COVID-forced remote teaching terms, I’ve noticed that photo- and videography offer very different experiences both from the creator’s and the viewer’s standpoint. I tried to analyze why this is the case, and came to the following hypothesis. 

A still image creates a synthetic experience for the viewer. All the information in the picture is presented at once, so the viewer can make up their own version of the story. This doesn’t mean that it’s a synthetic experience for the creator, though. Actually, it takes a series of distinct, sequential steps to create a still image. For example, in the photography context, it could mean setting up the lighting, taking the photo and post-processing it. The sequential nature of still image-creation is even more apparent in classical painting, which involves sketching, mixing colours and painting multiple layers to render the form to various degrees of detail in the different parts of the image. The the finished painting is presented to the viewer, they see it all at once: the entirety of the shapes, colours and all the paint layers. It is then the job for the viewer’s brain to synthesize this information and formulate a story.

A movie, on the other hand, is an actual story. The viewer cannot ingest it all at once. The information has to be consumed as a sequence that was deliberately laid out by the author. Ironically, the process of creating a video is, in a sense, synthetic in that the author needs to have the entire process in their head, from how the footage needs to be shot to how it is going to be edited. Of course, post-processing is a big part of still photography too, but when I shoot photos, I am generally not making specific plans of how I am going to process them. With video, though, I am constantly re-evaluating how the footage I am capturing would be spliced together in the final product.

I think this difference in how the still and moving images are created and consumed is the reason that the emergence of mainstream video production did not result in extinction of still photography. The two genres are simply too different.

Botanical Beach

Panoramic view of Botanical Beach. Port Renfrew, BC, Canada.
We haven’t been to Botanical Beach since 2013. My daughter was two years old then. We wanted to make it a fun outing, so I rode my motorbike, and my wife and daughter followed in a car. This time, the whole family rode in the car, including my parents. We stopped to stretch our legs in Jordan River at the appropriately-called Cold Shoulder Cafe (they had no bathrooms and no decaf coffee, which is the only kind my father can take.) Otherwise, it’s a perfectly located pit stop between Victoria and Port Renfrew, where Botanical Beach is.
The distance to Botanical Beach from our home in Victoria is 270 km (round trip.) It’s just long enough to make it a significant excursion, so we don’t go there too often. It is a famous destination for Southern Vancouver Island, and when we just moved to Victoria, we learned early on that timing is important for planning a visit there. The tide needs to be low enough (around 1.5 m or lower) to be able to fully enjoy the tidal pools – the main attraction of this unique place. If you arrive at the beach at high tide, you miss the magic of walking on the exposed oven floor and peeking into the pools that are full of marine flora and fauna. It would be just another beautiful West Coast beach – something that we get de-sensitized to by living in Victoria. The problem is that the lowest tides often occur at an inconvenient time – either too early in the morning or too late at night to fit into a single-day sightseeing itinerary. This time, on a weekend in mid-June, the timing was on our side – the (relatively) low tide was at the middle of the day, so we could take a leisurely drive to the beach.
Panoramic view of Botanical Beach. Port Renfrew, BC, Canada.
From the parking lot in Port Renfrew, we meant to take the easiest route to the ocean, worrying that it could be difficult for my parents to scramble across tree roots on the trail. Having not been there for seven years, we miscalculated and took a relatively more difficult trail. It was a lucky mistake, though, because the parents managed the walk well,  and it took us directly to the most picturesque part of the beach.
My daughter was delighted by the extraordinary scenery. She spent all the time documenting her impressions on a GoPro. This is her camera of choice these days for recording footage for her soon-to-be-established vlog (a new hobby, spurred by the sharp increase of screen time during remote schooling during the COVID lockdown.) I also carried photo gear – a Sony a7RIV with two lenses (a 70-200 mm and a 24-70 mm) and another GoPro (stay tuned for some videos from inside the tide pools!) It is funny that every time I visit Botanical Beach, I feel compelled to go into photography mode, because the place is so uniquely beautiful. But sinse I go there sufficiently rarely, the technology develops so much that every time my photos are better simply because I have better gear. In a strange way, it feels both good and humbling at the same time.
A woman, a girl and their dog are looking at tidal pools at Botanical Beach. Port Renfrew, BC, Canada.
Panoramic view of Botanical Beach. Port Renfrew, BC, Canada.
Tidal pools at Botanical Beach. Port Renfrew, BC, Canada.

New gear

There is no way around it – shooting with a brand-new camera is one, if not the, most exciting aspects of photography. Admittedly, I like new technology in a stereotypically geeky way, so my view is probably biased. Still, these are exciting times for photographers, with the technology advancing at an amazing pace.

During the past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking my new Sony α7R IV for some sports and concert performance shoots. The amazing 61 Mpix of resolution and the super-nimble autofocus (I mostly shot with a Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS lens) makes shooting incredibly exciting. Last time I had the same feeling was when I laid my hands on a then-new Canon 1Dx. Immediately, I knew that it was a revolutionary piece of equipment that was going to change the way I approach taking photos.

I am glad that I’ve had an opportunity to take my photography hobby to a professional level. Not the smallest part of it is that it allows me to play with the latest and greatest gear. Ironically, the state-of-the-art gear is needed to stay competitive as a pro. So it is not clear at all what is the means and what is the end.

Learning to see

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera.”
— Dorothea Lange

I’ve been watching a video of Richard Feynman’s lecture on the laws of physics, and he described the essence of the scientific approach like this: “This is the key of modern science, this is the beginning of the true understanding of nature – this idea that to look at the thing, to record the details and to hope that in the information thus obtained may lie a clue to one or another of a possible theoretical interpretation.”

The ability to observe is of primary importance both in science and in art. Leonardo da Vinci, who was an exceptionally keen observer, is a stunning example of a genius straddling both fields. There is some evidence that he, in fact, made no distinction between the two. Feynman also drew and played drums. He said at the beginning of his lecture at Cornell that somehow physicists and mathematicians always mentioned his artistic interests, but when he played drums at a club, no-one ever said that he was also a theoretical physicist. He attributed it to higher appreciation of arts compared to science.

The good thing is that the capacity for observation is a trainable skill. One exercise for developing it is to take photos of various random objects throughout the day. The idea is that the mere act of looking for subjects to take pictures of encourages us to be more tuned to our surroundings. I’ve decided to put to to practice and snapped a picture of a tree with multiple trunks as I was walking across campus yesterday. Then, I thought that it would be even better to turn it into a sketch. Here is the result – made on an iPad in ProCreate with an Apple Pencil.

Missing shots

Today, I once again confirmed for myself that being a shinpan (referee) at a kendo tournament is more exhausting than actually participating in a match. When you fight, you control your own actions, so you can anticipate at least 50% of what’s going on (the opponent controls another 50%). But when you referee, both competitors can strike at any time, so you cannot relax even for a second – or you will miss a shot. It is kind of similar to photographing kendo. Only the responsibility of missing a shot (or ippon) is higher when you are a shinpan.

I was both refereeing and taking photos at the Intercollegiate Taikai today – not literally at the same time, of course, but enough mixing of the two activities that I was often thinking about judging while shooting and about shooting while judging, missing shots in both cases as a result. It was still a great practice, both in terms of kendo and photography, not to mention a great time with friends.

Oh, and as a bonus – our club had two teams in the tournament, and they both met in the final! (No, we were not judging our own dojo’s teams, in case you were wondering…)

Being selfish

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“Most people think self-oriented and other-oriented motivations are oppositeness of a continuum. Yet, I’ve consistently found that they’re completely independent. You can have neither and you can have both.”
— Adam Grant

It’s a counterintuitive idea that you have to improve yourself in order to be able to help others. That means that at every given moment, as you work on something, your motivation is is both selfish and altruistic. But the fact (demonstrated by Adam Grant’s research, for example) that these motivations are independent is even more difficult to grasp.

In the end, I think that a selfish interest comes first. This is what sparks the initial interest in whatever we decide to do. Later on, as we develop some expertise in the subject, we might be able to maintain the interest as we find the purpose (as the answer to the “Why?” question starts to involve other people beside ourselves).

In my case, I am interested in photography first of all because I am a geek and love technology. Second, I love art, and photography lets me combine the tech and art aspects. Third, I like to photograph my family and the places I visit. Finally, I like the fact that my images are useful to other people: the athletes get to see the moments of their performance that otherwise only the spectators can enjoy, parents have memories of their kids practicing and performing dance numbers, etc.

Paradoxically, we do things we love mostly for ourselves, yet we seek external validation and are delighted by it.

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Mixing UV and white light sources

We have been exploring the possibility of creating new lighting effects by using daylight-balanced and UV light sources simultaneously. The two light sources produce inherently different effects, which can conflict with each other and detract from the overall image. At the same time, new possibilities are opened by breaking the conventional rules of thumb. Often, these new approaches are discovered by playful experimenting on the set, rather than by pre-planning the shoot.

Here is my recent blog post about this for The Black Light Magazine.

AA5Q9011_08-10-2016UV light photography is typically done in a dark studio and, until recently, with a relatively long shutter speed to maximize the intensity of the fluorescent light. As a result, “black light” photographs have a distinct look that features high tonal and colour contrast, a black background and a distinct bluish-purple colour cast produced by the visible portion of the LED or strobe lights.

We have been experimenting with mixing the visible, white light sources with UV strobes in order to expand the range of types of images that can be obtained using UV light and fluorescent paint. In the process, we have come across several technical and creative issues that shape the concepts that lend themselves well to UV photography.

First, when daylight-balanced light is used in conjunction with a source that is strongly biased towards the violet and ultra-violet side of the spectrum, managing the resulting colour cast, i.e. setting the white point correctly, becomes a challenge not only in the camera settings, but also in post-processing. This technical issue can be overcome relatively easily by using coloured gels on top of the UV-filtered strobes. The only drawback of this approach is that the gels further limit the intensity of the light, which has already been greatly reduced by the UV filters.

The second issue with mixing the UV and visible light is more conceptual, and it has to do with the type of image that can be created. Considering a portrait of a model with fluorescent makeup, for example, we quickly discovered that as we made the relative contrition of conventional, daylight-balanced strobes more prominent, the portrait became more and more, well.., conventional. This happened because the distinct colours and contrast of the fluorescent makeup became less prominent and significant in the overall image.

AA5Q8950_08-10-2016In order to maintain the impart of the fluorescent makeup, we found that it is effective to break the conventional rules of lighting the model. Specifically, instead of diffusing the incident light, we used a small, directed light source that created harsh shadows on the model’s face, i.e. sharp transitions between the light and the dark areas. This way, the fluorescent makeup, which was located in the deep shadows, was not affected by the white light and was very prominent in the resulting image.

In conventional portrait photography, particularly in “beauty” portraits, harsh light is avoided as being unflattering to the model. However, when the creative process features unconventional techniques like UV light and fluorescent paints, the solution to arising conceptual problems often lies at the extremes, or even is the exact opposite, of established guidelines. In this respect, the creative process is similar to scientific discovery, where researchers are advised to look for new insights at the fringes of the explored areas.

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