Philosophy – Page 9 – Peter Oshkai photography

August 26, 2015

Fear of missing out

Compulsion to take on a project simply out of fear of falling out of the loop on the related news, trends, etc. is so common that this “fear of missing out” has its own abbreviation (FOMO). I think this is particularly relevant to photography.

While staying current in one’s niche and continually honing one’s skills is fundamentally important, there are definite advantages of breaking everyday patterns from time to time. For example, Kevin Kelly argues that travelling forces one to break the routine and keeps the mind agile. Likewise, Tara Brach, who recently discussed FOMO in her interview with Tim Ferriss, pointed out that taking sabbaticals helps us identify habits that are normally keeping us from being attuned to the constantly changing reality.

August 21, 2015

On humility

In education and philosophy, “intellectual humility” is a quality that allows people to stop self-promoting their intellectual efforts and instead let their results (acquired knowledge, skills, etc.) speak for themselves. Perhaps, this concept could be expanded to any kind of effort, not necessarily an intellectual one, to help define humility in general.

For example, in art, and in particular, in photography one does not need to brag about the cost of equipment or the number of hours spent mastering the craft. Instead, we can just let the pictures stand on their own. With images, this should be particularly easy to do, since their transcend languages, cultures, and even time, because people are genetically programmed to heavily depend on visual input for much of the incoming information and emotional content.

August 7, 2015August 7, 2015

Being a third-person shooter

Some computer games can be categorized as either a first-person or a third-person type. In a first-person game, the player sees the virtual world through the eyes of the character and is not aware of what the character him-/herself looks like. In a third-person game, the player looks at the environment over the character’s shoulder or from above, but in any case, the character is a part of the picture tat the player sees. In other words, when we play a third-person game, we are aware of what we look like in the virtual environment.

Phil Libin, the former CEO of Evernote, mentioned in an interview with Tim Ferriss that different people tend to go through life in either a first-person or a third-person mode. According to him, there are advantages and disadvantages to being aware of one’s own image. I think that even if self-awareness can be distracting from the point of view of pure experience, having the ability to invoke the third-person mode at will is a tremendously useful skill. Taking photography as an example, it is not only important for the photographer to know what image he/she projects to the client, the models, etc., but it is also crucial to make the models aware of what they look like through the lens, so that they can adjust the pose, the makeup, etc.

I wonder what Velázquez, who included himself in the already busy composition of “Las Meninas,” thought about self-awareness and the image he projected in the presence of his royal models…

Being a “third-person shooter” is different from being a slave to the opinion of others, against which there are many warnings, including Hugh MacLeod’s “Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity,” for example. It is important to be focussed on the task and the experience at hand, but it is also important to realize that the proverbial big picture includes ourselves in it.

August 6, 2015August 6, 2015

California dreaming

Too much of a good stuff could be not so good, if it is monotonous. We have been having a stretch of incredible warm summer weather in the Pacific North-West, and I overheard one local man saying to another: “I hope it won’t turn into California.”

Granted, these people were both runners, and training outdoors is much more comfortable in cooler weather. Still, I think that this attitude shows that it is important to have variety in whatever we experience, even if things seem to be pretty good at the moment. At the very least, variation would make us appreciate the “ups” more and help cope with future “downs” by putting them into perspective.

July 30, 2015July 30, 2015

On diversification

Whether to specialize in a single subject, skill or activity (to “niche down,” in business terms) or to engage in various fields is a true dilemma, as there is no singe correct answer. Perhaps, niching down carries the higher probability of near-term success, while aiming to become a polymath promises more glory. I am not referring to glory in a conventional sense, or rather not only that, but generally a well-rounded and balanced personality and lifestyle, as well as the potential to eventually make a lasting contribution to whatever the field(s) of activity happen(s) to be (just think about Leonardo Da Vinci!)

I came across another appealing reason for diversifying one’s areas of interest in an interview with Stanley McChrystal, a retired 4-star US Army general. He mentioned that being genuinely interested in physical conditioning provided him with an area that was sufficiently separated from what he did professionally, so that even in the face of a crisis situation at work, he was able to think, “the workout today was excellent,” which provided a certain sense of stability.

I think that it is unreasonable to expect a constant rate of improvement at whatever we do, so it might be a good idea to cultivate multiple streams of activity, so that plateau periods in one would not negatively reflect on our overall perception of the situation.

July 29, 2015July 29, 2015

Gamer’s mindset

Jane McGonigal studies how skills and traits cultivated through gaming (particularly, computer gaming) can be applied to solve real-world problems. She uses the term “gameful mindset” to describe the state of anticipation of success at the task we engage in and our willingness to study and utilize our unique strengths, which are analogous to unique “special abilities” in gaming terms.

I think this kind of gameful mindset plays an important role when amateur photographers transition to being professionals. I am not talking about necessarily taking a plunge to become a full-time pro right away. In my case, for example, I enjoy a challenge of tackling professional projects as mini-missions in a computer game. The similarities between them are numerous: in both cases there are challenges to overcome, skills to learn, people to interact with, etc. I always anticipate success at the particular project, but at the same time, because I am not doing photography full-time, the stakes are not so high that failure is not an option.

July 27, 2015

On enthusiasm

According to Maria Popova, the author of an enormously popular blog Brain Pickings, in order for a piece of work to have a chance to become an important and lasting contribution to the field, rather count-intuitively, this work has to be done with only one person in mind as the potential audience – the author him/herself. This applies to nearly all areas of activity, and certainly all creative areas, such as writing, arts, sports, academic work, etc.

The concept is counterintuitive, because we tend to think that value equals popularity. This tendency is based on human’s inherent desire for positive reinforcement, so we mistake interest in our work for evidence of its worthiness and value.

I personally see the grain of truth in the concept of doing the work for ourselves in the fact that doing something consistently, on the daily basis, and fully engaging in the activity (i.e. “showing up”) requires enthusiasm, and it is not possible to be genuinely enthusiastic about something without being interested in it. This echoes Richard Feynman’s story of how he re-discovered scientific research for himself after being burnt out during the work on Manhattan project. He said that decided to work on problems that were fun, without worrying about whether they were already solved by someone else or if they would potentially lead to important discoveries or applications.

With several millions of blog visitors per month, there is no doubt that Popova’s writing is popular. Of course, according to her own thesis, this is not a proof that her contribution is important or that it will be lasting, but she claims to be writing for herself, and her enthusiasm is evident.

July 19, 2015July 19, 2015

Time commitment

I think the reason why photographs remain popular even though video conveys more information is that the time commitment associated with video is much larger than that of photography. This applies to all aspects, starting from production, where editing takes an enormous amount of time from a photographer’s perspective (in my experience, and I have heard others confirm it, the rule of thumb is one hour of editing for every minute of video for short clips.) The content consumption stage, i.e. watching a video, also requires more time that watching a photo. A photo can be hung on a wall and enjoyed every time our eye falls upon it, while a piece of video mush be viewed in its entirety to be appreciated.

Also, paradoxically, a good photo can potentially engage the viewer more than a video would precisely because a photo contains less information (there is no sound, no physical movement, etc.) Therefore, the viewer has to rely on his/her own experience and imagination to fill in what is missing in a photo: e. g. how fast is the sprinter running? How strong is the wind? How hot is the weather? Perhaps, a good photo is a kind of collaboration between the photographer and the audience, and that is why it can be both produced and enjoyed with a limited time commitment from either side.

June 30, 2015June 30, 2015

Processing time

Sitting in airports during flight connections or in the planes during the flights themselves had an unexpected positive side effect: it gave me time to think about and process quite a bit of information that piled up earlier in the trip. This information was diverse both in form and in subject. It ranges from talks that I listened to at the conferences, meetings with colleagues, pictures I took, museums I visited, food I ate, conversations with parents that I had.

This processing mode was kind of forced on me, similar to the trip itself – a forced track back from Madrid to Voronezh to pick up a passport. I planned to make use of the airport time by reading and writing papers, and I did some of that, but travel is inherently tiring, so I often found myself staring out of the window, thinking about my travel experiences.

It is not surprising that thinking without trying to be productive is quite useful, but this work mode typically does not occur naturally. There are certain conditions that are conducive for it. In the case of this particular trip, they were:

I was alone. Typically, I try to completely focus on my three-year-old daughter when I am with her, but this time, my family stayed in Madrid.
There were no pressing but unimportant things to be done (like minor everyday stuff at home or at work).
There really was a lot of information to process – the previous few weeks were full of new impressions and interactions.
I had substantial chunks of time available, so I could do both “real work” and just think.

Unfortunately, replicating these conditions in everyday life is not easy – one almost has to be shaken out of the routine and forced into the “deep work” mode.

May 21, 2015May 21, 2015

On analogies

I like finding parallels between different activities that I am involved in, e.g. fluid mechanics research, photography, martial arts, etc. It seems that many people enjoy finding analogies of whatever they do with other areas of life, particularly those that seem important to them.

Whether these parallels are useful, is a different question, though. I have read an autobiographic story by Richard Feynman about an episode from his student years, when he was asked to draw parallels between poetry and theoretical physics. He did that, but pointed out that the world is full of such similarities, and therefore dwelling on them is meaningless:

“Then I said, ‘It seems to me that no matter what you say about poetry, I could find a way of making up an analog with any subject, just as I did for theoretical physics. I don’t consider such analogs meaningful.”

Personally, I think the “analogs” are useful from the point of view of extending our experience in one area into other, unrelated fields. Of course, any two fields only seem to be unrelated. After all, the very fact that the same person attempts to deal in them makes them similar in that respect. So it not surprising that we can find parallels between any two subjects. Needless, to say, that in doing so, we ignore the differences, so it is indeed meaningless to say that poetry and physics, kendo and teaching, raising children and gardening, etc. are the same.

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