Philosophy – Page 7 – Peter Oshkai photography

December 3, 2015

Why hacks don’t cut it

“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it.”
— Robert Pirsig, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“

The concept of “hacking” or finding an unconventional, often more efficient, way of achieving something has become very popular. Indeed, some people even build their careers around it. For example, Tim Ferriss has become famous for his books “The 4-Hour Workweek“, “The 4 Hour Body” and “The 4-Hour Chef“. As the titles imply, the underlying idea in all of them is to maximize the outcome of minimal efforts. I am a fan of Tim’s approach partly because I like the ideas of innovation and optimization that are inherent in hacking, but also because his view of hacking is deeper than simple cutting of corners on the way to a goal.

The concept of 10,000 hours that are needed to master a craft, which was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers“, has recently been debunked, or at least put into a wider context by several authors. Also, the Pareto’s 80/20 rule of diminishing returns when practicing a skill suggests that a lifetime dedicated to any single task would be an example of inefficiency. However, in my personal experience, whenever I see an example of something remarkable being created, it is inevitably a result of a lot of work. When everything is said and done, even if we follow all the quick recipes for success (“10 steps to taking a perfect photo” or “10 steps to writing a perfect blog post”, etc.), the very act of cutting corners removes something valuable both from the process and from the resulting product. We really do need to live the craft that we practice, make it our way, like the “do” in kendo, kado, shodo, etc.

In photography, for example, there is no way to fake the genuine knowledge of the subject, the intuition that comes from true mastery of the technique, the emotional connection with the models, etc. In the event and reportage photography in particular, one needs to become a participant, rather than the observer, in order to convey the emotional content to the viewers. Recently, I was photographing local dance students participating in a Santa Claus parade, an event that is difficult to capture because of the poor lighting conditions (it takes place at night) and general setting (the spectators are separated from the participants, who quickly pass by them on the street). I wanted to take pictures that would capture the excitement of the the early holiday season and the enthusiasm of the young dancers. My strategy was to join them as they were preparing for the parade – meeting at the lobby of the local museum, lining up in their spot long before the start of the parade, doing the sound checks, going over their dance routines again and again to keep warm on a cold November evening. The performance itself probably counted for 80% of the impact on the spectators and took 20% of the effort from the dancers, considering all the hours they spent preparing for the show. But I think that it is capturing the other 80% of the event from the participants’ perspective is what makes the memories recorded in the photos valuable and gives them emotional content.

November 23, 2015

Why email is like fast food

Email has some tangible advantages over real-time communications such as phone calls or face-to-face conversations. To me personally, the main advantage is the ability to respond to emails at a convenient time. There is also an opportunity to pause before hitting the “Send” button, to re-read my response and to edit it if needed.

But this very feature of taking the conversation off-line, the ability to make it less spontaneous, also tremendously detracts from the depth of the communication. I recently listened to an interview with Prof. Sherry Turkle, who wrote a book about this called “Reclaiming Conversation”. Most points that she makes seem obvious in retrospect, but they are easy to overlook in the everyday life.

She draws an analogy between human desire for genuine communication with cravings for food – both are results of our evolution as social and biological beings. Just like it is convenient to satisfy food cravings by grabbing a quick bite at a fast food joint, so it is appealing to satisfy our craving for communication by periodically checking and replying to emails. Also, eating fast food is not necessarily a social event, and similarly, the non-spontaneous nature of email exchanges appeals to the introverts among us. However, just as a cup of soda with a serving of French fries are not a true substitute to a three-course meal at a fine restaurant, so the snippets of online communication cannot replace face-to-face conversations, as uncomfortable and inefficient the latter may seem in comparison.

According to Dr. Turkle, research shows that real, meaningful human connections strongly depend on face-to-face interactions. Ultimately, the quality of communications, even if we consider only one aspect of it, such as information exchange, is increased if they happen face-to-face. As an engineer, I believe there is a balance between efficiency and effectiveness should be considered here, but there are implications of the importance of meaningful personal contact in nearly all areas of our lives.

For myself, how these principles apply in my academic life are obvious, as I mentioned at the beginning. For example, it is well known that quality of teaching is directly proportional to the amount of face-to-face contact with students. In terms of research collaborations too, it is common knowledge that you don’t have a real working relationship with a colleague until you have a meal together, preferably with some alcohol.

In photography also, I find that it is easy to overlook the importance of human relationship (with the clients, the models, the colleagues, the audience) in the continuous pursuit of efficiency and optimization of the production process. I wrote before that it necessary to provide and seek feedback to and from models during a photo shoot. Likewise, many full-time professional portrait photographers agree that building long-term relationships with clients involves learning about them as people, educating them about photography, personally delivering the final photos to them, etc.

Certainly, all this takes time and effort, but it could be argued that all we do in our lives is communicate with other people on various levels, so we might as well keep the quality of the interactions high and not live our entire lives in a superficial, online mode.

November 18, 2015

Honour vs dignity

Both words “honour” and “dignity” carry positive meanings related to integrity in modern language, but I was surprised to learn that in sociology these concepts are, in fact, opposite.

According to Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, the authors of “Microaggression and moral cultures” (2014) Comparative sociology, 13, 692-726, the term “honour culture” describes a paradigm where people are sensitive to slights and insults in order to maintain reputation of physical bravery. In contrast, people living in a “dignity culture” are taught to ignore the slights. The idea there is that responding to a slight would lower the person to the insulter’s moral level. In this respect, dignity culture shares some fundamental ideas with stoicism. Stoics believed that no external forces or circumstances, including insults, can fundamentally hurt them, because their self worth and intentions are not subject to extent influences.

Historically, honour cultures developed where the power of the state was relatively weak, and people had to rely on their reputation for bravery to protect themselves and their families, to pre-emptively deter an aggression. Dignity cultures, on the other hand, rely on a strong state that can be invoked in time of need to quickly and efficiently stamp out a conflict. In the case of an honour culture, a conflict can develop into a prolonged blood feud, for example, where members of two clans keep taking revenge for each consecutive act of violence against them.

It is fascinating that such positive concepts as honour and dignity can be based on mutually-exclusive ideas. While most societies nowadays operate in the realm of dignity, principles of an honour culture have left a prominent mark on the modern world in terms of art, literature, etc. The symbolism created to it still resonates strongly with the emotions of the audience due to the cultural baggage that they we are carrying through generations.

November 4, 2015

Memories and predictions

When I look through my own photos taken several years ago, I find that I like different images from those that I liked around the time when the photos were taken (I have a record of what I liked in the form of star ratings that I gave the photos in Lightroom). I think that this is, in part, because my tastes and preferences changed over the years. Daniel Gilbert, the author of “Stumbling on Happiness”, explains that people tend to under-estimate how much they change throughout their lives. Looking at my ratings of the old photographs certainly confirms this, at least in my case.

Also, when we form impressions of events, our minds retain only a few key details and fill in the rest with plausible made-up stuff. As it happens (according to Gilbert, who cites references in psychology), we retain more objective details when we process the current events, relative to the events ether from the past (memories) or from the future (which are entirely made-up by our minds). This is an evolutionary safety mechanism – the present events the have immediate relevance have higher priority in terms of use of the processing power of our brains. Incidentally, this is why it makes sense to minimize distractions while doing creative or analytical work. There is a great example of this in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, where the main character argues that motorcycle mechanics, who listen to music at the repair shop, do inferior work.

Unconscious prioritizing of current events is also a reason to process and rate photos as soon as they are taken. There is a narrow time window, where our impression of the photographed events is most detailed and objective. After that windows has passed (or before the event has happened in the case of imagining the future), it is easy for us to subconsciously distort the reality of what happened, what we felt, and even what we saw. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but capturing the impression of the event immediately after it occurred is certainly valuable.

November 1, 2015

How much should we worry

Many famous martial arts teachers suggest that in order to be most effective in a fight, or during shiai in the case of kendo, one should be completely relaxed, yet alert. However, this balance between relaxation and alertness can be quite elusive. On the one hand, it is possible to relax so completely that we would become complacent. On the other end of the spectrum, if we emphasize present-moment awareness to the extreme of being alert to every minute detail of our surroundings, the tension would strain our nerves and would likely cause over-reaction at the critical moment.

So how much tension would be optimal? One common approach is to treat each everyday practice as a critical match and then consciously relax more during the actual shiai to compensate for the effects of adrenaline.

A while ago, I read advice from a special forces veteran to rookie bodyguards regarding how much they should be worrying about potential security threats on the daily basis. He suggested to maintain the level of anxiety roughly equivalent to what we feel when a traffic light changes from green to yellow, as we are driving towards it in a car (assuming that we are completely relaxed when driving under a green light).

The analogies between martial arts and other areas of life are well known and numerous. After all, Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War” and Miyamoto Musashi’s “The Book of Five Rings” are considered business references. In that sense, the “yellow traffic light” level of self-imposed anxiety might be a good guideline in other activities that require quick reactions and “right action” in the face of potentially changing environment, e.g. public speaking, job interviews, teaching, scientific research, photography, parenting, etc.

October 31, 2015

On missing opportunities

While we are prone to regret inaction, there is rarely a valid objective reason for such regrets. Even if we fail to take action, and the opportunities that are associated with that action are gone forever, this does not mean that we are doomed to the then-current state of affairs. As Richard Branson pointed out, opportunities are like buses, because there is always another one coming.

If we fail to act on a particular opportunity, a constructive lesson from that experience is that we are learning to recognize the opportunities and the moments when resistance, so vividly described by Richard Pressfield in “The War of Art”, sneaks in and keeps us from doing the work. For example, when I am shooting with a lens that works alright for the particular situation, i.e. it has an adequate focal length and f-number, I need to consciously make myself stop shooting and change to a different focal length (taking action) to avoid falling into a complacent shooting mode. Varying the gear, camera settings, subjects, composition, etc. might seem like a hassle at the time, but it is almost always worth it in retrospect. The good news is that that it is never too late to try all these new things at the next photo shoot, even if I miss the opportunity on a particular day.

October 30, 2015

Regretting inaction

According to Daniel Gilbert, studies in psychology show that when given a choice between taking action and doing nothing (assuming that either option has some probability of negative consequences), most people choose doing nothing. This is because it is not easy to rationalize excessive courage, while it is quite easy to justify excessive caution.

However, it turns out that in retrospect, we are more likely to regret inaction than action. Gilbert gives this example: Suppose you own a certain stock (stock A). You have a choice to either sell it and buy stock B (action) or hold on to stock A (inaction). If you choose inaction and lose money, you would regret it more than if you had chosen action and lost the same amount of money. I suppose, this is because the actions that we take become “our own”, in fact, we identify quite closely with what we do. And people tend to like (or at least are good at rationalizing) their own behaviours, possessions, choices, etc.

What are the implications of this psychological trait for photographers? I suppose, one possible conclusion could be that if you have been debating whether to buy a new expensive piece of gear, you should go ahead and pull the trigger – probably, you won’t regret it.

On a more serious note, perhaps there are implications for making creative decisions. There is a saying that rules are meant to be broken, and I think that consciously mixing up techniques, workflows, image styles, etc., instead of doing “what works” in every single photoshoot, is an example of action that requires courage. In fact, we are likely to regret not stretching outside of our comfort zones and breaking some conventions.

October 29, 2015

Using uncertainty to prolong an experience

I believe there two mutually-exclusive strategies for stimulating viewer’s interest in a photograph.

The first approach is to include many details that the viewer can examine. An example would be a panoramic landscape or a cityscape with great depth of field, where the field of view spans a large distance and every detail is in focus. This image would literally deliver a lot of information and thus would hold the audience’s attention for a long time.

The second approach is a minimalistic one: to include only a minimum of information that is necessary to convey the impression of the subject (a place, a person, etc.) and to leave it up to the viewer to fill in the details. This principle is extensively used in Oriental art, for example, which heavily relies on the concept of negative space.

To me personally, the former approach is akin to brute force (it is almost always possible to overload the viewer with details), while the latter one is more elegant and subtle. When viewing a minimalistic image, the viewer becomes a participant in the process of forming the mental impression of that image. In a way, they take a partial ownership of that impression, and it is known psychological phenomenon that we like what belongs to us more than an object of equal material value that we have no connection with.

Also, I think that people like images that leave out certain details because the uncertainty in the specifics of those details prolongs the viewers experience of interacting with the image. The mind needs time to explore the possibilities, to try different combinations of the missing details before settling on the “final” version of the impression from the image. On the other hand, when everything is spelled out for us explicitly, the element of wonder and discovery is lost, and while we might be receiving a lot of information, the experience is less personal.

October 26, 2015

Omitting details for smoother experience

When we view objects from a distance, we do not see small details, and therefore, the objects appear smoother than they really are (when viewed from up close.) If we deal with time instead of distance, we subconsciously draw an analogy between the two, as Daniel Gilbert illustrates in his “Stumbling on Happiness“, so similar loss of details occurs when we think about events that are separated from the present moment by a stretch of time (either recalling the past or imagining the future.) Our minds fill in the lost details by spreading the remaining information over time, essentially performing an interpolation similar to what a Healing Brish tool in Photoshop does with pixels in photographs during retouching. As a result, the recalled or imagined events appear smoother, softer, less irritating than the actual experience. In this sense, time really does heal.

This has significant implications in photography. It has been demonstrated that reviewing photos of past events actually shapes people’s impressions of their experiences of these event (that is why it makes sense to lug the heavy camera while walking around a new town!) So, taking travel photography as an example, is it better to take cliche postcard photos of the place that do not add many new details (e.g. a distant view of the futuristic Shanghai skyline, which is familiar to many people) and therefore leave a smooth, comfortable impression or to shoot more personal images, with details, textures and patterns that convey the essence of the experience of being there (e.g. a narrow, run-down alleyway in Shanghai)? I think, it depends on the audience. Another fact from psychology is that people view experiences that they closely associate with, i.e. ones that “belong” to the them, more positively (e.g. we tend to like our old cars, homes, clothes, places where we live, people, who live with us, etc.) Thus, people, who have walked along run-down alleyways of Shanghai would appreciate the images that re-create that experience, while those who haven’t spent much time there or did not take time to explore the city outside the touristy areas would likely prefer the postcard version. After all, the postcards are popular for a reason.

October 17, 2015October 17, 2015

Jedi mind tricks

Daniel Gilbert in his popular psychology book “Stumbling on Happiness” describes a study that demonstrated the fact that people like and strive on being in control (or rather, on perception of being in control) of the consequences of their actions. He gives examples of toddlers, who are delighted that they can topple a pyramid of blocks, to retirement home residents, who live longer because they are given a responsibility to care for a house plant.

This trait can be exploited to play “Jedi mind tricks” on ourselves, when we are working to master a skill or form a habit. Habits are notoriously difficult to form (the flip side of it is that they are also hard to break.) Particularly difficult is the initial stage of the habit-forming process, where it is psychologically easier not to perform the new behavior. Eventually, after about three weeks of daylight practice, the trend reverses, but the first days is where the resistance (read: “procrastination”), which Steven Pressfield describes in detail in his “The War of Art,” can overcome us with ease.

They way to work through this is to set up the practice in the early days I a way that makes it nearly impossible to fail, to stack the deck in our favor. Archers do this by shooting arrows at the target while standing at an arm’s length from it. Weight lifters do this by lifting a bar without plates. This practice establishes an early victory, an equivalent of scoring a goal in the first minute of a soccer match. This immediately boosts confidence and establishes a perception of control of the outcome of our actions, which is crucial for maintaining the motivation to continue with the practice.

The initial stage of (super-easy) practice might not do much for the skill development per se, but it serves as a Trojan horse for sneaking in the habit of practicing into our daily routine.

Applying this to photography, if we want to develop a habit of taking photos every day, for example, it would make sense to simplify the logistics of it as much as possible, at least when we are just getting started. This means taking the photos early in the day, before other obligations take over, avoiding complicated lighting setups (shooting with ambient light) and using a phone camera instead of a DSLR camera. Choosing subjects that would not require us to go out of our way (literally and figuratively) is also helpful. For example, I have been taking landscape snapshots using my iPhone from my daughter’s school yard when we drop her off there every morning.

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