Author Archives: danijel

Wrong equipment

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I was thinking about the four thirds system I was using for a few years, between 35mm film and 35mm digital. Was it a mistake?

I don’t think so. Olympus E1 with the ZD 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 lens was the best camera/lens combo I could’ve bought in 2004, especially since it was discounted. At full price, it would’ve been too expensive, but for what I paid for it, 1000€, it was a good deal. Compared to the 6-8MP Canons and Nikons at the time, it had similarly limited resolution – yes, percentage-wise the difference between 5 and 8 sounds like a lot, but it really wasn’t; whatever you couldn’t do with one, you couldn’t to with the other, either. So, as a singular camera-lens entity, it was great and it served me well in the transition from film to digital. Essentially, I used it for the same kind of photography I did on film, just with less money spent on film, development and scanning.

The problem with four thirds wasn’t that it didn’t make good pictures, or that I was unhappy with the camera and the lens. The problem was that I wanted to replace 35mm film with 35mm digital because that was the look that I wanted, and four thirds wasn’t 35mm. Also, the upgrade path was either very expensive, to the point where getting everything I wanted would cost as much as a 35mm system or more, and so when the 35mm Canon 5d became available, I did the math and decided that I might as well buy the stuff that I actually wanted in the first place, and I could get both resolution, dynamic range, and the reduced depth of field that I wanted, all at the same time.

So, the reason why I used the four thirds gear was the same as the reason why Canon and Nikon users used their APS-C cameras at the time. It’s not that they wanted APS-C, it was that 35mm was beyond reach so they used what they could get for reasonable money. I’m sure some stayed with APS-C even when 35mm became ubiquitous, but I’m also sure that most upgraded to 35mm. It was just a normal thing in that phase of development of digital technology, where not all was there yet. This is why I don’t consider it a mistake; driving a 1980s car in 1980s wasn’t a mistake, it was just what everybody had back then. Yeah, a 1980s car didn’t have airbags, wasn’t anywhere near as safe as today’s cars, and didn’t have equipment that’s anywhere near today’s standards, but nobody says buying an Audi 80 in the 1980s was a mistake. It was a very good car by the standards of the era, but technology progressed significantly since. If I had to go back in time and pick a camera to buy, I’d buy that same Olympus set in a heartbeat. What I would likely not do, however, is buy my first digital camera, the Fuji S602. Sure, it was a learning experience about digital, but it was a completely wrong camera for me and didn’t fit my style, requirements or criteria at all. For something as expensive as it was, I would have been better off buying more film gear immediately, rather than later, but then again, if I didn’t get burned on early digital, would I be able to tell what the problems were? I don’t think so. I think everybody needed to get burned somewhere in order to know what’s not good for them, what needs to improve and so on. Still, I have one good photo with that early digital camera:

In fact, I had a film camera with a 50mm f/1.4 lens with me when I took it, and tried to take it with film gear, as well, and the depth of field was so much of an issue that the photos weren’t anywhere near this good. So, a camera that sucked for me in most ways turned out to be just right for taking this picture. If it helped me do that, and if it helped me learn about what the limitations of small sensor digital were, and helped me figure out what I wanted, was it really a mistake?

That’s why I say mistakes are a part of the learning process, and I’m not worried about them. Mistakes are a problem if you fail to learn, and fail to move on. They are a problem if you get stuck in them. A correct path is sometimes navigation between wrong choices, between not enough and too much, between what you know for sure you don’t want, and what you think you want until you try it and see it’s an overkill. It’s not just a photography thing, it’s a life thing.

 

Evolution of style

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Had you met me when I was younger, between 1984 and 2005, and told me that most of my lenses would be wide angle, and my photographic style would be defined by wide compositions, I wouldn’t have believed you; in fact, I’d say there’s no way. In my early photography, I defined good photography as successful presentation of a beautiful detail through isolation, using depth of field.

Here are some of my earliest preserved works:

Those are all colour negative prints, 35mm film, year 2000 or earlier, but nothing earlier than than 1998, I think. Everything earlier than that was left at my parents’ place when I moved out. You can see the pattern in all of them – basically, get close, get the detail, isolate it from the rest of the world, and capture that feeling. It’s not a matter of equipment; I used a 35-70mm zoom lens, so I could have gone wide enough, but I didn’t; even when I did, I sucked at it because I didn’t know how to compose wide.

This is my first successful wide-angle shot:

Probably because I used Romana’s film point and shoot camera which didn’t have the closeup functionality I instinctively relied on, I composed the picture differently, but that did not result in a change of style. In fact, my pictures in the following years were more in the line of this:

You get the picture; again, remove the detail from the world, find the beauty as separate, isolated, in a photographic equivalent of meditation.

It’s not that I stopped taking such pictures completely; they still make up a significant portion of my work. However, a typical shot I am aiming for these days is something like this:

I’m trying to figure out the differences and similarities myself, because it’s not that the wide-angle compositions lack that meditative feeling of the closeup shots. It would be too easy to say that I just learned to evoke a similar feeling with a different technique, but I don’t feel that it tells the whole story. You see, in order to do a closeup shot, you need to remove almost everything from the composition. With an ultrawide lens, everything that is in front of you will be in the frame, even your shoes or tripod legs if you’re not careful. With it, you can no longer abstract ugly and the mundane from your composition and create beauty by omission. You need to compose the entire world in front of you into an artefact of beauty. It’s not just a matter of photographic technique; it’s something about the worldview, about not fearing chaos and ugliness and escaping into reduction.

It’s not just a matter of using an ultrawide lens. The picture above is made with an 85mm portrait lens, at f/1.8, but I would never have used such a wide composition in my early years. Even when using a long-ish lens and shallow depth of field, I’m leaving more of the environment in the composition.

I mean, this is taken with a 400mm telephoto wide open, for fuck’s sake. If you gave this lens to my 2000 self, I’d have composed it so tight you’d see nothing but the cyclist’s head and shoulders, most likely. This is a normal, slightly wide composition, just with telephoto spatial compression. I remember a conversation I had with two people, somewhere around 1999-2000, about what equipment I’d like to have. The first thing would be a digital camera that has a 35mm sensor capable of full film quality, not the stupid toys that existed those days, but real replacement of film with digital technology with preservation of everything that’s good about film. The second thing I wanted was a big zoom lens, essentially this 100-400mm telephoto that I have now. What I couldn’t imagine then was the way I would use that big zoom lens. I would expect portraits of birds in their environment. I wouldn’t expect, essentially, normal to wide compositions with spatial compression:

I think I’m starting to understand what I’m doing there. It resembles the difference between meditating in a quiet, isolated room with your eyes closed, and learning to meditate with your eyes open while walking or interacting with people. It’s a difference between having to hide from disturbances, learning to ignore them, and finally learning to make them part of the experience. It’s a transition between waiting for your wife to stop taking pictures and remove herself from the composition, then composing her into the shot as a joke, and then intentionally composing her into the environment as a stylistic choice that makes the compositions what they are.

 

Forums

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I am occasionally nostalgic about the Croatian usenet foto group, where I was quite active in the early- to mid-2000s, but which died along with the rest of the usenet. Unfortunately, there has been no obvious replacement to host the community, so basically it all dispersed. I occasionally look at the forums on the Internet – dpreview.com, for instance. Most threads on the Sony forum are like “I have more money than brains, and I just bought 4 super expensive lenses I don’t know how to use properly, and now I’m thinking about replacing one of them with an even more expensive lens that’s bound to get me the respect and admiration I crave in my midlife crisis”. I check the micro four thirds forum, they are still arguing about focal length and aperture equivalency and trying to convince themselves and others that four thirds is not just good enough, but better than full frame or whatever. I close it in resignation. Then I look at the pictures they send in the dedicated threads, because that’s the bottom line of it all. I have to admit, there’s a few excellent photographers in every forum, I’ve seen great examples of landscapes and wildlife. Of course, most people post generic snapshots of nothing in particular, but that’s expected. The good examples more than make up for it.

But then I get curious about the Croatian photographic community, and I look into the forum.hr site which has a photography section. I look at one of the threads, Sony vs. Canon. “Sony photos have colours like they were taken with a smartphone, Sony is shit”, “No Sony is great, Canon has obsolete sensor design with low dynamic range, Canon is shit”. Ah, so Canon vs. Olympus flame wars are now replaced with Canon vs. Sony flame wars, but everything else remains the same. Honestly, I didn’t miss that at all. Close the browser tab.

Honestly, I don’t know what I expected. Probably something along the lines of pictures from some good location, accompanied by a thread with comments on how to get there, which time of the day is the best, how many tourists are there getting in the frame and how to find spots they don’t know about, and so on. Stuff you actually care about when you’re interested in photography, not just gear-themed dick measuring contests. Or maybe someone’s review of equipment accompanied by their best photographic work with said equipment. Something nice to look at, something that makes you think, something useful and helpful.

I’ve been criticised on the photo group for always saying good things about the gear that I’m using, instead of “being objective”. Honestly, I don’t even know what that means. I use the gear that works for me, and since it works for me, I find it great. It always has flaws, and I also write about those occasionally. If it’s really bad, I get rid of it very quickly and get something that works better, so it’s not like I’m going to whine endlessly about how much something sucks. Yeah, it sucked, I sold it, and got something that didn’t suck, problem solved. I whine if I don’t have an obvious solution for a problem I’m having, for instance when I was in the four thirds system, I was kind of stuck with one lens, because I wasn’t sure if the system was long-term viable, and I actually wanted 35mm but those either cost car money or just didn’t exist. When the technology advanced to the point where that was solved, I had nothing to whine about and just took pictures. I also can’t really write comparative reviews because I use one system at a time. I can’t really tell you whether a Nikon, Canon or Sony version of a certain lens is better, because I use one, and it’s the one that’s in the system that I’m currently using. If people can’t make up their minds about which is better, it means that both are likely so similar in practice that it doesn’t matter which one you use, which solves the problem.

Sony user taking a picture of a Canon user taking a picture. 🙂

It’s not that I’m averse to gear talk. I like gear talk. I’m very technically minded and prefer to get into the physics of how something actually works. If I had to name something I miss from those photographic forums, it’s sharing experiences with gear, and opinions about relative importance of certain metrics, for instance how focal length, aperture and shape of the iris influence bokeh, or how sensor construction parameters influence colours. But those brand flame wars,… kill me now please. 🙂

Illusion of choice

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I’ve been thinking how in the mid- to late-1990s there was that prevalent assumption in the “spiritual circles” that we are in the middle of some major global awakening, rise of global energy, mass Kundalini awakenings, spiritual insights and awakenings and so on. Here in Croatia, you couldn’t find a bus stop that didn’t have ads for Reiki-something, something-meditation or some guru or another. Even on the TV, there were esotheric/spiritual/something “shows”, popularising things from spiritual healing and health food to various gurus and spiritual schools.

Then, in the early 2000s, it all went “poof”.

My working hypothesis is that the popularisation of the social networks and smartphones completely shifted the interest from some kind of transcendence, however limited and flawed, to human interaction online, which essentially consumed everybody’s focus and energy. However, that’s not all. I also think there’s a lesson there about the illusion of choice.

You see, someone who was there in the 1990s would be inclined to believe that gurus, spiritual techniques and schools and transcendental realities in general were something common, if not ubiquitous. Enlightened gurus are dime a dozen, advertising themselves and competing for your attention, and you’re obviously so important if they all want you. You have a choice. Even if you chose something, a better thing might be around the corner and just waiting for you to get aware enough to notice.

It was all a circus, for the most part. Guys in Swami clothes and/or with weird names were mostly spiritual beginners with one or two samadhi experiences, all copying each other’s homework which is why they all sounded the same and there was this illusion that spirituality is a standardised thing, all rivers flowing to the same ocean and stuff. My students at that time mostly felt like I’m something normal and common, and if they don’t like my approach, a better guru is around the corner. Even I, myself, did not appreciate the uniqueness of my position.

In hindsight, there was no abundance of gurus and spiritual teachings, merely Hindu copy-pasta and lots of wannabes. The abundance of choice was like the abundance of make money fast and penis enlargement schemes on the Internet – all fake. If anyone knew what they were doing (and there were some), they had no following; those who had a following were all worse than useless. There was no global energy awakening, no ascension into higher realms, no “New Age”, all “channellings” were fake. “Kundalini awakenings” were almost all symptoms of mental disorders. The abundance of choice was just an illusion. It was just me and probably a handful of other, equally unknown people, our voices drowned by the cacophony of charlatans.

For people who had an actual opportunity to achieve something, this illusion of abundant choice was incredibly harmful, because most of them stagnated, missed their chance and will eventually have to do things the hard way. I think their situation was comparable to that of pretty girls on dating sites, where everybody seems to swipe right on them, but since they think wrong, they match with tall, muscular, rich guys who just fuck them all in a circle, while they live in an illusion that thousands of matches mean abundance of choice. Size of the haystack says nothing about the number of needles within. It just turns them into free hookers who soon rack up body counts appropriate for sex workers. Thinking you have abundance of choice is how your life gets wasted and at one point you wake up and realise that, other than the fact that half a kilometre of cock went through you, you also arrogantly rejected all the options that would actually work for you and make you happy. Now those good guys are married, your soul is crushed by all those side-fuck experiences, your youth is gone, and there seems to be nothing good to hope for.

The ego high created by the apparent choice is deadly. You think you’re on top of the world while you crush the best things in your life underfoot, and when the ride ends, it’s all gone. The choice that never was, the actual choices you arrogantly rejected, the time that passed riding the wave of illusion, and then you’re left with bad karma, ruins of a life you never started living, inflated ego and bitterness of being used.

Consent

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There’s a super annoying thing the American leftards are pushing for within their universities and, of course, as the brainwashed students graduate, the thing then spreads into the world. It’s the concept of explicit consent.

Basically, in order to not be accused of some violation or another, you would need to ask permission, verbally and explicitly, and granularly, for every interaction with another person.

Let me illustrate what that would look like.

“Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Do you mind if I buy you a coffee?”

“Do you mind if I put my hand on your shoulder in order to draw your attention to something I want to show you?”

“Do you mind if I hold your hand?”

“Do you mind if I kiss you?”

“Do you mind if I kiss you again?”

“I would like to hold you, if that’s all right with you?”

“Would you like to have sex with me?”

“Can I take your clothes off?”

“Do you still want to have sex with me?”

“I’d like to have an orgasm now, if that’s ok with you?”

“Can I pull it out now?”

“Do you want me to make you coffee?”

“Can I kiss you now?”

Honestly, such idiocy could have been conceived only in leftist academia, because only they are so removed from all genuine human experience in the real world, for them to think that such a thing could possibly make sense. In reality, the first few steps are reasonable and make sense as common courtesy; people who are not yet introduced to each other need to do so gradually, in order to establish the level of contact they are comfortable with. However, after the basic introductions have been made, if a man keeps asking for permission for every single thing, instead of just judging the level of chemistry and going from there, any reasonable woman will see him as insecure, tentative and in fact super creepy. Also, the insistence that consent can be withdrawn at any point, even in retrospect, is incredibly dangerous. You see, it sounds nice and empowering to say that a woman can withdraw consent for intimacy at any point and it’s her right to say “no”, but imagine a situation where a woman leads a man on to the point where they are naked in bed, because she already consented to having sex, but now she says “no, that’s enough” because that makes her feel powerful. Great, but how is the man going to feel? Probably used for her mind games; taken advantage of, manipulated and violated. She’s basically going to piss him off and alienate him forever, if he has any self-respect worth speaking of. Also, what’s going to happen to women who play the empowerment games by making themselves attractive only to be able to say “no”, is that men are going to catch on, and then women will run out of men to say “no” to, because men will stop asking. That’s already a thing in America, BTW; the men almost entirely left the dating game and women who fucked around are starting to find out, and what they are finding out is that their major weapon and source of power, the sexual attractiveness to men, stops working if abused, and they are then left in a position of utter and complete disempowerment, because nobody cares about anything they have to offer. Nobody holds the door for them, nobody offers to help carry heavy bags, nobody offers their seat in public transport, nobody comments their look, nobody talks to them, nobody flirts with them, nobody asks them out. Everybody is just politely avoiding them as if they were a non-entity, not exactly lepers but more like dangerous, manipulative social outcasts whose game has been figured out.

And then women ask where are all the good men gone, and why is everybody ignoring them. Well, children, that’s the danger of playing power games with other people. They are not stupid, and they can retaliate. A woman’s power is to say no, but a man’s power is to not offer.

Yes, consent is important; however, it’s not absolute, unless you’re an omnipotent, completely independent and untouchable God or Goddess. If you need things, your consent is relative, and if you really need things, your consent might not matter at all, because you might not be in a position to refuse anything. Let me use work as an example. In the context of work, consent means you really need money in order to buy food and pay the bills, and you will offer to work for someone who can use your abilities and finds them useful enough to pay you money for it. This is a voluntary and consensual business relationship, but it doesn’t mean you have to like it in a sense that you would keep doing it even if you had unlimited financial resources, which is how the leftards would qualify a non-coercive relationship. Of course most consensual relationships are coercive and exploitative. Someone will offer you money if you work for them, and you will accept because you need the money more than you object to doing what you’re asked to do. Also, there are examples of non-consensual interactions that are completely fine, for instance if your heart suddenly stops and you fall down on a sidewalk, and a stranger jumps in and performs CPR on you and breaks your ribs and you are revived, no part of that interaction was consensual, a stranger put their hands on you with enough force to break your ribs, put their mouth on yours and exhaled into your lungs, your permission was neither sought, nor were you in a position to give it, and yet the only thing you are reasonably expect to do is thank them for saving your life, not sue them for touching you without permission while you were incapacitated. Basically, the less power you have the less likely you are to be asked permission about things, and requiring others to ask your permission is perceived as trying to acquire power others might not be willing to give you, and you might find yourself in a situation where you crave the opportunity to say no, but others refuse you that power by simply not offering anything. The trick with consensual relationship is that they go both ways. By saying “no” you are not just gaining power, you are also cutting off interest, which, if done too frequently, makes your power moot, or, in other words, you get to be rejected yourself, and in a way you might not be able to handle at all.

That’s the main problem with what all those leftards and feminazis are doing: society is a complicated dance, mostly non-verbal, between pushing too hard and not doing enough, between enforcing your boundaries and being sensitive to other people’s needs and wants. Sure, you can try to enforce rules according to which consensual sex means having a notarised written permission, and everything else qualifies as rape, and women will applaud you until they notice that they became so powerful that men don’t want to have anything to do with that, because it’s too risky. Even talking to a woman who can arbitrarily decide to report you for harassment and have you fired is too risky. So, then women find out that their main source of power in a society stems from being wanted by men, and if men withdraw their interest, women find themselves in a position where they are completely and utterly powerless. Power, respect and consent are games with multiple players. Just saying.