Peter Oshkai photography

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 7, 2015May 11, 2015

Learning to be an extrovert

Any personality type has unique advantages and disadvantages. At certain times, though, it is important to be, or more precisely, to act, like an extrovert. This is particularly true in the case of teaching, where engaging the student(s) is of primary importance. Incidentally, this is a challenge to many academics in analytical areas, such as mathematics, where concentrated, solitary thinking process is an effective, perhaps even necessary, mode of operation, which naturally favours introverts. But since teaching is a necessary stage of any learning process, sometimes, even the most introverted person has to summon the ability to gladly engage other people at an emotional and intellectual level.

I believe that both martial arts and photography (or any visual or performing art, for that matter) offer excellent training grounds for the skill of behaving like an extrovert. Martial arts, by definition, involve communication with an opponent, and in photography, sharing photos, receiving and providing feedback and interacting with models, assistants, colleagues and the audience are the points of communication with other humans.

I do not suggest that one needs to change his/her natural behaviour in general. On the contrary, trying on a different personality type can enhance the inherent character strengths and, at the very least, help understand the other people’s perspective on the common issues.

April 6, 2015

Creative direction

Although it sounds like an oxymoron, good creative direction can be very effective and make the creative process a positive experience. A good example of this are the instructions that come with LEGO blocks. They are very specific, which guarantees the successful result, and they teach important techniques, such as sorting the blocks by colour before starting a project, interlocking the blocks to make walls, etc. As a result, we feel that we have learned something and also created an interesting and aesthetically-pleasing object.

As my daughter reaches the age where she starts to appreciate the possibilities of making neat objects out of the heap of blocks, but still needs help with it, I had a chance to play with LEGO for the first time in a very long time. I really appreciated the thoughtful design and clear directions. The creative aspect was limited, of course, particularly since the subject was a sheep, which does not inspire thoughts of creativity and leadership. However, I think there are some interesting possibilities in terms of macro photography involving Lego.

I took the photo above with my iPhone. Its wide-angle lens is perfect for this kind of close-up shots. In fact, a combination of the focal length and sensor size in a smartphone camera would often outperform a DSLR in close-up photography, provided that the lighting is adequate.

April 5, 2015April 6, 2015

Image vs. reality: telling a story to yourself

The question of whether the act of photography detracts from the actual experience of whatever is being photographed is not an unreasonable one. After all, a photograph is only an image of the a event, place, person, object or situation. A still photo cannot even adequately represent motion, which is arguably one the most important components of an artistic image. A still image is just representation of motion, a conventional way of describing the concept of time-dependence and change, which is inherent to everything that surrounds us.

Moreover, taking a photo requires a certain amount of concentration and effort, which can detract from the interaction with the subject. Travel photography is a perfect example of this, where lugging around a backpack full of heavy photo gear often profoundly altered my experience of many exciting and relaxing destinations. In fact, this exact issue (travelling with too much equipment) prompted the popularity of “nimble photography,” which is being popularized by Derrick Story.

On the other hand, I believe that the effect that photography has on the experience is well worth the effort and attention that it requires. To be clear, I don’t think that the main value of photography is in documenting the experience. Rather, it is in forming the experience. In this respect, photography is similar to writing, which does not simply express a pre-existing idea, but serves to crystallize the idea or a viewpoint through the writing process itself.

In the case of travel photography, researching the destination for possible photo locations, looking for shots and taking time to take them is what allows me to formulate my impression of the place and people, who live or visit there. Carrying a camera is then similar to an artist’s carrying brushes and sketchbook. As to the question of whether a DSLR is necessary or if an iPhone would suffice, I prefer to paint with high-quality brushes on good watercolour paper rather than with a blade of grass on a napkin. In other words, I find it very liberating, from the creative standpoint, not to be limited by the equipment.

It would certainly be sad to pursue an experience merely for the story that could be told about it in the future (as this is what a photo is – a condensed story in a single picture, the one that is, hopefully, worth a thousand words). But creating that story can actually shape the experience itself. I think that in this the storytelling has a tremendous power.

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.

April 3, 2015

Popularity

An unexpected aspect of sharing photos on Flickr or other social media and offering them for sale as stock images is realizing that some of the most popular photos (in terms of the number of views, sales, etc.) are not my personal favourites. I believe that this is a feature of broadcasting to a very large audience, as opposite to “narrow casting” to a small community of personal friends, who generally have similar tastes and interests to my own.

Sometimes, however, I have a sense that an image has a potential to become popular even before I post it. It usually has to do with the subject, as in the photo of ukai (fishing with cormorants) that I took in Inuyama, or the unique viewpoint, as in the shot of Niagara falls taken from a helicopter.

Otherwise, I find that even if the image has some of the components that can potentially make it interesting, such as motion and emotion, if the audience cannot relate to or immediately recognize the subject (e.g. the Eiffel tower or the Great Wall of China), their engagement in terms of views, shares over social media, etc. will be limited.

April 2, 2015

Event coverage

When two important photo shoots happen on the same day, as it was in the case of this year’s the banquet for our university’s graduating athletes and the university graduation party, production planning and efficiency of operation become tremendously important. My associate Armando is very skillful in planning and running shoots like this, and over the past few years I have benefited tremendously from his experience by being able to experiment with new shooting styles, lighting setups and workflows, while having the safety net of his expertise in case the experiments would not yield desired results.

In general, I find that for any even coverage, having more than one photographer removes a lot of psychological pressure of potentially blowing up the assignment by making some kind of trivial mistake (e.g. missing a key moment of a wedding ceremony or an important speech due to equipment failure or having the wrong lens or camera setting as a result of trying to be creative).

With the two events happening back-to-back, we had to exercise economy of motion in terms of the setup and logistics. Fortunately, we had enough studio flashes, light stands and light modifiers to set up three photo booths at the same time. We started by preparing the setup for the graduation party and then moved to the banquet location a couple of city blocks away, where each of us was running a separate photo booth for different parts of the ceremony. In between the mandatory portraits of the award recipients, we were able to take candid shots of the students, speakers at the podium, eat dinner and pack up the gear when the work at one of the booths was finished.

Overall, this year, we managed to balance the efficiency with being able to enjoy the events themselves. Of course, this would not have been possible without the help of six additional friends, who came out to help with the graduation party shoot. They did everything from taking the actual photos to managing the crowd of students of various degrees of sobriety. During the banquet, which was a formal event running according to a tight script, the crowd control aspect was naturally taken care of.

It was a long night, but as usual, the interaction with the students outside of classroom, their youthful energy and enthusiasm about our photography left us with a positive feeling.

April 1, 2015April 2, 2015

Graduation party

The theme of this year’s graduation party of our university was “Under the stars.” In the spirit of involving people in photography, we did some compositing right in front of the students, showing them the post-processing steps and asking for feedback along the way. We were using their portraits, which were taken just minutes earlier and super-imposing them on starry backgrounds. Instead of using a conventional photo booth approach that involves props, a backdrop with some (cheesy) images on it, and minimal post-processing, we wanted to try a more artistic process, which would limit the students’ choices in terms of poses, but would produce higher quality (arguably, still cheesy) images.

From my perspective, the new process was more rewarding than the conventional one, not in the financial sense, but in terms of improving the quality of the interaction with the students. The students were generally more appreciative of our work and seemed to enjoy seeing the inner works of the photo manipulation process.

In terms of the workflow of the entire photo shoot, selection of the portraits from the sets of five or six still presented the main bottleneck, even though this year we had two computers operating at the same time (compared to one last year) and had a substantially smaller number of photos taken of each group of students. This is not surprising, as culling of raw images is the major time-consuming stage of any photography project, whether the clients are involved in it or not.

March 31, 2015April 1, 2015

Behind the scenes

In preparation for our university’s graduation party photo shoot, my associate, Armando, and I brainstormed possible lighting setups and image processing workflows. We noticed how valuable it is to have a visual record of previous photoshoots. In fact, Armando has been recording behind-the-scenes videos with a DSLR on a tripod during some of his recent shoots.

There is something inherently fascinating in the images that document a production process, whether it is a photo shoot production, a dance rehearsal or the inner workings of the kitchen in a local pizzeria. Glimpses of the stages of the process that are typically hidden from the consumers of the final product (lighting tests, the work of a makeup artist, baking of the pizza bases, etc.) create a sense of an exclusive access to the viewer.

Sometimes, all it takes to capture some interesting behind-the-scenes shots is pulling out a smartphone while sitting at the bar in a pizzeria, but at other times, it requires advanced planning and a dedicated photo/video setup. What often prevents us from seeing the candid photo opportunities in everyday activities is getting caught up in a mental plan instead of being present and aware of the action as it is actually unfolding. Perhaps, consciously documenting the process, in addition to focussing on its results, can help balance presence and productivity – two aspects of everyday life that are often difficult to reconcile.

March 30, 2015

When not to give advice

Throughout a learning process, it is important to be conscious about which advice to follow and which to ignore. Here, “ignoring” does not mean not noticing it, but rather choosing not follow it, upon processing the information that comes with it.

Just as important is to know when to voice an opinion or criticism and when to withhold it. This notion is particularly important in teaching. Sometimes, too much feedback can either discourage or mislead the student about his/her learning process. More importantly, certain things cannot be transmitted by words or even visual example – they have to be discovered and mastered through personal practice.

The restraint that is required to withhold or delay voicing an opinion, particularly when immediate response is expected, is a learned skill, and as such requires practice. This does not mean distorting the truth when speaking up is genuinely the right thing to do. Instead, the practice can focus on making the communication more laconic and efficient – using the minimum amount of words (indeed, information in general) to convey an idea. For example, Amanda Palmer explained that she spent two month polishing her viral TED talk to distill her life philosophy into a twelve-minute presentation.

I find that effort spent on self-editing my comments on other photographer’s images, reviews of other colleagues’ research papers, my lecture notes, etc. translates between these and other areas (e.g. practicing with novice kendoka). Ultimately, this capacity for restraint is based on being sufficiently present at the moment when my opinion is formed in order to realize that this opinion by itself is only a part of the overall communication and teaching/learning process, and as such does not automatically has to be made available to others. There might (or might not) come time when the opinion will be needed. Then, it would have benefited from being effectively formulated and delivered.

…These thoughts came to mind after I heard an interview with Amanda Palmer, and, being fully aware of the irony, I decided to put them into the blood post right away. In my defence, this is not an advice, just some notes to self…

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