Author: James Vornov

I'm an MD, PhD Neurologist who left a successful academic career on the Faculty of The Johns Hopkins Medical School to develop new treatments in Biotech and Pharma. I became fascinated with how people actually make decisions based on the science of decision theory and emerging understanding of how the brain works to make decisions. My passion now is this deep explanation of what has been the realm of philosophy, psychology and self help but is now understood as brain function. By understanding our brains, I believe we can become happier, more successful people.

On Deciding . . . Better : Imagination as Simulation

On one monitor tonight I’m watching Garry Winogrand’s New School interview via 2point8. His work was just taking pictures. He transformed the ordinary by capturing it.

On my other monitor, Dave Rogers reminded me just how long we’ve been at this. The Edit This Page group is now going on 9 years of online writing.

Groundhog Day: “Tomorrow will mark the ninth anniversary of my effort in this thing called ‘blogging,’ or, as I tend to think of it, ‘ranting into the void to no discernible effect.’ Not sure if longevity counts for anything, but there it is. Been here longer than Scoble. Go me.”

I think Dave can safely assume his writing has been toward some end, as we have all moved to occupy different spaces than we did 9 years ago. We’ve gotten somewhere, but not where we imagined back then. I still enjoy reading Dave’s work on figuring out exactly how that works.

Since my original weblog is now lost to time and the discontinuation of the ETP servers, I go to the Internet Archive every once in a while to read what I wrote back then. From Dec 5, 1999:

On Deciding . . . Better : Imagination as Simulation: “Simple solutions to complex problems are usually wrong. Complex problems usually require complex solutions. In a complex situation it can be hard to know which variables are important. We tend to act from simple biases based on simple analogies once complexity becomes too great.

When decisions involve uncertainty, multiple goals and multiple effects technology can help amplify imagination. In my own life, I’ve been exploring how this technology can help me clarify my goals, understand my assumptions and help me act in a way that is most consistant with what I believe.”

My set of concerns are very different now and my approach to this complexity is also very different. My decisions are now much smaller and short term. They are less focused on getting someplace, less focused on defining path. More taken with what to do rather than which to do.

The problems are no less complex and the uncertainty is just as great. Yet rather than looking at the pieces analytically, I’ve moved to a wider view in which emergence of choice dominates analysis of options.

Extremes



Trunk Detail, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

This image was pushed very hard in post processing The right side of the image was in poor focus compared to the center/left. I assume it was mostly due to the angle that I captured it at and a wide aperture.

Instead of throwing it out, I took the image way down with what Vincent Versace calls a dark to light curve- a heavily convex curve that pulls the values down. I then selectively lowered the effect on the sharp portions of the image, illuminating the areas I wanted the view to see. If you look, the out of focus areas are still there, but they are not where one looks first.

It’s not a great image, but I like the idea of painting with light well enough to create one that is at least passable and reads as a believable reality.

Taking It On the Road



Canal, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Because of traffic, I decided to take the long way round to suburban NJ. Interstate 78 goes past Bethlehem, PA. We had stopped in Bethlehem on a vacation trip, actually looking for coffee after a night’s camping in the Lehigh Valley.

The city is spit down the middle by the river. On the south side are the old steel mills, where there’s an interesting mix of hilly old, small housing and the old steel mils. There seems to be condo development along the river in some of the old industrial sites.

On the other side of the river is the upscale, historic side of the city. This image is from that side of town.

Taking It Easy



Leaf, Sky and Water, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

The other day I wrote about how equipment and workflow combinations either seemed easy or put obstacles in the way.

The other side of this of course is subject matter, locale and light. There’s a set of conditions that make it easy for me to create images that I like. I’ve always struggled against going the easy way, seeking growth in pushing myself to do things that are out of my reach. Over the last year, this included moving my images into three dimensions from the flat formal compositions that I mastered long ago.

For example, this image is near flat, but renders depth and subtle perspective. It’s a victory for me because a year or two ago I would have tried to take it straight down and flat. I now know that I would not have been able to compose the leaf plus tree reflection plus walkway into a coherent whole by limiting the angle of view.

My audience in this is primarily myself. I’m grateful for the new internet mediated means of sharing my work. Dozens of people see my work everyday on Flickr or here- something that wouldn’t have been possible if I depended on the old physically mediated world of galleries and books.

As I’ve been mastering one area, I’ve been pushing less successfully in another. While my subjects are more in the world, having setting and three dimensions, they still are not of the world. My subjects are generally insignificant, having themselves no real meaning. They reflect my visual world well, the suburban landscape, cities, sometimes landscapes.

To myself, I think of this next challenge as capturing a sense of place.

Another Drive By



Facing the Road, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I was on my way out of town for a business trip and decided to visit the fields that provided so many interesting images in the summer.

It turns out that in late fall / early winter, the landscape is not all that compelling. But just beyond the fields, I saw this setting and lighting. I saw that no one was behind me, so I put on my hazard lights, stopped in the middle of the road, lined up the composition and took a single image before moving on.

The focal length is near normal and with the car window to brace against, I ended up with a pretty sharp image at 1/15th sec.

Near Monochrome



The Broken Fence, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

I saw the light hitting this fence while driving towards home. I pulled over to the curb, got into position for the image by inching the car up and shooting through the passenger side window.

A little relief from the organic forms I’ve been working on.

What works



Western Run and Sky, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

Over the years that I’ve been taking photographs, I hit on equipment combinations that just sing for me. Clearly it’s a combination of camera, lens, subject matter of the moment, and post processing tools.

First time around it was a Minolta SRT 201, 50mm manual focus lens, low ISO black and white film, Ilford mostly, and fixed contrast paper with glossy finish.

Later it was an Olympus Stylus (the fixed focal length version) and color print film- from the drugstore.

The Sigma DP1 has worked very well. but there are obstacles. It’s found a place for urban travel photography. The Leica M6ttl with the 35mm f/2 Summicron with black and white film is perfect for a different kind of urban travel photography, different from the DP1. It’s nice to have both since they respond best in different lighting conditions.

My DSLRs have been good general purpose cameras, but both the Olympus E-1 and the Nikon D80 put obstacles in the process. I loved the image quality of the E-1 with the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 lens, but it was slow to respond when setting up a shot. The D80 metering system and I didn’t agree. And I had no lens like the Olympus to go to. It was the 24mm f/2.8D with it’s normal view and chromatic aberration that mostly lived on the camera.

The D300 with the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 sings. Post processing in Capture NX2 with the NIK filter set is fast and can get me to almost any vision of the print I want within a few minutes. It’s wide enough, it’s long enough and it focuses close enough to do macro style photography.

It feels to me like I’ve arrived somewhere regarding these tools.

Where Have I Been



Leaf Sequence, originally uploaded by jjvornov.

There was a period of about 3 months between returning from our New Hampshire vacation until about two weeks ago where I felt that all of my attention was completely and fully committed, crowding out photography in particular. There was the start of the school year for the kids, the Jewish Holidays, work of course, but then there also, very importantly was the US election.

On long trips in the car for work (up and back to Philadelphia and New Jersey), I would flip the Sirius radio between CNN, Fox and toward the end Bloomberg and CNBC, for news. Listening to stump speeches. Analysis.

Then it was over and the mental space returned. More fitness work. Pulling out the camera. Music back on the radio.

Midrange Zoom Methodology

Bagged Leaves

Working with primes, I had a simple way of composing. I looked through the view finder and moved around until what I saw looked like a photograph. With an SLR, the view envelopes you. My choice of lens was set by how close I wanted to get to my subject and how much depth I wanted to portray. Most of the time, the normal lens of 35mm to 50mm reflected my visual sense, so I felt comfortable in that range.

With the Leica, time enters into the shot to a greater degree because it’s easier to see around the outside of both the camera itself and the actual picture frame because of the mechanics of the camera.

Shooting with midrange zooms now, I’ve had to think about how to approach the choice I was holding in my hands. One idea is to choose a focal length for the subject and then put the camera to the eye. Kind of like having multiple primes available instantly.

Over the past few months I’ve developed a different way of working. I tend to keep the zoom at its widest view as I approach a subject. I explore through the view finder, approaching as if I had a wide prime on the camera. If I see detail in the scene that I want to isolate, I move into zoom mode and fill the frame. It’s led me to longer focal lengths and tighter shots. My mantra, courtesy of Vincent Versace is: “Own the frame”. Instead of waiting for the photograph to assemble in the viewfinder, I find myself more actively creating the image because I can play with position and focal length subtly and simultaneously.

My realization that I had changed my approach came from looking over my images from the last two weeks and running across this from Moose Peterson:

Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 AF-S: “I use the 17-55 mainly for landscapes and portraits. My preferred way of using it is getting close physically to the subject and than using the focal length variability to isolate the subject while telling its story. This means that quite often I’m using the lens wide open if not real close to it.”