Author Archives: danijel

Apex predators

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I occasionally watch all kinds of videos on YouTube and I noticed a weird fascination with monsters; apex predators specifically. Whether it’s about polar bears or crocodiles, or extinct things such as T-Rex, the prevalent theme is that humans are defenceless against such monsters and yada yada.

Bitch, please. The Inuit used to hunt polar bears. Their fur was considered particularly good material for women’s footwear, because of the soft fur. They even prayed to a polar bear god to send polar bears their way to be killed.

Crocodiles? We make shoes out of them, too. All kinds of leather accessories as well. Nice texture.

I used to wonder about human babies; their tendency to cry loudly seemed like an extremely anti-survivalist strategy in leopard country. It would attract all the predators from miles away. And then it clicked – no, the leopards wouldn’t be attracted, because a crying baby means lots of adult humans with sharp sticks. Bad, very bad. Humans like leopard fur, it’s very soft.

There’s only one “apex predator” in the world today, and it awarded other, lesser predators a protected status, because we think they are cute and interesting to have around. If a Megalodon was found to still exist, it would not be an apex predator, but a protected, endangered species. If humans wanted to hunt it for shark fin soup or something, we could drive it to extinction by Tuesday.

If T-Rex happened to get resurrected, it would be instantly endangered from poachers who think its teeth are great for piano keys or something, and its testicles are an aphrodisiac. An African elephant isn’t that much smaller than a T-Rex, and it’s endangered, not from T-Rex or Allosaurus, but from dumbass poachers armed with AK-47s.

Think about that. T-Rex would be hunted to extinction by people who are interested in what steaks made of its meat taste like, and they’d like to have trinkets carved from its bones. Whales are huge and what not, and we entertain ourselves with stories about monster whales, and we almost drove them to extinction because their oil was considered extremely useful before petroleum industry was a thing.

Big things are just endangered species to us; no matter how big. We put them under protection and know each by name. It’s the small things that are a danger to us, paradoxically; mosquitos, ticks, viruses, bacteria, fungi.

The only big things that are stupid enough to hunt humans are those whose populations weren’t reduced to only those who ran in panic after hearing a human baby crying.

Detached

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I was thinking about why photography is a different thing for me than any other instance of buying things and then getting bored of them quickly and not feeling anything for them.

You see, with photography, there is indeed that brief rush of getting the new lens or a camera. However, I don’t actually start feeling anything for the gear until after I’ve made some really good pictures with it. And then, it’s something different – I love the gear, but that’s completely detached from physical possession. It becomes something else – not a physical object that I own, but part of the creative process that made something I love.

This, for instance, was made with 35mm negative film – Kodak Gold 100 or 200, I think. Minolta X-300, MD 35-70mm f/3.5 lens. I still remember the moment I took it; sometime in early 1999, I think, on Sljeme. I love it; it brings me back there instantly, and the colours turned out so good, I never really repeated anything as good with the primroses. But I no longer own that camera, or the scanner, and I no longer shoot film. It doesn’t matter. The equipment, the moment, the motive and everything are tied together in the picture in ways that transcend equipment ownership.

This was taken with the Olympus E-1 and ZD 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, my first proper digital camera, after the abortive attempt that was Fuji S602z. It had such wonderful colours, the first digital camera that produced colours that matched slide film in my perception. I love the results. I sold both the camera and the lens during hard times when I needed the money for the bills. By today’s standards, it’s completely obsolete. I have great memories with it, though, and great pictures. Would I buy it again? No. The feeling and the memories are detached from ownership; having the camera wouldn’t change them.

I made this with the Soligor SR-300md camera, MC 50mm f/1.4 Rokkor lens, on Fuji Sensia 100 slide film; scanned with Minolta Dimage IV film scanner. E6 slide film no longer exists as a technology; it is lost to time. I can remember pausing Romana, taking the picture, and then letting her eat it. It was in Dotrščina, I don’t remember the exact year, but during the time I owned that film scanner, and I sold it to finance buying Olympus E-1 in 2004. I love the picture, the atmosphere and the colours. The chemical process that allowed me to make it is lost to me and I can never retrieve it; and yet, I have no regrets, no nostalgia. The image and the achievement are divorced from the process that made it possible.

I took this one on one of the Medvednica peaks after we completed the hike to the top; Strmopeć, with Canon 5d and the EF 15mm f/2.8 diagonal fisheye, in 2010. The memory is very much alive, and that camera helped me not only make many great pictures, but also helped me learn completely new styles of photography, it completely pulled me out of my former habits. I let it go without regrets, because the achievement and the memories are detached from the actual physical camera that made them. There’s the idea of it, the feeling of it, but that feeling is me.

This was taken with my current camera, the Sony A7RV and the FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM lens. I love both the camera and the lens, but the idea about them is very different from the physical object on my desk. The idea about the camera are the moments when I took the pictures like this one, and I’m there, in that moment, in the golden part of the sunset at Plitvička Jezera, atop the mound overseeing the lake. Sure, I know I had the camera and the lens with me, but the idea about the camera in my mind is what it helped me make. It’s not the physical object, or connected to the ownership thereof. They are always with me, even if the physical object that made them was lost to the sands of time.

That’s what makes photography different – it’s not a gear acquisition thing, although acquisition of gear makes it possible. The good part doesn’t start when I click “buy” or when the courier delivers it, or when I unpack it. It starts when I make the first good photo with it, and it doesn’t fade when the novelty expires. It stays with me forever.

Storm

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We had a walk last night and I took the FE 14mm f/1.8 GM with me, mostly because scenes with lots of starry sky are the only ones I can use that lens to full advantage.

I use it rarely, but when it works, it really works.

The thunderstorm never actually reached us, I think it blew itself out somewhat to the south-east, so we got no reprieve from the heat. Also, the humidity is terrible.

The compositions are not great because we were positioned low, with powerlines above us and headlights from passing cars every few seconds ruining most shots, but considering the conditions I’m pretty happy with what I got. Biljana didn’t carry her camera because it was almost dark when we started – that’s the only way to have a long walk here and not die; start after the sunset – and we’re pretty much screwed from all the karmic processing that never seems to completely stop, so it’s hard to add yet another thing to do without feeling overwhelmed.

Head in the game

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I was trying to find a pattern behind the human irrational behaviour regarding certain things – status symbols, compulsive shopping, trying to acquire symbolism of achievement thinking it will result in the actual thing, trying to optimise decisions about even the smallest things and “win”… but what if there isn’t any?

What if the root of it all is profoundly irrational?

What if it’s merely an extension of childhood patterns that were never actually understood and replaced, and instead, one is trying to be “good”, to “please the parents”, in order to “win”?

What if people are unconsciously negotiating with some implicit, invisible parental figure, and trying to be successful in life by meeting some criteria – “look at me, I have all the wealth symbols, I’m successful, can I get approval now?”

Because, for them, somewhere, the parents are actually in charge of the world, and if they are pleased, everything will be all right. So, depending on what they think their parents are expecting of them, what the rules of the game are, they will try to win.

So, is the rule that the person with most money wins? Most status symbols? Most degrees and titles? Most fame? Stable income and predictable life? Joined the military and died protecting his country? Married and had children? Performed religious duties well? Because people don’t look like they are all playing the same game, and yet, strangely, they all are – they all try to gain approval, be good and successful; unless they are so broken they are completely self-destructive in their pathology.

Anti-religious people seem to try to use this form of behaviour to try and discredit all religion as a way of appeasing “sky daddy” of some kind, and yet, the connection of this behaviour with religion and its projection upon transcendence seems wholly incidental. The materialistic atheists manifest the same behaviour through different symbolism. The religious person will think that he with least unforgiven sins and most sacraments wins; an atheist will think that he with most offspring, control over most assets and with greatest reputation in society wins, but both are trying to check boxes in order to “win”.

Unfortunately, at no point do they seem to stop and think about what the fuck they are doing here; it’s all automatic, following an instinctual line of either pleasing the parent or rebelling in order to get attention. The irony is that they will devote an inordinate amount of effort to trying to “win” at the most insignificant things, such as buying the best dishwasher, camera, TV, watch or a car, where a rational bystander would notice that it doesn’t actually matter, because after getting to the point of “good enough”, the differences don’t actually gain you anything. Basically, after getting a watch that looks elegant, appropriate and not “tacky”, nobody really notices anything about it, and yet, people will invest incredible amounts of effort into it. It sounds irrational, and the first instinct is to try rational arguments, but what if it’s actually irrational to the point of complete disregard of all rationality? What if people are just following the invisible lines towards parental approval, or rebelling against imagined parental authority, and their entire existence is essentially sleepwalking, barely perceiving anything beyond trying to satisfy the limbic system of their brain that was conditioned somewhere in early childhood, to try to navigate parental approval?

There’s definitely lots of that everywhere – an endless effort to appease an invisible or imaginary parental authority in order to navigate the needs of your limbic system that is stuck somewhere in early childhood. But it’s not all I’m seeing. There are other motivating factors – respect and love, for instance. You don’t dress up for a special occasion because you seek approval, but because you respect the occasion and the people involved. You don’t treat your spouse well because you seek approval from your invisible parent; you do it because of love and respect.

I don’t buy myself expensive photo equipment in order to impress anyone; I do it because I understood that respect for my art form and craft requires it, and deliberately starving it of resources means disrespect, and if you disrespect your own work, how could you expect others to appreciate it? It’s a delicate dance between pathology and virtue, between self-contempt masquerading as asceticism, and overindulgence. It’s so easy to go overboard either way – do too much, or not enough, and the line of moderation might not actually be where you think it is.

I do, however, have one thing to recommend. Awareness. Know what you’re doing, and know why, and then it becomes very easy to find the correct course. Have your head in the game, and see the big picture of what you’re trying to do, and what methods you are choosing.

Cost of choosing right

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Now that we’re at it, I’m thinking about something else.

People often map the situation as having multiple choices, and you either win, or you learn on your mistakes. That’s not how it actually works. In reality, you learn in both cases, but the lesson you learn might actually be counterproductive.

For instance, you try something and you succeed immediately. You think it’s because it’s either easy or because you’re really competent. In essence, you can get a skewed understanding of how hard it actually is. Then, with your inflated sense of competence built on a streak of good fortune, you try something else, and you fail spectacularly. Then you reach all the wrong conclusions, because you are reluctant to admit that the initial success, which you built up your entire ego support structure over, was a complete fluke. Having learned all the wrong lessons, you make your next moves, which increase the level of disaster you are in. Eventually, if you’re stubborn enough, you are completely destroyed.

It doesn’t have to be a major issue. It might be something like buying your first used car, and you get lucky and it has no major issues, so you conclude that used cars are great and people who buy new are just stupid and it’s a waste of money. Then you buy your next used car based on your experience, and it turns to be an absolute shitbox. Your options are now to either stand there in surprise like a damn fool, or realise you were statistically too lucky with the first car, and you misunderstood the situation. It’s like running downstairs with scissors. Statistically, it’s a very bad idea, but the thing with statistics is that bad ideas usually take time to show themselves. You can do something ten times with no consequences, only to slip on the eleventh try and impale yourself on the scissors through your neck. You can then curse your bad luck, or realise that you were in fact inordinately lucky for the first ten times, and you drew all the wrong conclusions.

Similarly, I’ve seen women who have it too easy picking the ideal partner. Then they assume it’s the norm, get arrogant, ruin their relationship and then wonder how come they can never find anyone that good again.

Winning has a cost, and the cost is learning the wrong lessons from it. The Americans even have a word for it, “a winner”. A winner is a person in whose nature it is to win, and a loser is a person in whose nature it is to lose. That’s what learning wrong lessons looks like. You win, and you change your self-image, imagining yourself as a winner. It changes your confidence, it changes the way you view the world and others in it. You think you won because you’re just better, and those who lost are just worse. You don’t understand that it might be a statistical fluke, and you don’t want to understand it because it ruins your very pleasant self-image. You don’t want to understand that those who lost maybe did nothing wrong, because you like feeling no obligation to help them; after all, they are the losers, and you are the winner. And then your luck changes and your entire world falls apart.

Both sides of a choice have a cost. In both cases, you experience consequences and you learn. Sometimes, failing early can make you prudent, cautious and more strategic, leading to good long-term outcomes. Sometimes, there’s nothing worse that can happen to you than winning early.