Shooting – Peter Oshkai photography

August 18, 2018

Simplicity

I’ve just finished reading a rather Machiavellian book “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. Part of it’s appeal is simplicity of the concepts of military leadership that are presented there. In fact, the authors make a compelling case for simplicity being a necessary condition for effectiveness of a mission plan. Not-surprisingly, the book also plays on the universal applicability of the principles of military strategy. From my experience, I can attest that at least some of these principles apply in science and art.

As it happens, I’ve been working on a research proposal that is supposed to outline my research program for the next five years. The issue is that the adjudicating panel spans a range of expertise, but none of the panelists is exactly in my area. Hence the need to simplify the description of my work. This may seem like a limitation for the proposal, but it’s actually a great thing. I find it very helpful to have main objectives to be formulated with enough simplicity that I can keep them on top of my mind on a daily basis as I work with graduate students, who do the actual research work. This makes making everyday micro decisions easy: does this move us closer to the objective? When the description of the goal is simple, this loaded question reduces to a yes-or-no one.

The same principle applies to photography. My camera is pretty advanced, and there is a nearly infinite number of combinations or lenses and settings that I could use. However, I find that it is most effective to simplify things. I only have a few combinations of settings: for action (maximum aperture, fast shutter speed, auto ISO, high framing rate, continuous focus), for portraits (same as above, but slower shutter speed, sometimes, manual low ISO), for landscapes (narrow aperture, low ISO, single-shot focus, single frame drive). There are othe creative scenarios beside these, but they are exceptions. So the question of choosing the settings, which can be overwhelming to a beginner photographer, can actually be simplified to “what are you trying to achieve?” And the beauty is that there are only few answers: freeze (or blur) motion, separate the subject from the background (or maximize the depth of field). This classification of shooting scenarios is so simple that it frees me to mostly think about composition, which is always important.

January 18, 2018January 18, 2018

Habits are synthetic

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I have started reading “Better Than Before” by Gretchen Rubin, and in the introduction, she writes that habits are powerful because they eliminate the necessity of decision-making, which, she also argues, is a finite resource. Basically, you make decision once and then follow a habitual sequence of steps to the desired result without thinking about the individual steps.

This reminded me of the “Creation and Destruction” essay by John Boyd, which I came across a month ago. Boyd was a military strategist and an instructor of fighter pilots. His theory of making creative decisions is based on a continuous loop of analysis (destruction) of the current reality (and one’s mental model of it) and synthesis (creation) of a new and improved mental model. In this context, a habit, as Rubin describes it, is a synthetic process – you don’t analyze the components of a habit, but instead string them together into one complex action.

Acting without thinking, but in a way appropriate to the situation is, of course, a central concept in martial arts. In kendo, it is called mushin. And just as an everyday habit, the instinctive reaction in a fight is developed through repeated practice.

Being a fairly universal principle, habit-forming can be applied practically to everything. For example, in photography, say, I decide that I want to freeze action of dancers during a performance. I select a ‘fast’ lens, open the aperture wide, set the shutter speed high, autofocus – to continuous tracking mode, framing rate – to ‘high’ and from that point on worry only about composition and catching the dynamic moments. Actually, even this preliminary setup becomes habitual with practice. I only need to think ‘freeze action’, and the rest happens more or less on autopilot.

Of course, as Gretchen Rubin also mentions, habits are great servants, but terrible masters. They makes us more efficient, but in doing so rob us of the actual experience of the action. When you hit a pause on Boyds Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) loop and delegate part of the sequence to a habit, you sacrifice present-moment awareness. Autopilots, after all, are not famous for their creativity.

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October 5, 2015October 5, 2015

Sports photography: pushing the shutter speed limit

Freezing the motion while shooting an indoor sport like basketball requires a high shutter speed. I used to shoot at around 1/1000 sec with an 1/2.8 lens on my Canon 1D X camera body. The indoor games are usually poorly lit, so the ISO (and the associated noise) increases significantly as the shutter speed increases (the exposure time decreases). Thankfully, the 1D X has excellent low-light performance. Besides, noise in a sport photo is more acceptable than in a landscape, for example.

Stil, there is a continuous pursuit of cleaner ad crispier images, so I have been experimenting with pushing the lower limit of the shutter speed to see when the motion blur would become unacceptable. What is acceptable is somewhat subjective, but in this case, I would like to have start images of the athletes’ faces, while allowing some motion blur in the other parts of their bodies (which actually enhances the visual impact of the photo). Also, I want to have a reasonable success rate of this kind of images. Every now and then, it is possible to capture a sharp photo even at 1/200 sec or so (I have done it by accident), but this happens purely by luck and shooting at such a low shutter speed would not be practical from a professional standpoint.

I found that with longer focal lengths (e.g. shooting with a 70 – 200 mm f/2.8 L IS), the sutter speed of 1/640 sec is a limit, while with a wider lens (e.g. a 35 mm f/1.4 L), I could shoot as slow as 1/500 sec. The difference is due to the shallower depth of field (DOF) of the longer lens (at the same f-number). Actually, the shallow DOF is highly desirable, as it allows to visually separate the subject from the background.

My general conclusion is that it is a good idea to vary the shutter speed (in the range of 1/500 – 1/1000 sec), as well as the lenses, in the course of the game. I would start with the long lens and fast shutter speed to make sure that I capture some “keeper” images and than try other lens/settings combinations in the hope to capture some more unique shots.

August 30, 2015

Action shots with an iPhone

Taking action shots is challenging with any camera, because there are several elements of the shot that have to be done correctly at the same time: focus, exposure and composition/framing. Fast moving subjects present challenges in all three aspects, and they are particularly difficult to manage with a phone camera.

I really like my iPhone 6+ camera. It certainly cannot do everything that my 1D X with a fast lens can do, but when the conditions (mostly, lighting) are right, it really shines. You just need to pick your battles wisely if the iPhone camera is your weapon…

Today, we were flying a kite with our four-year-old daughter on a very bright and windy afternoon. The light was harsh, but the contrast and saturation were excellent, which I find always works well for an action shot. My wife took a few photos of my daughter and me with the kite and the dramatic clouds in the background. I think there are two key factors that make these photos work: good composition (taking many shots really helps – one needs to expect many of them to be throw-aways); very bright lighting (it helps with sharpness, saturation and contrast).

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.

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”.

April 8, 2015April 8, 2015

Definition vs. understanding

In his book “The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety“, 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.

Even though we can define something, we often lack the deep understanding of it until we can experience the concept in question. In kendo, for example, it is almost trivial to memorize the names and superficial biomechanical descriptions of various techniques (waza). However, the understanding of the implications of the techniques develops gradually, through practicing them in multiple matches (shiai) and training sessions (keiko) against different opponents. I suppose, a similar difference exists between defining the various mechanical processes and artistic concepts that are involved in extracting a piece of music from a violin and actually playing it. Practice, as in physical doing, is the key word here.

By extension, the same principle applies to photography. It is not sufficient to mentally grasp the concept of camera shake, for example, that is caused by excessive rate of pressure on the shutter release button. To really understand the effect in conjunction with various focal lengths, shutter speeds and lighting conditions, one needs to practice rolling his/her finger over the shutter button hundreds of times and examine the results.

April 4, 2015

Easter egg hunt

Photographing children is often more challenging than shooting sports, because the clildren’s action is more unpredictable. For today’s Easter egg hunt with two three-year-olds, I used a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens lens on a 1D X body. I wanted to keep the aperture wide open for background isolation, so I had to reduce the shutter speed to about 1/1000 sec to avoid over-exposure. Also, I tried to position myself so I would shoot against the light.

Leading the children by playing with them in such a way that they would be well-positioned with respect to the camera makes a huge difference in child photography. This leading has to be done by someone other than the photographer. My wife is very experienced in this role, as she knows what angles and types of shots would work well for the pictures. As a result, my favourite pictures from today’s outing are of her playing with the kids.

March 29, 2015March 29, 2015

Focal length and autofocus speed

A fast lens, such as Canon’s 85mm f1.2L II USM, can do wonders in terms of improving noise levels in indoor sports photos. When shooting wide open, at f/1.2, I can regularly use the shutter speed of about 1/800 sec and an ISO of 8000 in very dim light during basketball games or kendo events. For comparison, the same shutter speed at f/2.8 pushes the ISO to 16500 or even 25000. For a Canon EOS-1D X camera body, this increase in the ISO means a step from minimal noise levels to those that require dedicated post-processing.

The problem with the 85mm f1.2L II USM lens is that it focusses very slowly. Its optical elements are so massive that even thought the camera’s autofocus system sends correct commands, it takes considerable time for the motors to physically move the glass into position. The 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, on the other hand, focusses lightning-fast, particularly if the subject is shot from farther away, at the focal length of 200 mm (compared to 85 mm.)

The advantage of shooting from far away using a longer focal length is that an equivalent motion of the subject causes smaller apparent displacement on the sensor of the camera (think about the classical example of an airplane appearing to move very slowly when viewed from far away, while a bicyclist at 1 m away shooting through your field of view in a fraction of a second.) Because the apparent displacement is small, the optics has to be only slightly adjusted to track the subject.

The bottom line is that a longer but slower (higher minimum f-number) lens will produce noisier images, but will yield a higher success rate in terms of the number of sharp images. Therefore, for a critical photo shoot, I would start with the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens, and after making sure that I have captured a few sharp images, I would switch to the 85mm f1.2L II USM to potentially get one or two spectacular ones.

March 28, 2015

Shutter speed for kendo

Selecting shutter speed for kendo photography is difficult, because the action is very uneven and explosive. Most of the time, the kendoka are relatively motionless, but the peak of the action is extremely fast and unpredictable (in fact, being unpredictable is part of the game.) The fact that the action usually takes place in a dimly lit gym makes matters even worse, so increasing the exposure time as much as possible is necessary for keeping the noise levels within reasonable limits.

During today’s kata seminar, I experimented with various shutter speeds and found that a setting around 1/650 sec is a reasonable compromise for capturing both the slow- and the fast-moving phases of the action. I was shooting with a 85mm f1.2L and a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lenses on a Canon EOS-1D X 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 noise reduction in post-processing and even converted some image to black-and-white.

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