“All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t “- which is just another way of saying that you can’t.”
— Richard P. Feynman
At the ocean science and engineering conference, I listen to many talks on fascinating subjects that are a bit outside of my main area of research (which is fluid mechanics.) They are just sufficiently remote, so that I think it won’t be a good idea to allocate time and other resources to pursue these tangent areas. Then, I remind myself that the ability to change the focus of research is, perhaps, the greatest benefit of working in academe — the proverbial academic freedom.
The problem with the concept of academic freedom is that more often than not our research directions are dictated by the combination of funding sources (interests of collaborating industrial partners, for example) and infrastructure availability, available time that is free of teaching duties, etc. All these factors forms a rather cynical insider’s outlook on the academic research, its role in the society and on our capacity to take creative decisions about research direction.
I often find myself in a similar situation with photography. I see someone else’s beautiful work and think, “This is really interesting. I know exactly how it was done. I could do this too.” But in most cases, just saying this to myself precludes me from actually trying the new type of shot. As if declaring my ability to do something makes me subconsciously check this potential project off as already accomplished.
To overcome the initial block created by the vastness of the subject, I find it productive to pick a specific element, such as an iconic building or even and try to cover it deeply. The term “study” that is sometime used to describe some of the classical works of art ( e.g. “a study in scarlet”) comes to mind. When I start my photography in a new place with a study of a small element of that location, I free up the bandwidth of my mind from the necessity of making decisions about the subjects of the photos (i.e. what to shoot, at what time of day, etc.) This is very valuable at the initial stage, as I can focus on learning more about the particular subject I have already chosen. It might not be the single most perfect subject representing the country or location, but it always offers opportunities for learning about its larger context, so the other subjects for follow-up photo shoots emerge naturally.
, an international-level chess player and a martial artist, who studies learning processes, refers to this strategy of focussing on small details as “creating small circles.” Interestingly enough, his inspiration for this approach came from the book that I am currently reading – Robert Pirsig’s “
Routine 
.”
I believe that a sense of entitlement is quite contagious and counter-productive in many fields. I my spheres of academic research, teaching, photography and kendo, for example, it is incredibly easy to take for granted the tremendous benefits that my work as a professor afford to my pursuit of photography, through taking me to various interesting places around the world for conferences, providing me with time and incentives to learn about the state-of-the-art imaging techniques and hardware, etc. The same can be said about, kendo, where we have a luxury of an incredible level of personalized instruction, even by Japanese standards (perhaps, especially by Japanese standards).
I am continually amazed that my three-year old daughter is enjoying some of the same cartoon characters that I grew up with, even though we came to know them in different cultural settings and in different countries. One particularly interesting character is Cheburashka, “an animal unknown to science,” who accidentally finds himself in Moscow and befriends a Crocodile, who works at the zoo as a crocodile. The animated movies about Cheburashka were originally made in Soviet Union in the 1960’s and 70’s and, after much copyright controversy, are currently produced by both South Korean and Japanese companies. 
I think one of the secrets of this character’s popularity and longevity is that the central theme of the stories about him is friendship. In Japan, the term moai refers to a small group of close friends outside of one’s work and family. Dan Buettner, in his book about world’s healthiest and happiest people called “
Needless to say, to be able to combine both approaches is very difficult, but perhaps a relatively straightforward way of making a meaningfull contribution in either sphere would be to apply state-of-the-art techniques and know-how from the other sphere. This idea is similar to multi-disciplinary scientific research, where breakthroughs often occur at the junction between two or more separate fields.
‘s theory of 
“, Alan Watts argues that to define a process or a phenomenon is not the same as to understand it. Of course, it is possible to become lost in the semantics of what the definition of “understanding” is, but in general, I believe this viewpoint provides a great insight.
I believe that both martial arts and photography (or any visual or performing art, for that matter) offer excellent training grounds for the skill of behaving like an extrovert. Martial arts, by definition, involve communication with an opponent, and in photography, sharing photos, receiving and 
The restraint that is required to withhold or delay voicing an opinion, particularly when immediate response is expected, is a learned skill, and as such requires practice. This does not mean distorting the truth when speaking up is genuinely the right thing to do. Instead, the practice can focus on making the communication more laconic and efficient – using the minimum amount of words (indeed, information in general) to convey an idea. For example, Amanda Palmer explained that she spent two month polishing 
and a 
lenses on a 
body. The lenses were wide open all the time, and at f/2.8, the ISO, which was on Auto setting, went as high as 25,000. I applied 