People – Page 7 – Peter Oshkai photography

March 22, 2015

Walk-around lens

I decided to follow an example of Alex Ogle, a street reportage photographer who was featured in October 2014 episode of “Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera,” to carry only one lens, namely a 35mm f/1.4L USM, for a family walk in a garden.

The absence of zoom is both limiting and liberating, as no mental energy is wasted on decision-making related to the focal length. Otherwise, the main feature of this lens that distinguishes it from cheaper, consumer-grade lenses is the very wide maximum aperture and excellent sharpness even when fully-opened (at f/1.4). This time, I was shooting in broad daylight, so there was no need to use the lens’s excellent light-gathering ability, but I still wanted to shoot wide open, to produce the subject isolation by blurring the background. To achieve the correct exposure, I had to decrease the shutter speed to 1/1000 s, which had a bonus effect of minimizing camera shake.

The main challenge with shooting at f/1.4 is that a common technique of pre-focussing by half-pressing the shutter button, recomposing and then shooting does not work due to the extremely shallow depth of field. Recomposing would shift the sensor plane sufficiently for the subject to become out-of-focus. Instead, the focus sensor has to be placed precisely on the subject (the front eye, in case of a portrait.) I usually crop the images in post-processing to improve composition.

In my opinion, the results of shooting with a 35mm f/1.4L USM are well worth practicing the shooting technique. The shallow depth of field immediately separates a photo taken with this lens from a mere snapshot.

March 16, 2015

Inspiration for the old age

I notice that with age, it becomes easy to lose motivation for starting new projects or even continuing to work on something that I have been doing for a long time. Inspiring stories of people who start something relatively late in life and through consistency and perseverance achieve results that are beyond average in that field, even for much younger people, work very well for me in such periods of uncertainty.

There are many inspiring life stories that can be found in books. For example, I have just heard an interview with Jack Canfield, who specializes in putting together collections of such stories.

In my own experience, one of the most influential encounters was the one with a Japanese lady, about sixty years of age, who visited our kendo dojo several years ago as part of the delegation of rather high-level kendoka. After the practice, she asked how long I had been practicing kendo. I was then in my early thirties and had started only a couple of years earlier. I thought that it was a hopelessly late age for starting kendo and that I had no realistic chance to ever achieving the level that this lady was at. However, she said the she started practice even later in life, after her children had grown up and left home. Naturally, this made me re-evaluate my entire outlook at kendo practice.

Activities that require certain level of physical fitness are the prime examples, where such inspiring stories are most impressive. I think that in other areas, such as arts, photography, studies, etc. there are even fewer excuses for not starting something new at any age. In fact, I recently read that from a psychological point of view, it is the joy of new experiences, and as a consequence, active seeking of new activities, skills and knowledge, that constitutes the essence of a youthfulness.

March 8, 2015

Why children are like carrots

Gretchen Rubin, who wrote “The Happiness Project” and more recently, a book about everyday habits called “Better Than Before“, pointed out that people are most satisfied with what they do if their activities are new and challenging, and also if the activities support an environment of growth. This means that a fulfilling pursuit has a cumulative effect, which we can see and enjoy over time. By the way, this does not mean accumulation of something material. The effect can be in the process itself, as in writing calligraphy with water on the sidewalk, for example.

Examples of activities that cultivate growth are gardening, collecting (stamps, coins, etc.) and raising children. The latter is particularly rewarding, since, as any parent would tell, kids grow very fast, both physically and psychologically.

I think that, by extension, photographing children (following the development of the same child over time) is an excellent long-time project. It develops the photography technique, provides a way to connect with the child and creates a cumulative record of memories that the child would be able to access later in life. Incidentally, having this visual reference is tremendously important for forming a post-factum impression of one’s childhood, since visual images can shape our memories.

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 26, 2015

Candid portraits

When the subject is not aware of the camera (at least, at the moment when the photo is being taken), the resulting candid portrait is often much more alive and “real” than a posed one, although the latter is often better executed from a technical standpoint. Professional models are trained to take the full advantage of a posed photo shoot. They know exactly what poses, view angles, lighting, etc. work best for them and, most importantly, can consistently reproduce their best poses. On the other hand, candid portraits makes “mere mortals” equal to pros in some respect, since it is much easier to be relaxed and behave naturally if one is not aware of the camera. In this case ignorance is, indeed, bliss.

I find that one interesting exception is photographing small children if they genuinely like being photographed. My three-year-old daughter is like that (most of the time). Everything in her world, photography, is a game to her. When she asks me to take a picture of her, she is fully aware of it, but somehow remains completely relaxed and continues whatever she was doing without missing a bit – exactly as she was doing it a moment earlier. I think this is because it all part of playing: she would “pose” for the camera one instant, run over to see the picture on the LCD the next second, and grab a camera to take her own picture of something that entered her attention field the moment after that. Incidentally, just as my daughter does not discriminate between playing model or photographer, the subjects of her photos (taken with an indestructible toy camera) uniformly span the range from portraits of her mom and dad to closeups of parts of furniture and toys to stickers of “Frozen” characters attached to whatever happened to be within reach.

February 16, 2015February 16, 2015

Social network

I wrote earlier that for me personally, one of the biggest benefits of practicing martial arts has been the instant camaraderie and the long-lasting friendships built doing it. I find that photography is somewhat similar in that respect. Perhaps, people naturally tend to build social networks around their activities, particularly if there is a true interest or passion in those activities.

Granted, connections with other photographers is typically not as instantaneous as with fellow kendoka or motorcycle riders. When the two hobbies/pursuits intersect, however, the common field of mutual interests becomes so vast that interacting with other photographers sometimes is often the most interesting aspect of a particular photoshoot.

February 5, 2015February 5, 2015

Vulnerability vs. helpfulness

In teaching, relating the teacher’s personal experience with the material, including initial failures or struggles in learning it, is an important tool for establishing a working connection with the students. This is relevant to teaching in a general sense, not necessarily limited to the scope of academe. For example, in the context of photography, I find that showing some vulnerability by making it clear that I am in the process of learning the craft, helps avoid appearing as a know-it-all. Of course, this applies to interactions with other photographers, and not with clients or models, with whom projecting confidence in one’s skills is of paramount importance.

On the other hand, to instil confidence in the students and to be genuinely helpful, the teacher must make it clear (either explicitly or implicitly) early in the interaction that he/she know the answer to the problem at hand or is well underway towards finding the solution in the case of an open-ended, complex issues. In any case, discussing past personal struggles would not appear helpful, if it comes out as whining, instead of deliberately chosen example of learning from one’s experience.

Some examples of good balance between vulnerability and helpfulness are writings of James Altucher, such as “The Power of No,” which is largely based on his personal stories.

January 26, 2015January 26, 2015

Street photography in Paris

My first ever visit to Paris was a trip to a conference, followed by a vacation with family. The timing of the conference was perfect in that I had a chance to take photos of the Bastille Day’s fireworks. As I look back through my other photos from that trip, I noticed that I took many candid shots of tourists in the city. I took these photos as we were walking along the streets and parks with my family. Our daughter was not yet two years old, so she was often sleeping in her travel stroller, being pushed by her grandfather, who thoroughly enjoyed this duty.

Sometimes, I quickly walked ahead of my family and took photos of other people. I did not worry about lighting too much, focussing on the dynamics of the street scenes. In retrospect, the lighting was mostly quite good, since we often took our excursions in the late afternoon, to avoid the summer heat. Also, I find that many street photos look better when converted to black-and-white, since there was no opportunity to manage colours in the composition of the busy street scenes.

I mostly used a 35mm f/1.4L lens on my 5D Mark II, but I also carried a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens whenever possible. I really like this lens for its ability isolate architectural details or pick out elements of street scenes from relatively far away.

Our expectations of travelling to Paris with a small child were very guarded, having read many negative opinions online. In reality, however, it turned out to be one of the most pleasant experiences. Parisians were incredibly accommodating and nice to us wherever we went, and our little daughter was often the reason we were invited to skip the long lines at popular tourist attractions.

January 21, 2015January 22, 2015

Rashomon effect

Travel photography is a tremendously popular niche. In fact, taking stock photos while travelling initially attracted me to professional photography. As my focus shifted from “places” to “people” over the past ten years, I find it increasingly interesting to review my own and other photographers’ photos of various destinations.

I believe that a good photograph contains a story with some emotional content. It conveys the personal view of the photographer to the viewer. Nowadays, with so many images of various destinations and events around the world available online, I often have an experience similar to what Akira Kurosawa brilliantly shown in “Rashomon,” where the same event is shown from the perspective of different people, each telling a personal story.

Interestingly, this effect is present even if I am reviewing only my own photos. As Daniel Gilbert, the author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” notes, people often under-estimate how much their personalities change, particularly, how much they will change in the next few years. I often view my photographs with the eyes of a different person from the one one who took them. Indeed, it is not possible to enter the same river twice. It turns out that we have multiple chances to experience the same place or event thanks to photography. As a bonus, each time, the story is told by a different person.

January 16, 2015January 16, 2015

On leadership

Recently, I have been listening to a podcast about military strategy and tactics of Mongols during the Genghis Khan’s campaigns. It is interesting that the Mongols valued leadership abilities of their commanders very highly. For example, there is a quote sometimes attributed to Genghis Khan (although it is more likely a variation of a quote of Alexander the Great or the Socrates) that “an army of donkeys led by a lion is better an army of lions led by a donkey.”

The basic principles of leadership certainly transcend military applications and apply to many aspects of life. After all, most of what we do day-to-day is communicate with other people. There is a vast amount of literature written about it, perhaps, Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War” being the best known example of military strategy guidelines becoming a famous reference for business people.

For me personally, working with a research group of colleagues and graduate students, teaching a course or taking photos of people – all these activities involve leading or directing others. There are many details of leadership that are specific to a particular activity, but some key aspects are common. Here they are, taking a typical portrait photo shoot as an example:

Planning. This is foundation of a successful project. I need to have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish, what gear I would need, how much time the shoot would take, etc. However, there is a point of diminishing returns in planing, so at some point, it is important to just start doing things.
Flexibility. It is likely that things would not go exactly according to the plan. When that happens, I try to trust my experience and intuition and not over-think the choice of lens or camera settings, for example.
Confidence. I believe that planning and experience are the foundation of confidence, and flexibility is the result of it. Perhaps, it depends on the type of personality, but I think confidence should come naturally, not as a result of artificial effort. After all, it is really impossible to convincingly fake it, and also, there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Communication. It is a two-way process, and when I am in a leading role, I control how the communication occurs. As a photographer, I need be aware of how the photo shoot as it progresses and make sure that everyone knows the general plan, but has sufficient autonomy to make adjustments without waiting for specific directions. This usually happens naturally with models, assistants and other photographers, as we establish a relaxed, fun atmosphere. Also, as I wrote earlier, asking others for feedback during the shoot is a great way of establishing a connection and avoiding mistakes.

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