Peter Oshkai photography

January 22, 2015January 22, 2015

First-order access

There are many online and printed resources for organizing tools for any project and decluttering your home, but I find one concept, used by the host of the “MythBusters” show Adam Savage, very important. It is referred to as first-order access and basically means not storing anything behind anything else. In other words, anything in a workshop, a kitchen, an office, a library or a photo studio should be within direct reach and not hidden or obstructed by other stuff.

I find this principle particularly important during a photo shoot. Often, situations arise that force me to deviate from the original plan for the shoot. Having all my gear neatly organized, so that any lens, flash or cable can be accessed directly, without having to unload other items from the camera bag is very important. It allows me to use unforeseen challenges as opportunities to try new creative techniques, instead of spending valuable time on searching for gear.

I should mention that it is equally (and perhaps more) important not to have too much stuff in the first place, which, of course, is the basic principle of decluttering. Having too many choices of photo gear that can potentially be used to take a given shot robs you creative energy that is best applied to making decisions regarding lighting, composition, posing and other creative elements of the photo. Not specifically related to photography, “It’s All Too Much” by Peter Walsh is a highly-regarded reference on organization.

In general, when problems arise, it is important to come up with a constructive solution on the spot. It may not be the optimal solution, but the immediate timing of offering a solution cultivates the mindset of treating setbacks into learning experiences, instead of reasons for complaining.

January 21, 2015January 22, 2015

Rashomon effect

Travel photography is a tremendously popular niche. In fact, taking stock photos while travelling initially attracted me to professional photography. As my focus shifted from “places” to “people” over the past ten years, I find it increasingly interesting to review my own and other photographers’ photos of various destinations.

I believe that a good photograph contains a story with some emotional content. It conveys the personal view of the photographer to the viewer. Nowadays, with so many images of various destinations and events around the world available online, I often have an experience similar to what Akira Kurosawa brilliantly shown in “Rashomon,” where the same event is shown from the perspective of different people, each telling a personal story.

Interestingly, this effect is present even if I am reviewing only my own photos. As Daniel Gilbert, the author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” notes, people often under-estimate how much their personalities change, particularly, how much they will change in the next few years. I often view my photographs with the eyes of a different person from the one one who took them. Indeed, it is not possible to enter the same river twice. It turns out that we have multiple chances to experience the same place or event thanks to photography. As a bonus, each time, the story is told by a different person.

January 20, 2015January 20, 2015

Shodo

After a nearly nine-month break, my wife and I are back to practicing shodo (Japanese calligraphy). I wanted to post my writing attempts on Flickr, and found, to my surprise, that when I started doing the same thing three year ago, my first post was of exactly the same writing (the image below is from three years ago.) It reads “しゅんらいききむかう.” As with many of the sayings typically used in calligraphy, the exact translation is a bit elusive (and somewhat missing the point), but “Welcome spring” is close enough. This is kaisho – formal script.

When I wrote this three years ago, it was also a re-start of our photo practice. Our daughter was just a newborn, and we would bring her to our teacher’s house. She would sleep peacefully (at least, this is how I remember it now) in her car seat, while my wife and I would write and then eat incredibly delicious dinners cooked by our sensei’s wife. Having a child with us was a major change in dynamics of our practice from the time when there were just two of us. I guess, this is just another illustration that shodo, like kendo, is a mirror of of the entire life.

Our daughter is not a little bundle laying in a car seat beside the chair anymore. She is a person, who wants to draw, and write, and play, and watch TV, and read, and eat, and drink, and talk. The change of dynamics and pace seems to be continuous. Perhaps, embracing it is the point of practice.

These days, our daughter likes to do everything together with us. I know that this will pass, as the need to assert her independence will take over, but I wonder if one day we would have a chance to write calligraphy side-by-side.

January 19, 2015January 19, 2015

Shutter priority

When I photograph people without flash or studio lights, which I do most often, I operate in a shutter priority mode. Even though I set my 1D X to manual mode with auto ISO, I typically fix the aperture to the widest setting that my lens allows (the lowest f-number), and adjust the shutter speed to freeze action. For sports, I usually start with a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec, and sometimes lower it to 1/800 or even 1/650, if the lighting is too dim.

Actually, depending on the lens (wider lenses can tolerate slower shutter speeds for the same subject), I sometimes obtain reasonable results while shooting sports with really slow shutter speeds, e.g. 1/125 sec. I should mention that I usually do not do this on purpose. Sometimes, I just forget to change the setting after shooting a relatively stationary subject and continue to shoot action, only to find out that among mostly blurry images, there a couple of nice ones. The benefit of the slower shutter speed is, of course, lower ISO and, therefore, less noise.

Of course, I am talking about freezing the motion, which is just one way to photograph action. There amy other way to convey speed, such as blurring or panning. “Understanding Shutter Speed” is a good overview book on this subject.

I was also happy to discover a shutter priority mode in the Camera+ app on my iPhone. Now I can can set the ISO to “Auto” and set the shutter speed to a reasonable value (around 1/60 sec) when photographing my daughter. The default setting of 1/30 sec is way to slow to capture a 3-year-old in her continuous motion. Incidentally, because kids are constantly moving, I find the fully manual mode of the iPhone Camera+ app (where shutter speed, aperture and ISO are all controlled separately) too cumbersome to use for spontaneous children’s portraits. While some control of the exposure mode and focus are nice to have, the point-and-shoot aspect is what makes the iPhone useful to me as a pocket camera.

January 18, 2015January 18, 2015

Need for self-expression

Many writers commented of the benefits of writing a journal and otherwise making writing a part of their daily routine. Besides increasing their productivity, developing writing skills and other obvious benefits, regular self-expression has a deeper underlying reason. As Kevin Kelly, an amazingly prolific author on the subject of technology, explained in an interview that I heard recently, it is not that we have something to say, and then we write about it. We write in order to find out what we have to say. In other words, we formulate our thoughts by writing them down.

A good example for this is academic research, where communicating the results through published articles is an integral part of the process. When I work with graduate students on a new project, we start outlining a future journal paper before starting the experiments that would eventually form its core. Doing so helps us define the focus as we work.

In a similar way, photography helps me appreciate the subject, whether it is a location, a building, a person or an event. Often, I do not have a particularly clear idea of what it was that attracted me to the subject to begin with, but by photographing it, I am able to find out its unique features. Just as writing (whether creative or technical), photography is a way of expressing our understanding of the subject. This very process crystallizes the intuitive aspects of understanding, ultimately deepening our knowledge. I think that more often than not, the author benefits from the process more than the audience does from the resulting work.

January 17, 2015January 17, 2015

Meaning of life

Recently, I came upon an interview with Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired magazine, who wrote, among other books, “Cool Tools“, a review of the best or unique tools for nearly any kind of job. In the interview, he shared some interesting thoughts about the dilemma between choosing a niche for your activities to optimize performance, and being a generalist, i.e. exploring a wide range of activities. By the way, this appears to be true dilemma, as there is no correct choice.

In photography, as in other activities, e.g. academic research, specializing on an area of strength has many advantages. However, if your personal domain of activity is limited, narrow specialization potentially gets you stuck on a local maximum of performance. Achieving a global maximum requires one to go down on the performance curve. In other words, we need to become beginners in order to ultimately become better in something new.

Kelly talks about a concept of finding not just what you are good at, but what only you are good at. Searching for this global maximum of performance is very difficult as it necessarily involves ups and downs of performance. In fact, it can take an entire lifetime. Perhaps, this process of figuring out is the purpose of life.

January 16, 2015January 16, 2015

On leadership

Recently, I have been listening to a podcast about military strategy and tactics of Mongols during the Genghis Khan’s campaigns. It is interesting that the Mongols valued leadership abilities of their commanders very highly. For example, there is a quote sometimes attributed to Genghis Khan (although it is more likely a variation of a quote of Alexander the Great or the Socrates) that “an army of donkeys led by a lion is better an army of lions led by a donkey.”

The basic principles of leadership certainly transcend military applications and apply to many aspects of life. After all, most of what we do day-to-day is communicate with other people. There is a vast amount of literature written about it, perhaps, Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War” being the best known example of military strategy guidelines becoming a famous reference for business people.

For me personally, working with a research group of colleagues and graduate students, teaching a course or taking photos of people – all these activities involve leading or directing others. There are many details of leadership that are specific to a particular activity, but some key aspects are common. Here they are, taking a typical portrait photo shoot as an example:

Planning. This is foundation of a successful project. I need to have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish, what gear I would need, how much time the shoot would take, etc. However, there is a point of diminishing returns in planing, so at some point, it is important to just start doing things.
Flexibility. It is likely that things would not go exactly according to the plan. When that happens, I try to trust my experience and intuition and not over-think the choice of lens or camera settings, for example.
Confidence. I believe that planning and experience are the foundation of confidence, and flexibility is the result of it. Perhaps, it depends on the type of personality, but I think confidence should come naturally, not as a result of artificial effort. After all, it is really impossible to convincingly fake it, and also, there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Communication. It is a two-way process, and when I am in a leading role, I control how the communication occurs. As a photographer, I need be aware of how the photo shoot as it progresses and make sure that everyone knows the general plan, but has sufficient autonomy to make adjustments without waiting for specific directions. This usually happens naturally with models, assistants and other photographers, as we establish a relaxed, fun atmosphere. Also, as I wrote earlier, asking others for feedback during the shoot is a great way of establishing a connection and avoiding mistakes.

January 15, 2015January 15, 2015

Light modifiers: a matter of size

The main parameter in choosing light modifiers (soft boxes or umbrellas, for example) for studio strbes is the size of the modifiers. Generally for portraits, the larger the modifiers, the better. The main function of soft boxes and umbrellas is to change a small light source into a large one. This creates soft, gradual transitions between the light and dark areas on the subject, which is aesthetically pleasing for most portraits (or course, there are situations, when the rules are broken intentionally to create impact, but that is another story). In my opinion, the more the light source resembles natural window light, the better. This concerns the size of the light source, its position (height relative to the subject) and its colour temperature.

There is not a huge difference between brand name and generic soft boxes and umbrellas in terms of the quality of light, so I think it is safe to use cheaper modifiers without sacrificing the quality of the resulting photo.

A disadvantage of very large soft boxes or umbrellas is that they are very cumbersome to use outdoors. They are, essentially, sails that catch every slightest gust of wind and tend to topple over, unless the stands are weighted down with sand bags. For an outdoor shoot, I use Speedlites, preferably off-camera, triggered by a PocketWizard radio triggers.

I found that getting started with studio lights is a bit intimidating, because of the many changes in the workflow, compared to a natural light setting. The best way to start is to assist someone who knows what he/she is doing and later copy the basic setup (there is nothing complicated about it, after all). The lighting principles themselves are actually quite straightforward, and another way to approach studio lighting is to read a book, such as “Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It.”

January 14, 2015January 14, 2015

Practice, failure and unlearning

Developing a skill requires consistent practice. This is common knowledge in martial arts, but it is definitely true in other areas of life. It is simply not enough to absorb new information; it is also necessary in internalize it by repeatedly tying the new skill. The role of failure in this trial process is debatable. Most people fail many times before succeeding, so it is comfortable to think that we learn from our failures. Also, it is clear that training has to be challenging to be effective. However, some argue that failure is over-rated. For example, Peter Thiel, the author of “Zero to One“, said that in the case of startup companies (which fail often), failures occur not because of a single reason, but because of a combination of multiple factors. This makes these failures difficult to analyze and to learn from. As he puts it, a failed business is always a tragedy.

Although practice is crucial for learning, at some point in the creative process, it is necessary to “unlearn” – to put aside one’s arsenal of learned techniques and allow the intuition to take over. During photo shoots, for example, there is often no time to think through the composition, the lighting, the posing, etc. as the action unfolds. At such times, I work on trusting my experience in selecting the appropriate combination of parameters without thinking about the details. In fact, it is practice that enables this to happen – I have seen and shot similar situations enough times that I know which techniques, gear and camera settings do and to not work. In fact, knowing what does not work is particularly important for spontaneous, intuitive shooting. That knowledge, in a sense, is a product of prior failures.

January 13, 2015January 13, 2015

Avoiding mental attachments

“…sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

– Marilyn Monroe

Although planning is a crucial part of a photo production, things often do not go according to the plan during the actual photo shoot. This is not always a bad thing (some believe that anything that happens, happens for a reason), but it is important to mentally flexible if such situation occurs.

Recently, I came across some interviews and writings of Josh Waitzkin, who had a very successful career as an international-level chess player and is also an accomplished material artist (he trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu under the instruction of the phenomenal Marcelo Garcia). Josh talks about mental attachment to past decision and how to avoid it.

To explain a mental attachment using a chess example, assume that I looked at a position on the board and decided to implement a certain combination. As the game unfolds, the opponent tries to implement his/her own plan, which changes the situation – what used to be a good plan, becomes not so good, because the objective situation has changed. (This is what makes chess and martial arts so much like real life.) If I stay mentally attached to the original plan of action, my own actions would make the situation worse, because they would be out-of-touch with the objective reality. In martial arts also, one of the fundamental concepts is to be present in the moment, “read” the opponent and not to be absorbed by one’s own thoughts and fears.

I believe that like any fundamental skill, mental flexibility in the face of unexpected changes requires practice. In photography, for example, if my arsenal of shooting and lighting techniques is fairly diverse, I would be able to adjust my shooting if the location, models or props do not work the way it was planned.

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