Walkabout (a.k.a. How to apply The Art of War to Photography)

Cheng/Chì (Ortodox/Unortodox) is an idea from Sun Tzu's book The Art of War, that says that to win a battle, you need two things: Ordinary military forces, doing the tried and true things, and unorthodox forces, creating an element of surprise. The principle can be applied to any other art, as well as the art of war.

I used to do a lot of street photography. It is an easy way to get started in photography, but it is also one of the most difficult photographic genres for the simple reason that most of the time, there is nothing noteworthy to shoot.

I followed the rules when shooting street photos, but I also started doing other kinds of photos. Still with a city environment as background, but with a dinosaur, or a spaceship, slipped in to make the picture more interesting.

I haven't done that in awhile, so maybe I should start doing it again.
Technically, this picture is mostly an exercise in tone mapping and saturation mapping. I started using the techniques recently, and I am not entirely happy with them yet. Next time, I intend to work in 32 bit mode all the way through the process, to see if that makes a difference.

Practice

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

― Anton Chekhov

You may wonder, "why so many nudes lately?" Good question. I wish I had a really good answer, but I don't. Here is the closest I can come at the moment:

When I started with photography, I shot a lot of flowers to learn the basics of composition, and how to handle my camera in various lighting situations. I mean a lot of flowers! I shot more than 8,000 the first year, and more than 13,000 the second year. I was out shooting three times a day, every day.

After that, I was kind of done with flowers, but I had learned a bit about photography. After that, I did street photography, model photography, macro photography, levitation photography, flesh manipulation photography, portrait photography, some art photography, even tried my hand at pin-up photography.

Now, with nudes, I have found something as interesting to me as horror, Science-Fiction, and Fantasy photography. I want to learn more, and I want to integrate the nudes with the kinds of photography I've done earlier.

I have always been that way. I used to be a programmer, so I learned programming languages, then techniques of Object-Oriented programming, then design patterns, then project methodology, then systems thinking, queueing theory, Theory Of Constraints, statistics, military strategy, Chinese and Japanese military strategy...

And, I integrate it. I synthesize.

While I do not intend to do 21,000 nude pictures, there will probably be quite a few more, before I have integrated them fully in my repertoire.

Cheng/Chì

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

If you read the picture caption, you already know that Cheng/Chì (Ortodox/Unortodox) is an idea from Sun Tzu's book The Art of War, that says that to win a battle, you need two things: Ordinary military forces, doing the tried and true things, and unorthodox forces, creating an element of surprise.

The principle can be applied to any other art, as well as the art of war. So, in the picture above, the street with all the ordinary people is the cheng, and the nude woman is the element of chì.

So, now you know how to apply the Cheng/Chí principle from Sun Tzu'z The Art of War.

Get out there and practice!

PS. The GDPR Thing!

You might wonder whether a picture like the one in this article breaks the new General Data Protection (GDPR) law. It does not. Journalistic images and art are exempt from the rules. That means it is okay to do street photography, it is okay to create digital paintings from street photographs, and it is okay to manipulate a photo taken in a street, if the purpose is to create a piece of art. You can read up on GDPR here.

Street photography course in Gothenburg on July 11th – Have fun with your camera!

I am running a street photography course in Gothenburg on Saturday, 11th of July.

You can bring any kind of camera, from a camera phone, to a professional DSLR.

We will take a walk, look at some of the best spots to shoot street photos, and you will get tips and learn  useful techniques.

After the photowalk, we'll go to a café, show each other photos, and talk about how to improve our photography.

When: Saturday, 11th of July 2015, 2.00 PM to 5.00 PM
Where: Kungsportsplatsen, at Kopparmärra (the statue), in Gothenburg

You can sign up for the course at simplesignup.se.

Legs

I had been on a photo job, and decided to walk along the harbor to my next working location. I came upon this scene at a location called The Temple of the Winds.

I had been shooting architecture with a wide angle lens, so I quickly changed to a zoom lens, and started taking a series of photos, while slowly walking closer.

This was the best shot I got, before whoever sat there changed her position.

Getting a shot like this does not happen often, but it does happen if I bring my camera.

When I started shooting some years ago, I always had my camera ready. Over time, I became a bit lax. I always had the camera with me, but far too often it stayed in the backpack.

Recently, I resolved to always have my camera ready, and to go for more photo walks.

It paid off.

So, definitely more photo walks in the near future, and I'll keep my camera ready.

Why I use a 10-20mm lens for street photography

There was a discussion about lenses for street photography in an FB group. I made this comic page to show why I often use a 10-20mm zoom.

Two days with the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 EX DC HSM super wide angle zoom lens

Test subject one: My son playing Club Penguin. He is not sad, just focused on the game, and a little bit annoyed with me removing framed photos from the wall, clearing off the table, and moving the computer to get just the right angle. The wide angle lens distorts perspective, creating the illusion of an enormous computer and a rather small boy.

 I bought a Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 lens recently, and decided to spend a a couple of days getting acquainted with it. It turned put to be quite an adventure. I learned quite a bit. The very first thing I learned:

Do not wear a hat while shooting with a super wide angle lens!

If you wear a hat while taking a shot like this, your hat will fall off.

Working with a 10mm lens is a lot different from working with a 30mm or longer lens. With a longer lens, you usually want straight lines to be straight. With a super wide angle, the whole point is to have a lens that can distort perspective. To do this, you will need to tilt the camera up or down while shooting. If you tilt the camera up, for example while shooting a tall building, your hat will fall off!

Extreme angles – high or low, and strong leading lines are important when using a super wide angle lens.

The first day I did not really have time to do much testing. Work and playing with my son had priority.

The day after, I decided to take a long photo walk, and put the lens to the test.

High angle, with a slight downwards tilt – you can make even dull, ordinary things look interesting by distorting the perspective. I got the shot by putting the camera on a monopod and raising it as high as I could.

My first stop was at the Gardening Association in Gothenburg. No flowers to shoot there this time of year, but there are other things, like this lift.

When I bought the lens, I also bought an important accessory: A monopod!

Why on Earth would I want a monopod for a wide angle lens? Aren't monopods for tele lenses? Well, yes, but I did not buy the monopod to reduce camera shake. I bought it to extend my reach, so I can shoot from interesting angles.

I shot the lift by putting the camera on the monopod, so I could lift the camera high in the air. My Canon 60D has an LCD screen that can be angled, so I see what the camera is pointing at, even when it is two meters above my head. (I bought the 60D because the LCD screen makes it eminently useful for trick shots of various kinds.)

I used the self-timer on the camera, and focused manually. Autofocus does not work well when the camera is wobbling on a long pole.

Here is a thoroughly conventional wide angle shot.

 There is a spot in the park where you can see two buildings with reflections in the water, if the day is calm. Well, I was lucky. It wasn't windy, and thanks to the wide angle lens, I could get both buildings and the reflections in a single shot.

This is a thoroughly conventional shot, but there are still some things to take note of. In particular, take care with the edges of your shot. There are trees in the park, and some of them have rather long branches. I had to compose the shot carefully to avoid branches poking in at the edges.

When I had left the park I saw some divers in the canal. It turned out to be the Gårda Fire Department that was out practicing.

With a 10-20mm lens you need to get close, so I simply asked if it was ok to shoot while they were practicing. It was. I got some nice shots.

I made a mistake though. I should have lain down flat on the ground and shot slightly upwards, to get a more interesting angle for the shot of the diver.

Well, the next time I shoot a diver, I know what to do.

I met an interesting character while visiting the Science-Fiction Bookstore.

In this shot, you can see the difference it makes when you shoot from a low angle and tilt the camera up.

In Sweden, there is a yearly book sale that is quite an event. Lots of people who don't normally read books rush out and buy them, in order to not read them.

I usually do not participate in the frenzy, because I am stocked with books that I do read all year round. However, you can sometimes find a gem or two at the sale, so I sometimes do visit a bookstore or two.

I got the alien shot at the Science-Fiction Bookstore. My favorite bookstore in Gothenburg.

I went to Domkyrkan, the largest church in Gothenburg, to take panorama shots. The plan fell through because of the church is undergoing quite extensive restauration.

I settled for a less exiting shot of a candle, and decided to save the panorama shots for another day, and another blog post.

My son was happy to see me when I turned up at his school.

A basic rule of child photography says never, ever, shoot downwards! In most cases, it's a good rule. If you shoot downwards, you will shoot at the same angle you normally see children, and you will get boring shots.

However, with a wide angle lens, you can break the rule with good results. The perspective distortion lends interest to the shot. Even more important, if you can catch a great expression like the one my son has in this shot, you can get away with almost anything.

If you want to go a bit artsy, and focus on form, a wide angle lens is great. The most difficult part was keeping my own feet out of the picture. I used a filter built into my camera to turn the photo black and white.

The public library in Partille

One more example of going high and tilting down to distort lines and lending visual interest to a photo.

In the evening, I went to a meeting with the Lerum photography club. I took this shot on my way to the train. The lens makes the bridge look a lot longer than it really is.

When I got to the meeting, I took a shot of the building before going in. I placed the camera at ground level, and tilted it a bit. 

The 10-20mm range is more versatile than you might think. At 10mm I can cover most of a large room in a single shot. At 20mm I can get a fairly close shot without standing nose-to-nose with my subject.

The shots from the meeting are interesting only if you were at the meeting, so I'll be brief. After two days of thoroughly enjoyable testing, I am quite smitten with the lens. I like it a lot, and I know I can get great shots with it.

You might be interested to know that I lit the photos in the collage with a single Nissin Di866 Mk II flash. Thanks to the white walls, that was all the light that was needed.

Sigma has two 10-20mm lenses. The one I bought is the f/3.5 version, which is slightly more expensive than the other f/4-f/5.6 variable aperture version. In my opinion, getting the f/3.5 lens is worth it. I know I will be shooting indoors in less than ideal lighting conditions, so I need that extra bit of light sensitivity.

After two days, I have just begun to put the lens through its paces, so I have more fun testing to do in the near future.

Street photos: More than One Way to Play a Fiddle

When you do street photo, observe carefully, and shoot the slightly unusual.

Lots of musicians and performers in the streets of Gothenburg right now.

For these three pictures, I used a very simple trick to make the colors pop a bit: I deliberately underexposed by 2/3 of a stop (-0.67 EV).

The top photo was shot at f3.2, the other two at f2.0. This gave me a narrow depth of field, and a nicely blurred background.

The lens was actually a macro lens, because I was on my way to make a macro shoot: Tamron 60 mm f2.0 Macro.

Find the moment. In this case, the moment right before the clap.

Wait until you are noticed. If you see a slight smile and a slight move forward, it is ok to take the picture.

Capoeira

Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines fighting moves with dance, music, and acrobatics. The moves are very smooth. The most common attacks are various circular kicks.

Because most kicks are circular, there is a lot of body rotation around the center of gravity. This makes Capoeira practitioners appear a bit slow, for martial artists. They are not. If you look at how fast the feet move, well, let's just say these pictures are all shot at 1/1600s. If there had been more light, I would have shot at an even shorter shutter time.

The high jumps are impressive. To capture them, I set the camera to shoot high speed bursts.

I also switched from RAW to JPEG format. The drawback is that I loose a bit of information, so I can't bring out details in shadows, nor reduce highlights as well as I could with a RAW picture.

The advantage is that the pictures are much smaller, so I can shoot long bursts without the camera's memory buffer filling up.

Another advantage is that the pictures require less storage space. I shot about 600 pictures in 20 minutes.

It helps if you start young, of course.

If you want to look at more Capoeira pictures, have a look at my Capoeira Picasa album.

Drink-and-Click in Gothenburg

Akram Ahmet posed in front of the camera, while I held the flash and clicked.

I was at my first Drink-and-Click yesterday. Drink-and-Click is a kind of super relaxed photo walk, where you walk from one watering hole to another, taking pictures in-between watering holes. Or, sometimes, in the watering hole.

I should point out that the "drink" part of the name does not refer to alcohol. I stuck to Coca-cola and Ginger Ale. Drink-and-Click is about meeting socially, taking pictures together, and talking about photography. And that we did.

The Gothenburg Drink-and-Click group maintains pages on Facebook and Google+. The event I went to has a G+ event page with some beautiful pictures.

My leading line contribution.

The evening had two themes:

Leading lines was the official Drink-and-Click theme. The second theme was long exposure photography.

One of the greatest features of the evening, was a pit stop at a restaurant. We had a nice dinner, and talked long exposure photography.

As it turned out, while several of us shot pictures with leading lines, the topic we talked most about was long exposure photography.

I went for light painting as an added extra. If you follow this blog, you already know I use the Cheng/Ch'i principle in my photography. Cheng/Ch'i (orthodox/unorthodox) is a military principle, from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, that says victory comes from a mixture of orthodox and unorthodox maneuvers.

Translated into photography, Cheng/Ch'i means a good picture should surprise you a bit. Or, if you have a collection of "orthodox" pictures, add one or two with a bit of extra oomph.

One interesting topic that came up, is how to select the pictures you want to show. For example, during the evening, I shot about 100-200 pictures. Out of those, I selected twenty-six that I transferred from my camera to my computer. Of those twenty-six, I selected eight that I like. From those, I chose three for this article.

That is pretty heavy culling. There are two more pictures that are good enough for publishing, but the style is different from the pictures you have seen here, so I am saving them for another blog post. And, there is one picture I like a lot, except there is way too much noise in it.

As a photographer, culling like this is difficult to do, but it does improve the end result, a lot. It is also technically easy: You do not have to know anything about image editing in order to not show an image. technically is even easier and more effective than cropping. Emotionally, it is darn difficult.

Why not have a look at your own pictures. What if, out of a hundred pictures, you showed only the five best ones? Think about it. How much better would your pictures look?

The Gothenburg Half Marathon (Göteborgsvarvet)

Capturing a cup of water in mid air took quite a bit of patience, and many tries. I got the idea when I saw how many empty cups were lying on the ground.

I like to shoot at events: There are lots of things happening, and lots of colors. The catch is that many other people have the same idea. I want my shots to look a little bit different, and this requires thinking a bit about what you shoot.

The Gothenburg Half Marathon is a good example. I didn't have much time to cover it, less than an hour, but it was enough to get a couple of good shots.

At an event like this, most photographers will stand on the sidelines and just shoot. If they have DSLRs and long lenses, they can get close-ups of the faces of runners, which always makes for a good picture. 

To get even better shots, some get down low, with one knee to the ground. Shooting from a low angle will almost guarantee better than average pictures.

If you want to do better than that, you have to get a bit creative. For example, I noticed many thousands of crumpled paper cups laying on the ground. I decided to capture one in mid air. as you can imagine, it took a lot of tries, but it paid off. One of the flying cups I shot had water in it. You can see the result above.

Another useful trick is to shoot something else, with the main action in the background. In the picture above, I shot the musicians from behind, so you can see what they look at. If I had taken a step to the right, and got a little bit closer, the shot would have been even better.

This shot uses the same technique: I focused on the musician, and used the runners as background. I desaturated the background in Aperture to make it easy for viewers to focus on the musician in the foreground.

It often pays off to look around and see what else is going on. A big main event attracts sideshows. The side shows may well be as interesting as, or even more interesting than, the main event.

Gothenburg is waking up after its winter hibernation, if you follow this blog, you'll get more tips, tricks, and pictures.

Next week will be a bit of a challenge, because there is both a big carnival, and a Geek Pride Parade, at the same time. And, as always, there is interesting work to be done.

On Fire!

I shot this photo right before sunset at Slussen in Stockholm. I overexposed the picture by 0.67 EV to bring out the color in the cameraman's jacket, and in the camera.

Big Smile!

One of the things I really like about street photography is that you get to meet people. Brief meetings most of the time, just talking a minute or two.

Easter Egg

I take morning photo walks as often as I can, for fun, and for practice. I always look in shop windows, because you can find amazing things there.

Photo Walk

I made this comic after a very fun photo walk in Gothenburg.