Street – Peter Oshkai photography

January 15, 2021

Christmas lights in Victoria

COVID had a huge impact on the Holiday festivities in Victoria. Basically, there were no festivities. Some of our favourite things, like ice-skating and watching the light-up at Butchart Gardens, were not possible this year – everything was cancelled and closed. On the other hand, it seems that individual people had stepped up and decorated their houses beyond what they would typically do in a more normal year. We took advantage of that and drove around the city on Christmas night to see these DIY designs.

We followed a map that someone had created on Google, which showed the most prominent light-up attractions. We spent a couple of hours driving along the route that I made up using a lot of guess work, because the online map didn’t offer any details except a bunch of pins indicating the decorated houses. Upon consideration, I noticed that they were clustered in groups throughout the city, probably because the peer pressure of neighbours putting up the lights pushed the other people in the same neighbourhood to follow suit.

I took my camera, but because it was pouring rain (and because I was lazy), I took most of the pictures without leaving the car. By the time we reached downtown, the rain had stopped, so we parked, walked around shot a few photos of the completely deserted Inner Harbour and the Parliament Building, also illuminated. I also took a picture of the new “Blue bridge” from the Esquimalt side – something that I wanted to do a long time ago, but never found the time.

August 28, 2019August 28, 2019

Old cars

During the last week of the past school year, after picking up our seven-year-old daughter from school, we went to a car dealership to trade in our old SUV for a new one. Our daughter was super-excited. As we were driving down the Douglas Street, one of the main roads in Victoria, she rolled down her window and shouted, “Dudes, we have a new car!” A few weeks later, she mentioned that she was missing our old one. This made me think that it is curios why we have such strong emotions towards such lifeless objects as our cars.

Of course, we spend a lot of time with cars every day and get used to them. There are also aspects of cars sometimes being luxury items and status symbols. But I could also see and feel genuine excitement at the old car show in Oak Bay that we went to in July. I think it is because of the human’s joint history and emotional connection with horses, which we project to our vehicles. In fact, this connection is particularly strong in the case of motorcycles. There is something about “riding”, rather than “driving” that makes the experience completely different. I think it has to do with the physical balance. On a bike, like on a horse, I need to be constantly aware of my body position, how far I turn my head to look into the turn, how tightly I grip the handlebars or the reins. Also, riding is both more technically challenging and inherently more dangerous than driving. And because challenge and risk help justify any activity, we are more likely to experience flow while riding a motorcycle. By the same logic, owning an old car and keeping it in a running order is a difficult pursuit, and this is what gives the meaning to the experience. We all understand it intuitively. Even if it is not our car, we are grateful to the owners for giving us a glimpse of this experience.

My only worry is that my daughter is now keen to ride my motorcycle. At least, it’s only as a passenger for now, but if my own experience is any indication, there is no going back from there.

September 15, 2018

Focus

One of the necessary conditions for achieving a flow state (when you are so engrossed in an activity that you lose a sense of time, and the challenges you face seem to be perfectly matched by your skill level at any given moment) is the ability to focus on the task at hand. This is easier said than done, and both the ability of the individual and the nature of the activity play significant roles. Apparently, people who are good at concentrating their attention are able to restrict the input of external information that they are processing. In other words, they can filter out everything that is not relevant to the activity. This enables them to enjoy what they are doing instead of constantly questioning whether they should be doing something else.

As I was reading about this in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow” (my favourite recent read), I thought that artists (or authors in any creative field) use the same principle to create a more focused, and therefore more enjoyable, experience for the audience. For example, in photography, we use shallow depth of field to isolate the subject from the background. This way, we do the pre-filtering of the visual input for the viewers, so they have a better visual experience.

Another photography technique that uses the same idea and that I find particularly useful is covering candid environmental portraits to black-and-white. I did it most recently when shooting dance classes at a local studio. In that particular case, while the subjects themselves are photogenic, the background of the dance studio, littered with clothes, shoes and bags of various bright colours, is definitely not. Removing the colour information from the image guides the viewer’s attention to the subject by literally reducing the input bandwidth. I also often use this technique in street photography, where the colours of the background scene are not only impossible to control but also irrelevant to the subject.

February 28, 2018March 5, 2018

Frozen

I’ve been walking across campus for several years now, but apparently there are still curious spots along the way that I haven’t noticed before. The reason is that as I walk from point A to point B, I almost alway take the same route. The force of habit acts as an autopilot of sort. A couple of weeks ago, I realized that my familiar route from the office to the gym is not the shortest one. There were some corners to be cut and diagonals to extend. Not that I was wasting a lot of time before, but the new route I found was was, perhaps, a minute or so faster, so as an engineer, I was compelled to increase the efficiency.

As a result, I discovered for myself a neat sculpture of a whale’s tail sticking out of the pond. I thought that it looked slightly comical, being obviously out-of-scale with the tiny body of water the implied animal is supposed to occupy. It reminded me of the monster-infested swamp on a planet in Dagobah star system, where Luke Skywalker crash-landed his x-wing fighter in Empire Strikes Back. Last week, we had a rear cold spell, and the sculpture looked even more fantastic, with the tail sticking out of the ice. A frozen motion indeed!

June 26, 2017

Maserati photo shoot

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The gym that I go to in Milan is located in a landmark building called Palazzo Lombardia. I’ve been there almost every day for the past few months, but I am still very much in awe of its architecture. If you look at this complex of buildings in plan view on Google maps, it looks like flags fluttering in the wind, touching each other.

The inner courtyard is under a transparent roof, which makes this outdoor space sheltered from elements. I have seen this unique space being used as an ice rink in winter, a marketplace for local cheese and meat vendors, a concert stage and a beach volleyball, a basketball and a mini-football court (the cleanup required after the sports events was particularly impressive).

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The transparent roof also diffuses sunlight, creating ideal conditions for a photoshoot. Every now and then, I see models in the next-season clothing collections being photographed on the backdrop of the building’s glass walls. Remarkably, the photographers use very little, if any, artificial light – just a reflector or a single strobe apparently do the job.

Last Friday afternoon, I was on my way to grab my running shoes from the gym’s locker, so I could go for a run along Naviglio Martesana on the weekend. On the way, I saw two cars parked in the Palazzo’s courtyard. They were concealed under protective covers, which had conspicuous Maserati logos. I snapped a couple of pictures of them and was immediately approached by a security guard, who told me that no photos were allowed. He was very friendly though, and after I asked him what was going on and told that photography was my personal interest, he explained that they were preparing to shoot a commercial for Maserati.

Sadly, I didn’t have time to stay and watch. I did see a Lexus commercial being shot on the very same spot a couple of months earlier, though. That time, they had a DSLR-looking camera mounted on a very long (approx. 10 meters) arm attached to the side of the car. The car was just driving around the plaza in slow circles. I guess, the quality of the natural light filtering through the transparent roof, combined with a modernist architecture in the background makes the production relatively straightforward.

This is the aspect of living in a big city like Milan that I am going to miss back home – bumping into cool events every time you take a step outside.

May 25, 2017

Bosco Verticale

DSC00239_03-31-2017 I read about this building, called ‘vertical forest’, six months before coming to Milan for sabbatical. It really captured my imagination. Just think about the concept: large trees growing on every balcony of a skyscraper, so that even the upper floor apartments have a forest-like view! I was really excited when I found out that my daughter’s school will be near the ‘forest’ – I would be able to see it every day!

That’s a beauty of travel – the fun begins long before the trip itself. The anticipation accounts for half (if not more) of the fun of the experience itself.

Nowadays, I pass Bosco Verticale almost daily on my way to and from the university. I’ve seen it from all sides and admired its reflection in the glass wall of the UniCredit Tower (haven’t been inside, though.) I’ve seen it at night and during the day, up close and from the roof of my building, without a single leaf in the Winter, with blossoming cherry trees in the Spring and now in full green.

Although the initial excitement of seeing this fascinating piece of architecture is now lost (I suppose, due to a kind of hedonic adaptation), partly because of this incredible building, I am glad to be able to call this part of Milan home for these few months.

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UniCredit Tower in Piazza Gae Aulenti. Milan. Italy.

March 7, 2017

Urban transportation

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It has been two months since I have driven a car. This is probably my longest non-driving stretch in the last twenty years.

Our priority for choosing an apartment in Milan during the sabbatical was proximity to our daughter’s school. We wanted to be within walking distance from it, because that is where we would need to go twice every day – to drop her off in the morning and to pick her up in the afternoon. By all accounts, driving in Milan is not fun. It is not so much the driving itself that is stressful – it is not being able to avoid fines for obscure violations like illegal parking or inadvertently crossing a bus lane.

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The first apartment we chose was literally within steps of the school, but we had to move to another accommodation because of a formality related to our registration with Italian authorities – the apartment was slightly too small to legally accommodate our family. The new apartment is much nicer: it is more spacious and bright. The location is also better in all but one aspect – it is twice as far as the first place from our daughter’s school.

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Now, instead of walking, our daughter commutes to school on a bicycle, while my wife and I walk. The bicycle belongs to the son of my colleague. The boy has outgrown it, so he lent the bike to us for the time of our stay in Milan. It became our daughter’s daily transport. It takes about three adult-sized steps to cover the same distance that she travels in one revolution of her bike pedals. I would say, it is fair – at least, we can travel wherever we want at a reasonable pace (sometimes, a bit too briskly for true comfort). In fact, Google predicts that it should take eighteen minutes to walk from our apartment to the school, but we regularly make it there in ten.

Besides the daily commute to and from school, our favourite route for biking, walking and jogging is a footpath that starts near our apartment and follows a canal (Naviglio Martesana), crossing railroad tracks and busy streets in graffiti-covered underpasses. The canal, the path, and the many parks along it are a welcome retreat from the hectic city life surrounding them. Along the canal, there are several picturesque houses that I keep snapping pictures of, to use as references for future sketches.

July 3, 2016

Travelling with an iPhone

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My 1D X and three lenses were already packed for the trip to The Netherlands, but at the last moment, in fact, on the morning of departure, I changed my mind and decided to leave the DSLR in favour of an iPhone. It was a conscious effort to do things differently from my usual routine. Besides, I wanted to see if I would be able to still do photography, if I focussed on different aspects of it – namely, on documenting (nearly) everything I encounter and sharing it with my wife almost instantly.

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On the second day of travel, I can report that it is indeed possible to do a significant amount of travel photography with a smartphone. In certain ways, it is even easier than with a DSLR. Indeed, carrying just a phone, instead of a bulky camera and a backpack makes you more nimble, both physically and mentally. I found myself actively looking for photo opportunities not only after arriving at the destination, but throughout the trip.

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Also, a phone camera allows me toby much stealthier and sneakier while taking candid shots. the sound of a high-speed burst from a 1D X is as distinct as that of an AK-47, and has a similar (but not as lethal) startling effect on an unsuspecting person. Not only the phone camera is silent, but the smartphones are so ubiquitous, that it seems that people stopped paying any attention to them – I could be taking a picture of a persona meter away, and he won’t even notice it.

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There are a few issues with iphonography, though, compared to shooting with a DSLR. I am not talking about image quality – it is expected that a phone camera would have some limitations. The first thing I noticed is battery life. Shooting, editing and posting photos through the travel (two airports and a train ride) and then walking around The Hague for entire afternoon drained the battery completely and sent me beck to my hotel room (I must say that I was quite tired and glad to do it anyway).

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The second issue is storage. In my particular case, it is not the amount of storage on the phone itself – it is the capacity of my cloud account, where all the images are backed up automatically. My 50 GB filled by the end of the second day. The issue was easily resolved by deleting some old backups. I am sure that my workflow can be optimized, for example, by copying the photos from the cloud to a laptop at the end of each day. However, a camera phone does not completely free you from either a computer or a power outlet.

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.

April 27, 2015

A jet-lagged impression of Shanghai

I shot quite a few photos while walking around Shanghai before and after the conference, both alone and in the company of colleagues. Because I didn’t have much chance to view or process the photos (my ability to share them online from behind the Great Firewall of China was severely limited anyway,) I went through and processed all of them at once, sitting in front of my computer late at night. My jet lag was relatively mild, but it was sufficient to hold me awake, while keeping the mind too dull to do anything except browsing through the images.

The next day, I looked back at the set that I selected, and was surprised at how random and incoherent it was in terms of the subjects, the techniques, the composition. Perhaps, it reflects my overall experience from this trip: random, contrasting images of Eastern and Western architecture, rich and poor streets, hot days and cool nights,..

It seems that Shanghai is full of great opportunities, but people living there are prevented from grasping them. For me also, those few days away from the university were an opportunity to collect my thoughts, both on research and in general, to slow down and enjoy the new and exotic place. In reality, the trip was a bit of a blur: I missed my family a lot, and the conference was a rater high-level meeting, where we did not get into the specific details of our research.

The biggest positive aspect for me personally was the chance to get to know my colleagues, some of whom I have worked with for years. During our walks through Shanghai, we talked about children, and photography, and books, and movies, and work, and travel, and languages, and music,.. I would not say that doing so is enough to really form personal friendships, but it is a healthy start, without a doubt. “Collegiality” is a somewhat nebulous term in the academe. I read somewhere that you do not really form a working collaboration with someone until you share a meal together. Exploring an new city together is probably even better.

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