Techniques – Page 9 – Peter Oshkai photography

July 25, 2015July 25, 2015

On communication

Nowadays, almost all tourists carry digital cameras, and a huge number of people take selfies as they travel. I often have fun taking sneaky photos of people photographing themselves, and I find it ironic that while the purpose of taking selfies is obviously to communicate with others (to share them of social media, etc.), people ask others to take their photo for them more and more rarely – the selfie mindset replaces this form of communication.

Of course, asking a stranger to take a photo has disadvantages. For one, there is a psychological barrier of striking a conversation. Perhaps, more importantly, there is no control of how the person would compose a shot. In my experience, the chance of getting a reasonably good photo by asking a random tourist to take it is less than 50%. More often than not, my face would end up dead centre in the frame and/or out-of-focus.

So selfies are not so bad in principle. Perhaps, the premise of taking a selfie is also useful when you want to take a sneaky shot of someone or something else. In “Ronin” (one of my favourite movies) Robert De Niro’s character would not have had to resort to tricks of asking someone to take a picture of himself if he had had an smartphone with a Chinese-made “selfie-stick”.

July 21, 2015July 21, 2015

Let me repeat…

In teaching, it is a common practice to repeat a peace of information several time, hoping that it will eventually reach the majority of the class. Likewise, in marketing, potential consumers are continuously bombarded with repeating advertising messages. There are many examples of this kind of repeatability, and while it obviously works, it is also clear that this approach is wasteful in terms of the information bandwidth that each of us is capable of receiving or transmitting during s typical day (or a lifetime.)

The balance between delivering the message and annoying the audience by unnecessary repeating it is very relevant for photographers. For example, when I want to share my travel photos with friends, I send them a link my Flickr photo stream before I leave for a trip, so that they can follow along, if they like. It turns out that most friends (those who genuinely want to see the photos) visit the link once and expect it to be re-sent periodically as a reminder. Wouldn’t it be nice if each of us was able to cut through the chatter and not need to be repeated things twice? Perhaps, our minds are not wired to capture things right away. But there are certainly exceptions, or rather, exceptional people out there.

Richard Feynman, in his autobiographical “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” describes an episode when prominent physicists were debating a technical problem, which was a part the Manhattan project. Despite tremendous time pressure, no one felt the need to repeat his statement in order to promote his point of view – there was an implicit trust that the other would hear what was stated just once. As Feynman said, “These were very great men indeed.”

July 14, 2015July 17, 2015

On timing

Timing of delivery is tremendously important in photography. This is obvious in such genres as reportage, event coverage, etc., but even in less obvious genres like travel and family photography I constantly find that sharing the photos immediately, or at least shortly after taking them, makes them more valuable in terms of the emotional impact.

In fact, some professional photographers believe that ability to make the photos available to public (or clients) as quickly as possible is more important than even the quality of the images. I think that there is some truth in it, but some level of quality still determines the inherent value of a photo. However, in every aspect of the production workflow (lighting, costumes/makeup, posing, post-processing) there is a point of diminishing returns, after which additional work results in progressively smaller improvements in quality. Therefore, upon reaching this point in every aspect of the photo production, the image should be shared/delivered. Finding this critical stage could be a valuable skill and is definitely worth practicing.

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 28, 2015

Equipment failure

I have heard that CF cards can fail for no apparent reason, and that the results can be very frustrating. I has never happened to me until now. Yesterday, an UDMA 7 card failed after an hour of shooting (nothing very intense, just a family walk around town). The card has never left the camera: it just stopped responding at a certain time, and could not be either formatted in the camera or accessed through a card reader afterwards.

This is not a big problem in the sense that could have been worse (e.g. I could have lost images from a professional assignment), but it is definitely frustrating. I guess, the dual CF slots and the option to write files on two cards simultaneously in my Canon EOS-1D X are there for this kind of eventuality.

I will check off this accident as a learning experience: I rarely reach the full capacity of both cards that could be put in the slots, but losing images even once is not a pleasant experience.

May 24, 2015

Professionalism: a matter of size

I find that many rules in Italy (including some traffic laws) are either ignored or can be overruled as the need arises. One great example of this are the regulations regarding photography in Sforza Castle in Milan.

The sign at the entrance showed a camera in a red circle, crossed with a red line. Suspecting that in this case “no” does not necessarily mean “no”, I asked a lady at the ticket office to confirm, and she said that photography without a flash is allowed. Then she saw my camera (I had a Canon 1D X with a 24-105mm f/4 lens, which happened to be extended to its longest focal length) and said that I cannot use it, because it was “professional.” As I was thinking about what to say, I turned the zoom to 24 mm, which made the lens shorter by about 50%. Seeing this, the lady said, pointing at the camera, “This is Ok. You can use that.”

So, I found that my level of professionalism can be instantly adjusted (at least in the range of 24 to 105 mm.)

May 4, 2015

How to photograph people in glasses

As I was taking headshots of colleagues from the mathematics department for their website (in case it is not obvious, the photos in this post are not of them), couple of things became apparent: (a) many math professors wear glasses; and (b) glasses are a big part of people’s image, and they are attached to them. From the photography standpoint, glasses are problematic because they reflect light and produce glare, which obstructs the eyes.

In most cases, if at all possible, it is better to remove the glasses and take a portrait without them.

However, if removing the glasses is not desirable (see observation (b) above), it is useful to take into account the direction of the dominant light source. Specifically, it is easier to avoid the reflections in eyeglasses, is the subject is illuminated by broad lighting, where the most illuminated side of the face is the closest to the camera. In this case, the subject is facing away from the dominant light source, so the reflections of this light source are directed away from the camera. Broad lighting is the opposite of short lighting, where the most illuminated side of the face is farthest from the camera. It is more difficult to avoid the glare in eyeglasses in the case of short lighting.

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015

Photography schedule

After returning from Shanghai, where I did a lot of photography without any agenda – strictly as a personal project, it would seem logical to put photography on a back burner and let the ideas for the next shoots naturally form in my mind. In reality, it turns out that over the next few days I will be taking photos at various university events – an alumni workshop of our research institute, an opening of the new athletic centre and a headshots photoshoot for the website of the mathematics department.

On the one hand, I am flattered that my colleagues value my skills enough to ask me to the the photos (so I am not ready to say “No” to these projects,) but on the other hand, I realize that doing shoots that are not motivated by personal interest ultimately lead to a burnout. Perhaps, the way to approach this dilemma is to turn the photo shoots into personal projects – to find certain aspects that are enjoyable in their own right. This necessarily means taking time with each project, even if just enough to think about what is interesting about it.

In terms of finding interesting aspects in an arbitrary photo shoot, I find it helpful to keep the following points in mind:

Any project is an opportunity to practice, to hone some photography skill(s);
Any project is an opportunity to learn something about the subject(s);
Most projects allow one to practice stepping outside of the comfort zone by trying an unconventional technique (e.g. composition, pose, lighting, post-processing).

April 19, 2015

Reflections

Photos taken from airport terminal windows out of sheer boredom are often boring, which is not surprising. Sometimes making a window reflection a prominent element of the picture can add some interest.

I took this shot with my iPhone, going for a”double exposure ” effect. The problem with this type of image is that the dynamic range between the brightly lit scene outside and the dark interior scene in the reflection is too high for the camera sensor. In this case, instead of pulling the shadows in post-processing, I focussed on the pattern of the reflection.

April 17, 2015

Gear list

I do not have a specific photography agenda for my upcoming trip to Shanghai. I will have only a couple of days available for photography, but the destination is so exotic that I want to take enough gear to not be limited in the types of shots I can take. At the same time, I plan to carry most gear with me as I wonder around the city, so excessive weight can easily become a limiting factor itself.

With all this in mind, here is my tentative gear list for the trip, based on my prior experience:

Canon EOS-1D X camera body. It is bulkier and heavier that my 5D Mark II, but fast autofocus and much better low-light performance of the 1D X really tip the metaphorical scale. If I had a 5D Mark III, it would have been a perfect compromise for travel.
70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens.This is the heaviest lens that I plan to take. Leaving it at home would save a lot of weight and space, but this lens is incredibly versatile. In fact, most of my best photos are taken with it. Besides, one type of shot that I do plan to take is a night-time cityscape, similar to the one from Yokohama (above), and this lens is the perfect one for this job.
35mm f/1.4L USM lens. This is currently my favourite walk-around lens. I was debating wheteher to take a 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM lens instead, but I am willing to sacrifice its zoom and image stabilization for incredible low-light performance, shallow depth of field as well as physical size and weight of the 35mm f/1.4L.
16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens for close-up shots of architectural details, like the shot from the Forbidden City below.
Tripod. I have a slightly different tripod from the one in the link, but carbon is the key for saving weight.
Flash. Mine is an older model from the one in the link.

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