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Analytical observation: why we like what we like

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Last year in Milan, I saw two exhibits related to Leonardo da Vinci’s work. One displayed his original notebooks, and the other, Leonardo3, showed models of his engineering designs. What impressed me the most is how much Leonardo was able to accomplish, both as an artist and as a scientist, by simply observing nature. When I think about it a little deeper, though, I realize that he was not “simply” observing the phenomena that interested him – he was was simultaneously analyzing them.

Cultivating the skill of analytical observation of everything that surrounds us is tremendously useful, even just as an exercise in concentration, which, in turn, is a basis for any deep work. One effective way of doing it is to start with things that genuinely interest you and to try to answer the question “Why am I interested in it?” For example, if it is a movie, a book or a piece of art, instead of engaging with it as a form of escapism, it would be more productive (and, arguably, more enjoyable) to think about what makes the object so interesting while we are watching/reading/observing it.

In fact, I think there are three questions that set up a framework for analysis on any piece of creative work, from a piece of art to a scientific paper. Cal Newport identified them as part of his process of reviewing technical papers.

  1. What is the main point of the work (what makes it good/interesting)?
  2. What makes it different from other works (books/photographs/research projects)?
  3. What techniques were used to achieve the result?

Perhaps, applying this framework to our everyday activities, would put us at risk of making everything we do too mechanical, robbing us of the joy of doing thing purely for fun, without any agenda. On the other hand, this can be a way to a more mindful way of doing things we like and in the process learning about these things and about ourselves.

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How to quit

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“Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.”
― Donald Justice

When I first started practicing kendo several years ago, whenever I would meet with Japanese sensei, they would ask: “Why did you begin doing kendo?” Being a foreigner, the answer was always easy: I like Japanese culture, history, food, etc. Recently, I heard a a different question: “Why do you still practice kendo?” My first reply, which I thought was quite funny, was “Because samurai never quit.” Seriously, though, I find this to be a much harder question than the first one, just like sustaining motivation for practice is more difficult than obtaining it initially.

I think this is true with any activity that you have been doing for many years and that has become a big part of your life. You do it “seriously”, as people would call it. Dan Heller even introduced a gradation of levels of seriousness with which amateurs pursue their activities (it was photography in his case): beginner photographer, serious photographer, insanely serious photographer,.. After a while, you begin to realize just how large the part of your life that you are devoting to your activity of choice (photography, kendo, ) really is. It takes a lot of time, money, mental and emotional resources. Becoming any good requires both quality and quantity of practice. I am not saying that the benefits are not worth it, but whatever you invest into the activity does add up, both in the positive and in the negative sense.

You might wonder, “Just imagine how much time I would have if I quit that thing that I have been doing”. Wo-o-o-o… it’s a very un-samurai-like thought, but after all, some of us are also scientists or at least (think that) they like logic, so let’s think it through.


First of all, you might not have to “quit” per se to be able to claw back some time and mental resources. You might be able to dial down the amount of practice, because your experience should enable you to maximize the quality of practice during the remaining sessions. The returns on increasing the amount of naive practice, to borrow the term from Anders Ericsson, are rapidly diminishing anyway, so you might as well replace it with deliberate practice.

Second, even if you quit a highly structured practice regime that has been incorporated into your routine over the years, you might not be able to immediately reclaim all the freed-up time in an efficient manner. For example, when I have a looming deadline on a work-related project and decide to skip a kendo practice in order to get some of the work done, I typically find that the uninterrupted chunk of time that is typically devoted to kendo becomes fragmented by interruptions (usually, procrastination that manifests itself in one form or another) that exist because a routine for alternative work has not been established. So unless you are prepared to quit something for good or at least for a substantial period of time (like taking a six-months sabbatical from your usual activities, which would allow you to genuinely try something new and to make a new habit of it), it is actually not worth doing if your goal is to free up time for other projects.

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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.

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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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Capturing everything

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“…survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.”
Julia Cameron “The Artist’s Way“

The idea of taking notes to capture the events of our lives is controversial from the standpoint of present moment awareness. On the one hand, the vary act of note taking can be distracting from the experience itself. On the other hand, it can serve as a focusing tool.

In a recent interview, a comedian Mike Birbiglia said that an advice that he would give to his younger self was to write everything down in a journal “because it’s all so fleeting”. Basically, I think that the value of journaling boils down to cultivating the skills of observation. Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way” makes a case that paying attention is a key skill in any creative endeavour. Perhaps, it is a key in everything: relationships, work, memory, creativity, etc.

Last year, I went to the Leonardo3 exhibit in Milan, where Da Vinci’s notebooks were displayed. Those were e-copies; the real ones were displayed at the Santa Maria delle Grazie, which is also the cite of “The Last Supper”. My most prominent impression was of Leonardo’s incredible ability to observe nature and to learn from it. If I think about it a bit more, it becomes apparent that he must have been very generous with his time. He must have had sufficient patience to just look at things (e.g. turbulent water flow under a bridge or frogs swimming in a puddle) and figure out why they look and work the way they are. After all, Leonardo did all his work before computers and productivity tools. Yet undeniably, he had been tremendously productive. I think that perhaps, it was a conjunction of two key factors: patiently paying attention and diligent capturing of his experiences and observations.

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Media matters

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When amateur artists begin to extend their creativity and develop their skills, they often expect to produce great work right away. As Julia Cameron points out in her incredibly influential book “The Artist’s Way“, “By being willing to be a bad artist, you have chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.”

One of the reasons for the high initial self-expectations is that the creative process of (new) amateur artists is sporadic. By definition of being amateurs, they are are not thinking as professionals. For pros, the workflow is largely focussed on showing up and consistently delivering a large volume of work rather than waiting for mysterious inspiration. Here is Julia Cameron again: “Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.” In other words, the pros trust the routine of honing their craft. They know that if they keep at it every day, the inspiration (and greatness) will come eventually.

The beginners, on the other hand, don’t have the psychological safety of the large volume of generated work. Therefore, each painting they produce is very precious to them.

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Ultimately, the way to deal with over-attachment to one’s own work is to produce more work on a regular basis. Another trick is to set up the framework of practice from the beginning. One way to do it is to use very cheap or disposable media, the kind that typically would not be associated with a museum-quality masterpiece. I saw the ultimate expression of this concept in Beijng, where calligraphers write elegant Chinese characters on a sun-heated sidewalk using water. They can barely finish writing a poem before the first characters start to disappear as the water dries up.

Calligraphy writing at the Jing Shan Park. Beijing, China.

These days, I am playing with an airbrush, learning freehand and stecilling techniques. In airbrushing, the mistakes are difficult if not impossible to recover from. Once too much or too dark of a colour is sprayed, there is no way of removing it. So I made it a point to use newsprint paper – the medium that many professionals recommend for practicing airbrush techniques. I use newsprint even when I think that the result could be a unique painting. I also don’t hesitate to use subjects that have no potential for standing on their own as a piece of art, like copying fragments of famous paintings that were originally done in a different medium.

The idea of using newsprint paper came to me when I was looking at the paintings in Mauritzhuis earlier this year. Adrian Coorte, in particular, often painted on paper, instead of canvas or wooden board, which were typical media of the time.

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Active waiting vs. procrastination

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I have a copy of Robert Boyce’s “Advice for New Faculty Members” sitting on a shelf on top of my desk at home. As I was looking for an excuse avoid working on a research paper, I decided to flip through it. The book has been tremendously helpful during my first yeast at the university in terms of setting a framework for best practices in allocating time and efforts in teaching and research. The most effective practices are all laid out there in plain sight, supported by (sometimes too much of) statistical data.

Regarding writing in particular (as this is what I was avoiding) the first point that Boice makes is that it pays off not to rush into pouring words on the page. Instead, the best writers wait until they have sufficiently played with the ideas and supporting material in their heads to actually have something to say in their manuscripts. I was quite pleased with this idea: my procrastination was actually supposed to be productive in some indirect way.

There is a difference, however, between “active waiting’, how Boice calls it, and simply avoiding work. The former is a conscious, mindful process. It sets the stage for more efficient work.

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In my experience, active writing is absolutely crucial in a creative process. Photography or painting are great examples. Without some planning and taking time to create a mental representation the photo shoot or a painting season becomes a mindless going through the motions, a naive practice, to borrow a term from Anders Ericsson.

In kendo, the active waiting is formalized in the pre-practice ritual in the form of mokuso, a brief period of group meditation. Ironically, the meaning of it is not often discussed in modern dojos, as we are too focussed on getting to the practice itself, i.e. to literally just going through the motions.

Moss Street Paint-in, July 16, 2016.

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Under and over the water

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Here is a post for The Black Light Magazine on a photoshoot, where I was not involved as a photographer. In fact, the most challenging part for the production planning, and I avoided even most of that, being on travel in The Netherlands. Moving into the area of technically challenging shoots, where we have to rely on other people (e.g. a diver in this case) to press the trigger for me and my associates. One aspect that I am still trying to reconcile is the apparent lack of creative control that comes with delegating the actual shooting part. Perhaps, this is the inherent difference between the skills and the vision of the camera operator and the director. I should start looking at the shoot from the director’s chair and learn to enjoy the view.

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During a recent underwater photoshoot, which involved a marathon body-painting session by three artists working simultaneously on two models and a diver sitting on the bottom of the pool with the gear that is typically used for photographing marine creatures, we came across a rather unique challenge. Our objective was to show the models in fluorescent makeup swimming underwater, while simultaneously showing their environment, i.e. the reflections of the free surface and the colour of the water itself.

Capturing the images of the models was relatively straightforward. They were illuminated with underwater strobes cover with custom UV filters. “Straightforward” doesn’t mean “trivial”, though. The diver-photographer actually to shed some blood by cutting his finger on the edge of the filter. Luckily, there were no no bloodthirsty creatures in the pool…

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The challenge was to simultaneously illuminate the environment (i.e. the water) with studio strobes placed at the edge pf the pool. Since they were positioned above the surface, they could not be triggered with a radio trigger on the diver’s camera, since the triggering signal does not travel well under water. A makeshift solution was to stick one of the underwater flashes over the surface and trigger the studio strobes optically. The major drawback of this approach is that it significantly reduced the already scarce amount of light available underwater for illuminating the models.

A modified triggering method, that we are going to thoroughly test in a follow up photo shoot will involve floating a wireless trigger, coupled with an optical sensor, in a sealed glass container on the surface of the pool, giving it access to both the underwater flashes (optically) and the above-water studio strobes (via radio).

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Purposeful practice

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Anders Ericsson explains in his book “Peak” that simply repeating things over and over again does not lead to controls improvement (in fact, it is a recipe for stagnation). Ericsson differentiates between “naive practice”, “purposeful practice” and “deliberate practice”, in the order of sofistication and effectiveness. Basically, repeating something without focusing on a specific area of improvement is naive practice. In contrast, purposeful practice requires analysis of one’s progress and working out ways through or around the roadblocks that inevitably occurs once the current limit of ability is reached. The powerful message of Ericsson’s book is, of course, the argument that people’s minds and bodies are adaptable in way that a “natural” limit or ability can, in fact, be expanded. This means that we, in a sense, can increase our own “talent”.

Naturally, it would be great to spend our days with purpose, i. e. having a clear and specific goal to work towards. in the words of Annie Dillard, “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” This is easier said then done, though. First, the really high-level goal is quite elusive – after all, we may be talking about the meaning of life. Second, it can be argued that continuously operating in the productivity mode is, ironically unproductive in the long run.

However, in specific situations, for example, developing a photography technique, it is quite easy to practise purposefully. All that is needed is a clear, attainable goal (e.g. learn to recognize and act upon photo opportunities suitable for using a phone camera in daily life), and a measure of progress (e.g. number of photos taken each day and, perhaps, feedback from peers on the selected ones).

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Placidity Amidst Raging Waves

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“Saevis Tranquillus in Undis:
Placidity Amidst Raging Waves”
— life motto of William of Orange

On the second day of my trip to The Nethelands, I visited an impressive exhibit on the history of William of Orange in his house/palace called Prinsenhof in Delft. Before that, I thought about William of Orange first of all as a rebel leader, so I was surprised by his life motto written on the wall of the exhibit hall: “Placidity amidst raging waves”. Although William was undoubtedly a rebel, he became one quite reluctantly. In fact, during the iconoclasm in Holland, he predicted that it would cause a major political and personal disaster to everyone involved. He also struggled quite a bit to reconcile his oath of allegiance to the king with his inherent loyalty to his country, ultimately represented by its people.

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Overall, I find it tremendously impressive how forward-thinking William was in his political views and in his exercise of restraint (he was nicknamed “William the Silent“). Perhaps, it is his personal trait of tolerance and progressive views that continues to manifest itself in Holland’s ability to continuously ride the wave of progress, from near-exclusive (with the exception of Portugal) trade agreement with Japan in the Middle Ages to art of the post-Renessance to technological innovations of the modern days.

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In general, the ability to remain calm in the face of external perturbations is the key to mastering skills and life situations. For example, the space before the stimulus and the reaction is crucial in kendo, which is arguably a model for everything else in life, as described by Minamoto Musashi, whose “The Book of Five Rings” has been very influential in the business world. Even in photography, I often find that it is good to take time time to observe the subject instead of immediately starting to shoot in fear of missing the opportunity. A little pause allows me to choose a better viewpoint and composition and ultimately, to learn more about the subject.

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Travelling with an iPhone

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My 1D X and three lenses were already packed for the trip to The Netherlands, but at the last moment, in fact, on the morning of departure, I changed my mind and decided to leave the DSLR in favour of an iPhone. It was a conscious effort to do things differently from my usual routine. Besides, I wanted to see if I would be able to still do photography, if I focussed on different aspects of it – namely, on documenting (nearly) everything I encounter and sharing it with my wife almost instantly.

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On the second day of travel, I can report that it is indeed possible to do a significant amount of travel photography with a smartphone. In certain ways, it is even easier than with a DSLR. Indeed, carrying just a phone, instead of a bulky camera and a backpack makes you more nimble, both physically and mentally. I found myself actively looking for photo opportunities not only after arriving at the destination, but throughout the trip.

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Also, a phone camera allows me toby much stealthier and sneakier while taking candid shots. the sound of a high-speed burst from a 1D X is as distinct as that of an AK-47, and has a similar (but not as lethal) startling effect on an unsuspecting person. Not only the phone camera is silent, but the smartphones are so ubiquitous, that it seems that people stopped paying any attention to them – I could be taking a picture of a persona meter away, and he won’t even notice it.

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There are a few issues with iphonography, though, compared to shooting with a DSLR. I am not talking about image quality – it is expected that a phone camera would have some limitations. The first thing I noticed is battery life. Shooting, editing and posting photos through the travel (two airports and a train ride) and then walking around The Hague for entire afternoon drained the battery completely and sent me beck to my hotel room (I must say that I was quite tired and glad to do it anyway).

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The second issue is storage. In my particular case, it is not the amount of storage on the phone itself – it is the capacity of my cloud account, where all the images are backed up automatically. My 50 GB filled by the end of the second day. The issue was easily resolved by deleting some old backups. I am sure that my workflow can be optimized, for example, by copying the photos from the cloud to a laptop at the end of each day. However, a camera phone does not completely free you from either a computer or a power outlet.