Spain – Peter Oshkai photography

July 17, 2015July 17, 2015

Stonework

When I climbed to the roof of the Duomo do Milano and looked through the layers of intricate gothic stone carvings at the streets below, all I could think was that it looked like lace. I had a similar impression of the Doge’s Palace in Venice and, most recently, of the Alhambra Palace in Granada. What distinguishes the gothic cathedral for me is that it looks like its elements are flying upward, as if in an explosion of vertical lines and tiny details. I tried to show this by using a wide lens (Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L, which distorts the image in favour of keeping the straight lines straight).

In contrast, the carvings in Alhambra did not look particularly dynamic. Instead, repeating patterns lead the eye to infinity, which, in fact, is one of the techniques of the muslim art that conveys the infinity of the universe. For close-ups of these patters, I used a telephoto lens to visually compress the perspective.

July 15, 2015July 17, 2015

Alhambra

We visited the palace-fortress-gardens complex of Alhambra in Granada in 45-degree (C) weather with our three-year-old daughter and with no particular plan for photography. I wanted to try to capture our subjective impression of the sizzling heat through close-up portraits, but I also wanted to take some descriptive photos of this famous tourist attraction. The place is so overwhelmingly beautiful, with its lace of stone carvings and bubbling fountains, that I quickly ran out of creative ideas of what to photograph besides the cliche shots of people posing in front of the pools receding into the background, framed by orange trees.

In that sense, it was very helpful to take a break from walking through the gardens and temporarily escape the heat by visiting a photography exhibit in one of the palaces that featured the architecture of Alhambra. Seeing the same subject through someone else’s lens not only highlighted the iconic viewpoint, but also defined what not has been done (at least within the scope of that particular exhibit). The main idea that I took from the exhibit was to vary the technique for the single subject. For example, I tried to shoot the carved walls looking directly at them and at very oblique angles, using shallow and deep depth of field, long and short lenses, in direct light and in contre-jour, etc.

July 13, 2015July 17, 2015

Artistic skill

Street artists were hard at work at Plaza Balcón de Europa in Nerja (Spain) every night during our stay there. Their popularity among tourists obviously varied. The cartoonist who drew funny caricatures of models was, by far, the most popular artist. His skill was great, both in observation of the distinguishing features of his clients and in the drawing technique itself.

I think it can be traced, at least in part, to the sheer number of hours he spends practicing his craft. He was there literally every night, with the uninterrupted stream of clients, who were eager to pay 25 euros or so for their portraits. This was definitely, a high-volume operation, as far as selling art was concerned. I have had a couple of experiences with selling photography that way (helping to cover sporting and performance events), and every time, I was left with a feeling of having wasted my time. The whole production process was so mechanical and emotionally draining, that it left no space for creativity.

This time, observing the cartoonist, I was wondering how this artist was able to maintain his motivation to set up shop on the daily basis. Perhaps, the difference in the production processes between his “analog” drawing and digital photography is the key. Even though he worked very fast, he still spent considerable time on small details (which is the most fun, in my personal experience) and on what would be referred to in photography as “post-processing” – adjusting and manipulating the image that he had captured in his mind. Maybe, the way to stay motivated and to have fun with photography is to allow sufficient time to think about and work on individual images – something that is easy to lose in the digital workflow.

July 12, 2015July 17, 2015

Summer heat

I find that our perception of air temperature is not only subjective, but also relative, i.e. it depends on what we experienced recently. My recent trip to Europe was unusually long and included stays in Italy, Russia, Netherlands, so I had an opportunity to compare summer weather in these countries. Genoa in May seemed very hot. There were a couple of days when people flocked to the beach in the neighbouring Boccadasse, a Chinque Terre-like idyllic town, and the purple-coloured fountain in the middle Genoa looked like an oasis in the hot maze of the narrow streets.

Eighteen degrees (Celsius) in Amsterdam felt cold after hot and humid Voronezh, and it set a stage for the 45-degree heat of Madrid to be almost shocking. The good news about Spanish heat is that the humidity is low, which makes it tolerable. Also, further South, in Nerja, the temperature was much more comfortable 35 degrees, and the breeze from the sea made for exceptionally nice warm evenings – something that I miss in Victoria.

Weather is an important aspect of photographs, but I often forget to consciously convey it in the pictures. Most of our everyday activities are weather-independent, yet weather has a strong emotional resonance – perhaps, a remnant of prehistoric times. As I work through my photos, I will try to use the photos with distinct weather elements to paint a more personal picture of the various locations. This is quite challenging, though, as our sense of temperature is inherently non-visual, so the visual clues of summer heat are often subtle and indirect (sweat on the subject’s forehead, blueish shadow in harsh light, etc.)

Perhaps, it would make an interesting project to try to show different kinds of weather, from nice to nasty to dangerous in a single series of photos.

July 11, 2015July 17, 2015

Patterns of Spain

My wife and I have never went on a cruise, because we always thought that a whirlwind visit to a foreign country, where you change a location every day and have only few hours to explore each town would detract from the experience of travel by not allowing us to see the country through the eyes of someone who lives there, albeit for a short time. During our most recent trip to Spain, we drove from Madrid to Nerja, stopping for a night in Merida along the way. I thought that this would be a very leisurely pace for exploring the rural Andalusia, but the variety of patterns we saw in the landscapes around us was so overwhelming that at some point I gave up trying to mentally capture these in hope to somehow “process” them in the future. At that time, I released that no pace would be too slow to fully experience a country.

Rick Steves, whose travel guides I find very helpful in determining key destinations of a trip, points out that a foreign country is similar to a good novel in the sense that it leaves a better impression when visited the second time around. Certainly, the attitude of assuming that I will return to the place another time helps me personally to avoid (or at least mitigate) regrets of not being able to jam all possible points of interest and experiences in the single trip’s agenda.

In terms of photography, I tried to change the style of my landscape and street photos a bit, by focussing not so much on the composition, but specifically on patterns of light and colour. Using an analogy with painting and drawing, I wanted my images to be more like sketches that capture the impression of the scene, rather than studies of the subjects. My intend was to take care of the composition in post-processing. Hopefully, these visual patterns will become a sort of bookmarks for more detailed memories. Otherwise, the amount of new information that we are exposed during any trip (if we are paying attention to it, which itself cannot be taken for granted) is so tremendous that keeping it all at the same level of memory, with direct access to every tiny detail, is simply impossible.

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