My thoughts on the craft, the process and the subjects
In my experience, limiting the scale of projects certainly works well for photography. High-volume photo shoots involve a lot of overhead related to production and logistics. As the scale of the project increases, so does the overhead, while the essence of the project that served as the original motivation, at best, remains unchanged.
When taking family pictures on a holiday like Mother’s Day, it is best to let the children and parents interact and play naturally, without imposing on them with lighting, wardrobe and posing directions. The profound nature of our relationships with our mothers makes it difficult to convey this connection in a picture, which freezes only one short instant in the relationship. It is common knowledge that conventional, posed family portraits are often boring (partly, because they reflect the experience of taking these photos – tired parents, uncooperative children, stressed-out photographers…) On the other hand, a candid portrait can potentially provide a unique glimpse of a genuine emotion that connects the family members through their “normal” interactions.
The same argument applies to adults (in this case, parents.) Despite the wide-spread obsession with selfies, typically, our mental self-image is different from the more objective view provided by the camera. This is why we often don’t like how we look in photographs. Accepting the image of oneself as others see it takes practice. A positive side effect of being photographed regularly is that we can learn which poses, camera angles, clothes etc. are most flattering for us and repeatably reproduce those conditions. Thus, we can objectively become more photogenic.
Some of my most vivid travel impressions are from the trip to Italy that my wife and I took six years ago. Now, I am planning a short research-related trip to Genova and Milan, where I have never been before. This time, I will go without my family, though, so the dynamics of the trip will be very different. I will have only a couple of days off work for some sightseeing, so I do not have a detailed photography agenda. It would be nice to balance photography with the actual experience of being in the foreign place.
Photography requires a certain amount of focus, which can detract from the travel experience. On the other hand, I find that visual memories, frozen in photographs, largely shape the overall retrospective impression from the trip. I am curious to see how my photos from this year’s trip to Italy would be different from those taken six years ago.
Although a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes a subject of a photo shoot is so vast that it is difficult to decide what to start with. This is often the case with travel photography, as every country’s story can be told in many different ways: through its architecture, food, people, arts, etc.
Josh Waitzkin
Russian photographer Elena Shumilova became famous online for idyllic portraits of her children that she has been taking at a farmland in beautiful golden light. Recently, she shared her thoughts on what makes a good children’s portrait.
Elena also notices that the most photogenic age is between three and five years old. This is a bit sad, as time flies incredibly fast, and my daughter will soon outgrow this “golden window.” Perhaps, focussing on child photography when his/her own children are of the most photogenic age is a good strategy for a parent-photographer.
Elena’s other suggestions are regarding persistence in photographing children and avoiding brightly-coloured, distracting clothes. Both are deceptively simple and obvious. In practice, even such trivial thing as wardrobe selection can be tricky, as modern children’s clothes are often overly bright and covered with cartoon characters and company logos. If we want to be able to capture spontaneous, genuine images that would have some artistic quality on a moment’s notice, it is not sufficient to keep the camera handy and have a good sense of composition. We also have to be conscious about colours, fit, etc. while picking the children’s clothes.
Eventually, my interests shifted to sports and events photography. In part, this is because this niche provides more opportunities for interacting with people, who are involved in the photo shoots. From the business perspective also, the type of photography that delivers both a product (images for sale) and a service (event coverage) has been more successful (at least in my particular case).
I am quite pleased to see some of my photos enlarged to a rather enormous size and covering the interior walls of the new athletics centre of our university. Every time I go to the gym now, it feels as if I visit my personal gallery.
My associate, who got me involved in the sports photography for the university and with whom we took these pictures, also thinks that this collaboration with the school has been quite productive, even just for satisfaction of knowing that our images have a life beyond our hard drives.
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.
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.
“…it is not only necessity, but also laziness, which is the mother of invention.”
– Alan Watts, “The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Conserving energy and economy of motion is important in many, if not all aspects of life. It is certainly true in the case of martial arts, academic research, teaching, and other areas, where creativity is important. However, there is a fine line between conserving motion and thus moving “skillfully – along the line of least resistance”, as Alan Watts puts it, and just being passive, procrastinating.
In kendo, there is an expression “bogyo no tame no bogyo nashi” – “there is no defence for the sake of defence.” I would not attempt a definitive interpretation (these sayings are notorious for having layers upon layers of underlying meanings,) but one way to read this is that even when we have to be defensive the reaction itself should be viewed as an opportunity to prepare to the next action.
Photography, in fact, facilitates this rapid switch between the memories, which are frozen in images. Because, as Watts explains, we tend to think about a memory of an event as if it was the event itself, photography can actually alter our subjective experiences in retrospect. This is why eyewitness accounts are not considered to be definitive evidence in courts – the memories of the witnesses can be affected by the information acquired a posteriori.
