Peter Oshkai photography

December 18, 2014

Travel photography

Recently, I listened to an interview with Rolf Potts, the author of the bestselling book “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”. He made some excellent points on the general idea of travelling and managing information while away from home. I can certainly relate to what he said about the meaning of travel in terms of personal development, and I think that most of the general ideas apply to photography.

For me, one of the most attractive aspects of travelling to other countries is the possibility to return with a different set of views on various everyday subjects or situations. My former PhD advisor called this interaction with other cultures “being calibrated” by them. This makes world travel incredibly valuable – not many other activities have potential (and high probability) of changing me as a person is the span of a few weeks.

In order to achieve this effect, I find that I need to actively resist the urge to continue managing my work and social relationships in the same way as I do this at home. Ironically, it is the technology, which I value and enjoy tremendously, that makes it so easy to continue living in the “business as usual” mode while on the road. As a result, there is a real possibility to spend most of the trip looking at the laptop or a smartphone screen, instead of the new environment I happen to be in.

Another great value of travelling is that it lets (indeed, forces) me to experience the World with what is called in the Japanese martial arts tradition, a beginner’s mind. When I am in a new country for the first time, I am as vulnerable as a five-year-old in many respects: I can barely express myself verbally, it is dangerous to cross a street, I have a very limited sense of what is socially acceptable, I cannot find anything in a supermarket, etc. Actually, it is “growing” through this stage that teaches us the most about the different cultures and the universal aspects of human relationships.

In terms of photography, I think that it is important to follow the same principles, i.e. to keep in mind the original purpose of being away from home and creating a photographic record of that experience. While travelling, I try to change the change the way I approach photo shoots, compared to what I do at home. For example, while some degree of planning is necessary, I consciously reduce the amount of micro-managing of the setting, lighting, etc. to be more flexible and responsive to new situations and opportunities.

Also, I try to capture the moments that are significant because of their emotional content, not just their exotic or famous settings. For example, some of my favourite images from our family trip to France last year are the portraits of my daughter, two-year-old at the time, delighted by the sheer size of the Roman and Greek statues in Louvre. We expected her to be bored by the museum, but it turned out that she enjoyed it so much that did not want to leave.

While on the road, I make backups of everything I shoot, but generally don’t post-process the images to their final form. I used to try to edit photos right away when I started exploring stock photography, but realized that doing so detracts too much from the travel experience itself precisely because it is what I would do after each photo shoot at home. Besides, it is fun to look through the images from a trip after a few months (sometimes, years) after returning home. If all of the photos were down-selected to a “nice” portfolio and post-processed, there would be no excuse to go back to them in the busy day-to-day routine.

December 17, 2014December 17, 2014

On efficiency

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
Annie Dillard, “The Writing Life”

I have been spending substantial effort on optimizing my photography workflow. This primarily applies to post-processing, but the concept is also relevant to the overall process of creating an image – from planning to shooting/production to retouching. Having experimented with it, I think that sometimes it is important to consciously forego efficiency for the sake of exploring new ideas or perfecting particular techniques.

It seems that in most aspects of our lives, productivity became the etalon of success (or at least the main indicator for potential for success – whatever the definition of the latter may be). Unfortunately, the flip side of this is that efficiency often tramples presence – active intellectual and emotional engagement with the job at hand.

Drawing again a parallel with kendo, the Japanese Way of the Sword, I learned from a hachidan (8th dan) sensei that personal development requires a combination of quality and quantity of practice. To achieve quantity, certain degree of efficiency is absolutely necessary. After all, nobody has an infinite amount of time to devote to any single aspect of training. However, quality of practice requires presence. As I mentioned in the post about the learning process, we need to engage with the subject and make it own own.

In photography, the focus on efficiency is particularly prominent in high-volume shoots, where increasing the quantity of images offered to the clients is viewed as a way of boosting the overall sales. I would argue that this approach does not necessarily lead to the long-term development of a creative photographer. Personally, I have been working on consciously reducing the number of shots I take in a given photo session. This is not to say that I change my shooting style to the one of the days of analogue film. I just try to think ahead of what I want to capture before firing off a high-speed burst from my 1D X. In post-processing, having a limited (read: manageable) number of images to start with frees up time, which allows me to have fun with the photos by trying new techniques, thinking about what works for a particular type of shot in terms of composition, lighting, etc.

I believe that quantity of practice for photographers comes from consistency – regularly shooting new projects, either for clients or for personal interest and fun. Quality, on the other hand, is achieved by allowing ourselves to sacrifice some efficiency for presence, i.e. engagement with the subject and the process of creating the image.

December 16, 2014December 16, 2014

Photography in art and engineering

“Beauty is the highest degree of appropriateness in nature”

Ivan Efremov, “Razor’s Edge”

My academic research in fluid mechanics heavily relies on experimental methods that are based on photography. At the same time, in my photography, I enjoy subjects that are related to my research: water, clouds, architecture, ships, airplanes, birds, etc. Although these two areas of interest benefit each other, and in some sense, both my photography and my research straddle the junction between art and engineering, I have not been engaged in hybrid research per se. I believe this is true of majority of colleagues, who work in the similar area. Engineers produce knowledge that is applicable to engineering projects, and artists produce objects of art that can communicate emotions directly, so the classification between the two is usually quite clear.

Philosophically speaking, the results of true hybrid research are not strictly art or engineering. In fact, the status of such results and their function in the world is not clear. I am wondering if even Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the most recognized “renaissance man”, produced works that were objects of both art and engineering at once, not one or the other.

On the other hand, it is clear that engineering advances can enable artistic creation (e.g. computer graphics). Likewise, artistic objects can be used to communicate complex scientific and engineering concepts to broad general audiences.

I believe there is definitely a close connection between art and engineering, and therefore a potential to make productive contributions to both fields through photography – a technique that is firmly established in both worlds. It would be interesting to apply photography to create objects and knowledge that would truly belong to both fields at once.

December 15, 2014December 15, 2014

On choosing a niche: travel and stock photography

As I mentioned in an earlier post on specialization, although some degree of focus is probably beneficial for photographers, actual selection of the niche can be difficult.

I believe the most important factors in selecting the area of specialization are

What you enjoy doing/shooting.
What you are good at.

Also relevant, but somewhat less important question is whether a lot of expensive equipment would be required (and whether you already have some of it).

Some business experts also suggest considering how competitive the prospective niche is and how well would it pay. I would argue that for someone, who is not looking to immediately make photography his/her main career by abandoning the current way of making a living, these considerations are a poor place to start. Personally, I would not want to trade the enjoyment of photography for potential financial returns, although I find the commercial aspects of photography (as any applied art, for that matter) fascinating.

I started doing travel and stock photography, because it allowed me to add focus to family vacations, and it had a potential for very passive income from repeat sales. Presently, I think that stock photography has two main drawbacks. From financial perspective, the income is very low, and a very large portfolio is needed before any money starts trickling in at all. Perhaps more importantly, from creative standpoint, my stock photos that have been most successful are rather cliché. Taking those kind of photos requires looking at the subject not through my own eyes, but rather through the eyes of a corporate client (which is an average of about all possible clients one can imagine). It can be a fun exercise, but it is not something I would do all the time.

Having said this, travel photography is still tremendously interesting to me. Fundamentally, what I like about it is probably what makes most people pick up a camera in the first place – ability to capture the moment and re-live it later while looking at the photo. Nowadays, when I take photos while travelling, I like to think about what aspects of the experience I want to capture and convey. More and more often, it involves people, whom I meet during the trips.

December 14, 2014December 14, 2014

Importance of teaching

I wrote before about involving people in photoshoots by asking them to model, assist or critique my work. It is especially beneficial to collaborate with other photographers, who are at different levels in terms of their technical skills, creative ability and career. This variety of levels enables one to learn and, just as important, to teach.

In kendo, the continuing development of the technical skill and the philosophical understanding of the way of the sword can be represented by the following diagram. I first learned about it in a kendo seminar, and since then have been using it in my main work as a university professor. I believe the principles apply equally well to photography and, probably, any other serious pursuit in life that involves development of a skill.

Learning diagram

Learning. This is the first stage of the skill development cycle (yes, ultimately it is a never-ending cycle – think about “life-long learning”, a concept that is a bit over-used in academe these days) – acquisition of information. It can take a form of reading a book, being taught by a teacher or a senior colleague/student, etc.
Processing. In order to make use of the acquired information, we must internally process it, make it “our own”. Examples of this, from different fields, are working through homework assignments or research papers, practicing kendo techniques (waza) until they can be performed correctly and without thinking, practicing different lighting techniques in photography, etc.
Teaching. This is a less obvious stage, but it is critically important. In order to continue our own development and avoid stagnation at a certain level, we need to share what we learned with others. Teaching requires deep analysis of the subject and communication skills. In order to transmit our knowledge to others, we have to identify the the essence of it.

The arrow that connects “Teaching” and “Learning” in the diagram is very interesting. At some point in teaching, we begin to learn from our students. In a sense, they become our teachers, and the cycle continues. In kendo, this aspect is acknowledged in a very direct way, when both the sensei and the student bow to each other. In photography, I am always grateful when I have an opportunity to answer someone’s question or when someone teaches something to me.

December 13, 2014December 14, 2014

In the dance studio

Today, I took photos in a children’s dance school, not as part of a pro photo shoot, but being a spectator in a class. I did not use any flashes – just a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens on a Canon EOS-1D X body. I shot at f/2.8 and auto ISO, varying the shutter speed between 1/200 sec and 1/800 sec, depending on how fast the children (3-5 year old girls) moved.

It turned out that motion blur was not the problem (the girls were not vary fast at that age), but the flickering fluorescent light caused all sorts of weird colour casts. The light tubes were not only quite dim – they flickered between pinkish and greenish colours. To make matters worse, different light tubes in the studio flickered with different phase relative to each other, so in some of my images, part of the frame had pink cast and another part – green.

Normally, I would correct the colour in post-processing, aiming to create realistic skin tone. However, with colour gradients across the frame, often the only option was to convert the photo to black-and-white. Still, today’s shoot was the case where being spontaneous and unobtrusive mattered more than creating high-quality lighting conditions.

December 12, 2014December 13, 2014

Photographing fire

One of my current research projects is related to hydrogen infrastructure safety. We study how hydrogen flames behave and how large they become if the gas leaks from a storage tank or a pipeline.

Recently, our industrial partners tried to photograph a hydrogen flame and found that it was not easy to capture the details of the flame because the fuel (hydrogen, in this case) burned very cleanly, so there were not many particles in the flame to “mark” it. This challenge is not unique to the scientific experiments, but is common in conventional photography when fire is involved. So here are some notes on photographing flames.

Including fire in a photo can add dramatic impact, because we, as humans, have a deep emotional connection to it. I wrote before about shooting portraits by a bonfire, but when the fire itself is the subject, different considerations and camera settings apply.

How easy it is to see (and therefore, photograph) the flame depends on the fuel. Generally, for artistic photography, we prefer fuels that do not burn cleanly, but instead “volatize” tiny unburnt particles into the flame, which serve as flow tracers and give the flame its color. Precise color of the flame depends on many factors involving fuel-air mixing, but generally, burning wood, paper or natural textiles give a warm, yellow-orange flame color, while gas- and alcohol-based fuels burn with bluish color. As I mentioned earlier, hydrogen flames are nearly invisible (fortunately, they are not common enough to be a popular subject).

Wood fire is quite easy to photograph, because it emits a lot of smoke and unburnt particles. To capture the details of the flame, a dark, uniform background and a fast shutter speed (shorter than 1/250 sec) work best.

Sometimes, it is best to focus on the traces of sparks (e.g. in fireworks), in which case, I usually take long exposures (2 – 10 sec) in bulb (B) mode.

Smoke is an interesting subject too. It usually requires an additional light source to capture the details of a smoke plume.

When fire is an important part of the photo, but there are other elements in the frame, the main challenge is the high dynamic range in the scene that may be beyond what the camera’s sensor can capture. In this case, I expose for the fire, which is usually the brightest element, and add more light to the other subjects using flashes or in post-processing.

December 12, 2014

To niche or not to niche: on specializing in photography

Most photographers start out as “generalists”, i.e. taking pictures of a wide range of subjects. I think there is nothing wrong with it, in principle, but most experts agree that from a business standpoint, it is good to choose niche and specialize in it. Actually, this is true for any business, not just photography.

Finding a niche is important because there is only so much time in a single lifetime, and developing the skills specific to a certain genre is a long process. In fact, one can argue that development of a skill is an endless journey. Unfortunately, skills and expertise often do not cross over between different niches. For example, the techniques, the equipment and the entire approach that are required for macro photography are completely different from those used in sports or fashion niches.

There is also a question of marketing. It is easier to promote a portfolio if it is focussed on a single topic.

Having said this, I personally find that focussing on a single niche to the exclusion of all other types of photography would be a sure way to kill the enthusiasm that made me pick up the camera to begin with. Thinking more philosophically, perhaps there is a certain contradiction between “focus” and “balance” in a general sense. If you intensely focus only on one aspect of your life, other areas inevitably suffer.

In kendo, which I believe is a metaphor for everything else in life, there is a concept of tokui waza – a special, favourite technique, which has the highest probability of success. Tokui waza is specific to a particular kendoka, who strive to identify what their best technique is and then focus their practice on polishing this special skill. However, this specialization cannot be done at the expense of other techniques. Otherwise, the range of available skills/techniques would become so narrow, that an experienced opponent would be able to exploit it as a weakness.

I think the answer is in the degree of focussing. Ideally, I would like to specialize in a given area just enough, so that the result would be legitimate expertise without unwanted side effects. Paraphrasing the term popularized by Tim Ferriss, it is the minimum effective dose (MED) of focussing – the smallest amount of focus that would produce the desired outcome, beyond which, focussing is ineffective or even harmful.

If we agree that specializing, to some extent, is beneficial, choosing a niche in photography is not trivial (as I mentioned, most of us start as generalists), so I will leave this subject until another post.

December 10, 2014December 11, 2014

Making holiday greeting cards

I have been considering various options for sending greeting to family and friends for the Christmas and New Year. In the past, we ordered paper cards customized with our own photos using iPhoto on a Mac. The quality was excellent for the price. Also, I like to believe that there is something special about a handwritten card that arrives in the mail. Unfortunately, I am almost always late with ordering the cards and then sending them out. This, combined with uncertain snail mail delivery times for some overseas destinations, often caused us to miss the actual holidays, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the holiday cards.

This year, I am considering a fully electronic alternative to traditional, handwritten paper cards, but I still want to convey the personal attention and avoid a cookie-cutter look.

Broadly, there are three options:

Printed cards. There are several online printing companies that would accept a custom-designed card, print it and ship directly to the address specified by you. One example is Holiday Cards by Sincerely Ink. For me, the drawback of this option that the greeting would not be written by hand and thus would lack the personal feel.
E-cards. There are many options for creating custom e-cards either on an iPad/iPhone or on a Mac (naturally, there are counterparts for Android and Windows machines). I have tried the eCard Express, and was a bit disappointed by the lack of customizable fonts and very few templates that accept your own photos.
Fancy emails. This seems to be the most promising option. In OS X, the built-in email client, Mail, has an option of using custom stationery (accessed by pressing the button at the top right of the message window.) Several companies offer stationary sets that include greeting cards. For example, Equinux has stationary sets that cost between $8 and $15, which is substantially cheaper than printing and sending traditional paper cards. Finally, this page gives a comparison of greeting card software for Mac, with Hallmark Card Studio for Mac being the top pick.

Upon considering these options, I am leaning towards creating the card from scratch in Photoshop and sending it as an email attachment. I can use my own photo and draw the graphics elements, such as snowflakes, etc., using a Wacom graphics tablet. I can also incorporate handwritten text into the design, which I think would be a good compromise between a traditional card and an e-card. While my digital card would not be one-of-a-kind, it would still be “handmade” as much as a digital image can be.

December 9, 2014December 10, 2014

Photographing water droplets: setup plan

I am planning a research project that will focus on close-up photography of liquid drops and splashes. So far, I have no photos of my own to illustrate this post, but here is the equipment list for the setup that will be developed in the Fluids Lab:

Camera. I will use a Canon 5D Mark II or 5D Mark III, since it has higher resolution than a Canon EOS-1D X. The higher framing rate of the 1D X offer no advantage in this case, since the motion will be frozen by the flashes.
Lens. I will start with a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens, but a Canon EF 180mm f3.5L Macro might be a better option for shooting from greater distance.
Shallow water tank (tray). I plan to ask the students to build a shallow water tank that would be quite long, so we could shoot along its length and avoid getting the front and back edges into the frame.
Studio flashes. Three Paul C. Buff’s “Einstein” lights will be triggered by dedicated radio triggers. Two of them will be positioned on the sides of the tank, and the third one will be placed behind a semi-transparent background.
Intervalometer. I will use a trigger for the camera and the valves that will release the drops. There are several options, including a Time Machine/Drip kit.

I am looking forward to this project (should it be called a still life, even though the droplets would be in motion?) and hope to post the updates with our first droplet images soon.

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