Business – Page 3 – Peter Oshkai photography

March 9, 2015

No permit required

Recently, I listened to an interview with Seth Godin, who wrote many famous business books like “Purple Cow” and more recently, “Linchpin.” He made a point that in the modern age of information technology, there is no objective need to ask a for permission to engage in any kind of art, trade or business from anyone other than ourselves. He used an example of book publishing, which nowadays has been reduced to typing the words and hitting “Publish” in WordPress.

The last remaining authority, the one the sits inside our head, is a tough one, though. I think the reason is that we associate ourselves with what we do so closely, that somehow our jobs (not necessarily the paid ones that we do to make a living, but practically any activity) subjectively become our identities. Although this may have nothing to do with reality, there is a real resistance to trying new things that we create for ourselves. In my experience, I sometimes have to consciously convince myself that trying a new kind of shoot, instead of “perfecting” the one(s) that I am already familiar with, would be fun (and almost always is, following the theory that new and challenging activities are most fulfilling).

The benefits of exploring new activities are definitely worth overcoming the internal resistance. For example, although sports photography was distinctly new, challenging and uncomfortable for me after starting initially in the landscape genre, shooting sports opened up an incredibly fun and rewarding area and generally prompted my interest in photographing people.

March 5, 2015March 5, 2015

Virtual communities

In his 2012 novel “Reamde“, Neal Stephenson describes a community of hackers that is “post-web and post-email.” They operate and communicate within a multiplayer computer game, forming complex networks that have implications in the physical world.

I am fascinated with how human communities evolve from physical to virtual ones, and which elements of the old models persist through this evolution. For photographers, for example, this has had some real implications already – our photographs are rarely viewed in any other media, but on a backlit screen. As Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. wax and wane, they are going to leave some of their elements for the future virtual communities. It would be nice to be able predict what those elements of future visual (and other types) of communication would be…

February 9, 2015February 9, 2015

To do or not to do

“No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
– George Lucas (Yoda, “Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back“)

I wrote earlier about the importance of exploring new subjects and techniques for one’s development as a photographer and an overall well-rounded person. It is equally important to practice the skill of not pursuing new projects, as James Altucher explains in his book “The Power of No.” Because time, as well as energy, emotional, financial and other resources are inherently limited, there is a very real cost of pursuing new opportunities. it needs to be weighed against the potential benefits, and of course, this is the most difficult part.

Taking up a new project implies a commitment to complete it one way or another, and this aspect alone diminishes freedom to choose to do something else in the future.

Having said this, there is also an inherent risk in choosing not to do new things. In fact, a finite probability of failing at something new becomes a certainty the moment we decide not to try it. Besides, it is often difficult to fail at something completely, which can make make even a failed attempt quite valuable as many authors, who advocate thinking big point out.

February 2, 2015February 3, 2015

Why stock photography is boring

Stock photography is not often recommended by professional photographers as a single niche to focus on. One of the reasons is that stock images are aimed at a ver broad audience and therefore do not offer much opportunity for creative self-expression. In my experience, I find this to be true. In fact, I am often surprised that my most popular/successful stock photos are not the ones that I personally like. This make

In the 1940’s, a term “narrowcasting” was introduced as the opposite to broadcasting (of radio and TV programs). It refers to transmitting messages aimed at a narrow audience, not the broad public. Many of the modern-day podcasts are examples of narrowcasting. Their authors are counting on the fact that the Internet-based audience is so large that it contains a significant number of listeners, who have common interests, views and tastes. This enables the podcasters to focus on the specifics on the niche area without spending time on explanations and justifications for the broader audience. In contrast, broadcast programs can reach larger numbers of people, but they are necessarily less personalized, more watered-down.

I think the same principle applies to photography. Since most of the photos are distributed online, we can count on the vastness of the Internet that somewhere out there there are people “like us” in the sense that our favourite images would resonate with them as well. These people are similar to us to begin with (perhaps, in their tastes, background, interests, etc.), so they don’t need to be convinced about the value of photographs that are meaningful to us, as authors. Perhaps it is not surprising then that many Internet followings start with small groups of family and real-life friends and later expand to social media friends and so on.

Of course, it is impossible to consistently shoot only photos with great personal significance and emotional content. For the rest (I always think about photos of the Eiffel Tower or other famous landmarks taken from touristy viewpoints), stock photography market is a perfect outlet. After all, vanilla is the most popular flavour of ice cream (it is my personal favourite too, by the way).

January 30, 2015January 30, 2015

Seeing the big picture

“You should not have a favorite weapon. To become over−familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well.”

– Miyamoto Musashi, “The Book of Five Rings“

In my academic research, I am often faced with a choice of exploring a new subject or focussing deeper on my core area of expertise. It is the well-known dilemma of specializing versus generalizing. Professional photographers face the same question when they decide to niche down on a specific subject or remain generalists.

Tim Ferriss, who wrote a very popular book about learning called “The 4-Hour Chef,” made compelling arguments for being a generalist. Specifically, being proficient in many areas allows one to see the big picture, recognize and explore connections and similarities between these areas. Aspiring to be the “jack of all trades and master of many”, as Ferris puts it, is also inherently more fun, and thus more conducive to happiness in daily life than forcing yourself to niche down for the sake of rapidly diminishing returns on your investment of effort in one specific activity.

I think that being a professional photographer, but not investing your entire identity into it, paradoxically, makes you a better photographer in the long term. This is somewhat similar to budo, the way of the martial arts, following which on a certain (high) level requires exploring other human activities, learning about human nature and applying this knowledge to one’s core area of expertise. In fact, Minamoto Musashi, who stated the principles for following the Way of Strategy in his “Book of Five Rings” (Go Rin no Sho), instructs: “Become aquatinted with every art.” and “Develop intuitive judgement and understanding for everything.”

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015

Quality control for stock photos

As I look through my old travel photos, I post-process some of them to prepare for use as stock photos. When I first started shooting stock photos, my approach was to prepare large batches of images and send them to an agency (I used Alamy). I quickly found that I would often become overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning the photos required in order to pass the agency’s quality control.

In the case of Alamy, this was usually related to digitally removing traces of dust particles, which are always present on the lens and the sensor of the camera. Modern cameras have improved dust control technologies, but some amount of particles is always present. These blemishes usually show up in uniformly lit and coloured areas of the photo, e.g. the sky. Higher f-numbers (smaller apertures) make the dust particles more pronounced.

Removing the dust in post processing is not difficult per se. I usually use a variation of the clone stamp tool in Lightroom or Photoshop. However, cleaning up many images at once is a sure way to kill all fun aspects of photography, and least for me personally.

Many professional photographers recommend outsourcing tasks like digital dust removing. I am sure that this is a solution that Tim Ferriss, the author of “The 4-hour Workweek” would recommend. In my case, the solution has been to drastically reduce the volume of the photos that I submit to the stock agencies. Doing so not only saves time overall, but encourages a more critical evaluation of the photos, as I select the ones that would be processed and submitted. The obvious drawback of this strategy from the purely business perspective is that some of the potential sales would not happen, because of the reduced volume of photos offered to potential customers. However, for someone like me, who does photography part-time and has already established a stock portfolio of reasonable size (few thousand images on sale), focussing on quality over quantity pays off in time savings alone.

January 17, 2015January 17, 2015

Meaning of life

Recently, I came upon an interview with Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired magazine, who wrote, among other books, “Cool Tools“, a review of the best or unique tools for nearly any kind of job. In the interview, he shared some interesting thoughts about the dilemma between choosing a niche for your activities to optimize performance, and being a generalist, i.e. exploring a wide range of activities. By the way, this appears to be true dilemma, as there is no correct choice.

In photography, as in other activities, e.g. academic research, specializing on an area of strength has many advantages. However, if your personal domain of activity is limited, narrow specialization potentially gets you stuck on a local maximum of performance. Achieving a global maximum requires one to go down on the performance curve. In other words, we need to become beginners in order to ultimately become better in something new.

Kelly talks about a concept of finding not just what you are good at, but what only you are good at. Searching for this global maximum of performance is very difficult as it necessarily involves ups and downs of performance. In fact, it can take an entire lifetime. Perhaps, this process of figuring out is the purpose of life.

January 14, 2015January 14, 2015

Practice, failure and unlearning

Developing a skill requires consistent practice. This is common knowledge in martial arts, but it is definitely true in other areas of life. It is simply not enough to absorb new information; it is also necessary in internalize it by repeatedly tying the new skill. The role of failure in this trial process is debatable. Most people fail many times before succeeding, so it is comfortable to think that we learn from our failures. Also, it is clear that training has to be challenging to be effective. However, some argue that failure is over-rated. For example, Peter Thiel, the author of “Zero to One“, said that in the case of startup companies (which fail often), failures occur not because of a single reason, but because of a combination of multiple factors. This makes these failures difficult to analyze and to learn from. As he puts it, a failed business is always a tragedy.

Although practice is crucial for learning, at some point in the creative process, it is necessary to “unlearn” – to put aside one’s arsenal of learned techniques and allow the intuition to take over. During photo shoots, for example, there is often no time to think through the composition, the lighting, the posing, etc. as the action unfolds. At such times, I work on trusting my experience in selecting the appropriate combination of parameters without thinking about the details. In fact, it is practice that enables this to happen – I have seen and shot similar situations enough times that I know which techniques, gear and camera settings do and to not work. In fact, knowing what does not work is particularly important for spontaneous, intuitive shooting. That knowledge, in a sense, is a product of prior failures.

January 10, 2015January 11, 2015

Value of education

Recently I heard and read many prominent entrepreneurs, such as Peter Thiel, co-founder of Pay-Pal and the author of the highly regarded book on startups “Zero to One” or Richard Branson, expressing very critical views of traditional, academic education. Thiel has completed both college and law school, while Branson never went to college, so the view seems to be relatively independent of their personal background. And of course, it is not just these two famous people, who believe that the conventional education is deeply flawed and, in a nutshell, one should take responsibility for his/her own learning. This view is so popular, that sometimes after seeing various infographics online, it seems that dropping out of school is requirement for success.

I think that this certainly applies to someone, who wants to become a photographer nowadays. The technology and the whole paradigm of content creation and production are developing so fast, that I cannot see how a school curriculum can truly keep up with it. Beside, there is a vast amount of resources available online and in print, so one only needs to be willing to learn.

Having said that, I see a huge benefit in formal education. Taking the example of photography, I think it would be of great benefit for a future professional to take formal classes in communications and business, not to mention fine art.

While Peter Thiel appears not to hold learning for the sake of learning in high regard, I believe that learning how to learn (note the difference) is very valuable. From the historical perspective, brilliant individuals like Thiel, Branson or Musk would always exist. They become personally successful and make great contributions to society. However, this kind of brilliance of a few individuals is different from the intellectual and creative potential of a sizeable slice of the population – people, who accumulated this capacity through receiving the highest possible education, often over multiple generations (i.e. children benefitting from the education received by parents). No doubt, maintaining the highest level of education for a large part of the population is very expensive for society. This is partly because this kind of educational system is more or less equally open to a wide range of individuals. Of course, one could argue that the higher education is very competitive, but the system certainly serves not just the highly capable and motivated people like Thiel or Musk. As Tolstoy’s character from “Anna Karenina” Konstantin Levin said about multiple generations of educated aristocrats, “talent and intellect, of course is another matter.” Perhaps, education is valuable precisely because the society benefits from it, even in an indirect way, even if an individual, who receives the education, doesn’t realize that he/she needs it.

January 8, 2015

On confidence

“We should devote ourselves to being self-sufficient and must not depend upon the external ratings by others for our happiness.”

-Bruce Lee

I came across an interesting article by Paul Graham, called “How to do what you love.” It is curious how similar are his thoughts regarding prestige, particularly in academic circles, to the words of Bruce Lee above. Graham goes bit more into details of why it is dangerous to let prestige be the guide in the choice of what we do. It is because the aura of prestige substitutes our own values with those “of the rest of the world.” Incidentally, he expands even further on this in “Hackers & Painters.”

I think there should be a balance between using the opinions of others as a constructive tool and being confident enough to disregard them when appropriate. In fact, it is in determining when it is appropriate to filter out the opinion of others that confidence is needed the most. After all, there is a thin line between confidence and arrogance.

For artists, photographers included, opinion of other people is a major factor that can influence the entire career. The challenge is not to let it dictate the direction of the art itself.

There is an effective way of approaching the confidence/arrogance dilemma in kendo. I have heard a saying that in practice (keiko), one should cultivate a feeling as if he/she is the worst (least capable) student in the group, while during shiai (read: real fight) one should feel as if he is the best. This way, we can be humble, yet not swayed by external factors during pivotal moments and decisions.

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