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Choosing the subject: how I became interested in dance photography

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Professional photographers often give the following advice on choosing the area of specialization: shoot projects in the field, to which you already have some connection. For example, if you play a particular sport, try shooting that. If you are interested in street photography, try shooting in your home town. If you travel a lot, try travel photography…

This is a sound advice, because choosing the subject based on your current activity makes use of your pre-existing interest and expertise in this area. In my case, this natural selection of the topic happened several times. First, I became interested in travel photography, because my job took me to conferences all over the world. Second, working at the University, I started shooting sporting events involving our student-athletes. Now, I am doing dance and performance photography for a local school, where my daughter takes ballet classes.

Dance photography is a fascinating area. I find that because dance itself is an inherently beautiful form of art, it removes a lot of pressure to create a beautiful image from the photographer – the subject is already beautiful! Perhaps, people like photographing flowers for the same reason.

On the other hand, I was never seriously interested in dancing myself, but through my daughter’s fascination with dance and through learning how to photograph it, I find that my interest in and knowledge of various aspects of it (training methods, performance production, dedication required form the students and the instructors, etc.) also increases. In fact, the idea of enrolling my daughter in a dance class at an early age first came to me when I was assisting another photographer with covering a large year-end performance for the same school. Of course, there were other clues, like her spontaneously starting to dance while watching a DVD of “Tales of Beatrix Potter” ballet in the gift shop of the Palais Garner in Paris, when she was less than two years old.

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How to go down in history: being the first or the last

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In a recent interview, Chuck Klosterman, the author of “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs”, mentioned that while it is difficult to predict, which musician/artist/scientist would be considered the most historically important figure of the current period many years from now, it is unlikely that it would be someone, who is considered as the leader of his/her field right now. Klosterman suggests that in order to have retrospective historical weight, an author (or a piece of art, scientific work, etc.) needs to meet at least one of the two criteria: he/she/it needs to offer true innovation, i.e. to be the first the first ever in the specific field, or he/she/it must represent the culmination of the development of the field that changes how people think, i.e. to be the last in the field – the finishing touch that completes it and points to a fundamentally new paradigm.

Basically, history likes those who are are either the first or the last in their area of work.

This concept has some parallels with the strategy for creating innovations outlined by Cal Newport in “Deep Work”: be on the leading edge of your field and then look just beyond it using patterns similar to those that exist (and are already known) in other fields.

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Of course, following the Newport’s strategy does not guarantee that the future generations will pick your work as singularly significant. However, stepping beyond the leading edge of your field gives you the chance to be the first in a completely new area, while getting to the leading edge gives you the chance to be the last in your field – the one who applies the unifying finishing touch to the existing body of work.

There are a couple of implications of this concept. First, you cannot be a narrow specialist. In order to apply known patterns from other areas, you need to have at least some knowledge of the fields beside your own area of expertise. As Miyamoto Musashi wrote in his famous “The Book of Five Rings, “Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.”

Second, you cannot be a pure generalist either. You need to specialize in something in order to develop the deep expertise that would enable you to do cutting edge work in this area. Becoming an expert of that caliber is, of course, the hardest part of the process.

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The big picture

Ukai in Inuyama, Japan.
Ukai in Inuyama, Japan.

At my daughter’s school, they told a story about how when we like something, there are usually some aspects of that “thing” that, while not pleasant by themselves, can be tolerated or even enjoyed when taken as part of the entire experience. For example, we may love our puppy, and because of that we learn to like waking up early to take him for a walk, which is a part of the experience of having a puppy.

I recently came across a similar concept in Charles Duhigg’s “Smarter Faster Better” in the context of psychology of motivation. During basic training, when faced with particularly gruelling exercises or harsh conditions, the US Marines are taught to ask each other questions containing the word “why?” This is done to focus the attention on the underlying motivation for doing the big job and to add meaning to the seemingly meaningless, tedious task at hand.

This techniques is effective in many settings, but it is particularly useful in creative endeavours. In photography, for example, the most fun part of the project might be to shoot beautiful subjects or to receive the compliments on our work. Getting to these fun stages, however, requires significant background work in terms of planning, production and post-processing. Doing many of these tedious tasks can easily snuff out the initial motivation for the project, unless we remind ourselves in the process, that it is all part of the big picture and a necessary component of getting to the really enjoyable part.

I experienced a perfect case of this during my trip to Japan a few years ago, where I had an unplanned opportunity to photograph ukai in a small historic town of Inuyama, close to Nagoya. Ukai is a fascinating traditional way of fishing that uses trained cormorants, who chase the fish underwater, catch it and then release it to their human handlers. I really wanted to see the process, take pictures, and show them to people, but in order to do this, I had to wait for several hours for the ukai tour to start. The waiting itself, in the humid heat of the Japanese summer, with heavy photo gear on my back, in the town where all tourist attractions were located within a couple of blocks (and most of which I had visited by that time) could have been quite miserable. However, I knew that it was a part of the entire experience, and in retrospect, I enjoyed it almost as much as watching the fishing itself and capturing one of my most popular photographs to date.

Another example, where the tedious part is integral to the entire experience, is travel. Dealing with pre-trip planning and arranging the logistics can be stressful. On the positive side, this preliminary stage not only makes the destination more enjoyable when we get there, but it also becomes a significant part of the travel experience itself by priming us (through anticipation) to what we are going to see, eat, and photograph. In order to appreciate this stage, we need to remind ourselves why are going on the trip as we are booking tickets, packing the bags and standing in line at the airport. Not all parts of travelling are equally fun, but all can be enjoyed if we remain conscious of the big picture.

Artist Kyoko Takatsu at work in her studio in Inuyama, Japan.
Artist Kyoko Takatsu at work in her studio in Inuyama, Japan.
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No big deal

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At my daughter’s birthday party, which was held at a local art studio, the children were reminded about one of the “rules” of conduct at the studio. The rule was “No big deal!”, as in “If I accidentally get paint on the floor, it’s no big deal” or “If I mess up my clay dragon and have to redo it all over again, it’s no big deal.”

For a creative process to be effective, it is important not to take things, particularly your own work, too seriously. That is why it is sometimes useful to choose disposable media for your work to avoid putting excessive emphasis on the result, where the process is inherently more valuable. Julia Cameron wrote in “The Artist’s Way” that in order to make art, we must be ready to make bad art, at least initially. I heard some writers say that if you work for hours to write a thousand words, and then end up throwing out everything except the last couple of sentences in revisions, the hours spent on this should not be considered a wasted time – writing the text that was ultimately thrown out was a necessary step in creating the last two good sentences.

In other words, it’s no big deal that it takes longer than what we thought it should have taken to create something of value. We should just accept it and enjoy the process. After all, they said at my daughter’s party that the main rule of the art studio was “Have fun!”

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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

Moss Street Paint-in, July 16, 2016.

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.