Good photograph

Just by keeping up with Facebook and Flickr I get exposed to numerous photographs during the course of the day. An awful lot of these pictures do not fit the definition of being “good” in terms of composition, lighting, contrast, or any such attributes that are highly regarded by photographers. However, I have come to realize that a photograph does not have to meet these standards to be judged “good”.

A photograph can be considered good if it meets its intended purpose.

Broadly speaking, a vast majority of photographs are taken to memorialize a moment.  These are pictures of people doing something, visiting somewhere, or just having a good time. The photographer is not paying much attention to anything except getting all the folks or place where the picture is being taken within the frame. As long as it meets some basic criteria---one can see the face, and the head is not cut off---it can be considered a good photograph, because it will serve as an aid to remember the moment, and what everyone looked like at that moment. It can be shared with others, or stored for future viewing.

Another major purpose one take a picture is to create, or at least attempt to create, a work of art. Photography is a relatively easy way to channel the need to exercise the creative right brain. As a work of art, a “good’ photograph has to appeal to the subconscious in some way. There are some guidelines that good photographers follow while taking a picture. These generally relate to composition, lighting, subject, use of space, contrasts, colors, and so on. However, some magic needs to happen to make it a really memorable photograph. I think the bar a photo has to clear in the second category to be called “good” is higher than that in the first.

There is also a third reason for taking pictures, and that is for photojournalism. These are the pictures taken by professionals that say a thousand words, and convey the meaning of an event, person or place in a powerful manner. However, most amateurs like us are not involved with this type of photography.

It is unfair to use the yardstick of one group of photograph while measuring the “goodness” of other type. Thus, an art photographer cannot call a snapshot “bad” because it does not meet the basic requirements of a work of art (composition, lighting, contrast, etc.). Likewise, a person used to taking snapshot should not judge an artistic photograph as useless because it just shows water, trees, and stones---and besides has no person.

That having been said, I would not necessarily call the person who took a good photograph a good photographer. Pointing the camera in the right direction, putting it on automatic, and pressing the shutter does not require much skills. A good photographer can create really memorable pictures of a family get together in the first category, or a work of art from the most mundane subject in the second.

Value of Life

General Motors is in hot water because of faulty ignition switches they installed in some of their cars. This switch had a problem that caused cars to lose electrical system while being driven. As a result the driver of the car would not have power steering or power brakes operating and that could lead to a collision. Worse, such electric malfunction would also make the airbags stop working, increasing the likelihood of death in such collisions.

A key issue is that GM knew about this problem for a long time and did nothing about it. Meanwhile at least 13 people have died because of this fault. Worse, the solution would have cost as little as two dollars a car. This has infuriated people at large, because it indicates what a low value GM places on lives of people.

GM may argue that we have accepted many other similar actions that they, and other carmakers, take, without any protest. For example, we know that a collision avoidance system, if made available on all vehicles, not just the expensive ones, may save lots of lives. Similarly, side airbags can do the same---save lives in case of a collision. Should the fact that GM does not have these systems installed in all their cars indicate that they put money above lives? If we have already allowed GM to get away with that, why do we make a fuss about the faulty ignition switch?

This is an interesting point. However, there are grounds to say that this is comparing apples and oranges. The faulty ignition switch causes accidents, the other example cited either prevent an accident or reduce its impact. That is not the same.

GM may then argue that we are upset because the cost of fix is so small. What if the fix required GM to spend two hundred dollars per car not two? Would we be less upset?

This is when things get interesting. Most likely we will say yes---we will be less upset if the cost of fix was not so insignificant. However, in doing so, are we putting a dollar value to human life?

So, for example, if the number of cars with the ignition switch problem is 100,000, at $2 a fix, the cost per year will be $200,000 and that would have saved, let’s say, two lives. Since GM decided not to fix the problem, they are placing the value of a human life to be less than $100 thousand. This is clearly upsetting to all of us. However, if the cost is hundred times more, the value of life goes up to $10 million, and we will be less upset if they did not fix the problem. If we extrapolate this reasoning, there may be some dollar figure at which we would find GM’s behavior acceptable.

So, despite rhetoric, we all agree that the value of human life is not infinite and there is a dollar value that we are comfortable with.

It reminds me of a conversation, George Bernard Shaw (I think) had with a woman:

GBS, “Will you sleep with me, if I give you $10 million?”

Woman, “Yes.”

“What if I give you $20?”

“What do you take me for---a whore?”

“Madam, we have established that fact, we are just haggling over the price.”

I know that in a serious subject like the value of a human life, such levity might not be appropriate, but you get my point. Of course, once we do accept that the human life has a dollar value, the question shifts to how much.

In the future if such a dollar value is placed, the process of making all kinds of decisions will get simplified.

For example, the medical establishment may decide that a life may not be worth saving if it costs more than certain amount. Thus, the guideline can be that the life of a 100-year-old person is not be worth extending by 100 days if it costs more than one million dollars.

Actually, such decisions are already being made, but with much trepidation and without any publicity. A recent NY Times article reported that “some of the most influential medical groups in the nation are recommending that doctors weight the costs, not just the effectiveness of the treatment, as they make decisions about patient care”. “Protecting patients from financial ruin if fundamental to the precept of ‘do no harm,’” the article mentions in describing the policy of cardiology societies.

Given the rising cost of medical care, I believe such policy is necessary.

However, if we do so, what right will we have to hold GM accountable for any tradeoff they make related to cost of fix vs. number of likely fatalities?

Music preference

Different folks listen to different types of music. The question I ask myself is what makes them prefer one type of music over the other. The most likely answer to that question is ---people prefer to listen to the type of music they got exposed to early on in their lives.

When I examine my own preferences, that observation is certainly true. Growing up in India, the first music I got exposed to was the Hindi film music---or Bollywood music (although that is not strictly true because the term Bollywood did not exist then). The radio in our house was on most of the times and my parents, uncles and aunts (who lived with us at that time) enjoyed songs by Saigal, Pankaj Mullick, Hemant Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, and Mukesh. Almost sixty years later, I still enjoy listening to these songs of my childhood. To me the era before the 70s was the golden age of that type of music and a favorite oldie from those days still gives me goose bumps.

However, if that was the only reason why I listen to what I do, I would not be enjoying the Western Classical music. I was not exposed to that at all until the late 60s when a pen pal of mine (a girl living in Germany) sent me a recording of Beethoven’s violin concerto. I truly enjoyed listening to it. My repertoire increased after I came to the US and started listening to the collection we had in MIT’s Ashdown house. I had friends who guided me along and soon I was hooked. After a while, listening to Beethoven’s ninth, or Mozart’s G minor symphony gave me the same level of excitement as those old songs of Mukesh, may be more. It still does.

Since I did not grow up with it, perhaps the reason I like it is that there is something intrinsic in me that attracts me to that type of music. It resonates with me. Resonance occurs when an external input has a characteristic (say, frequency) that matches that ingrained internally in a system. That is what makes a car vibrate furiously when you go over a rutted surface at a specific speed. Perhaps that mechanical phenomenon also takes place neurologically. I am an analytical thinker, organized to a fault, who likes mathematics and physics. May be these internal characteristics play a part in my appreciating an organized, mathematical, and primarily Germanic classical music.

That would also explain why my passion for the Indian Classical music is not as strong. Here, I had an early exposure. I actually learned Indian Classical music for a year and was a promising student. Even though I could not continue after one year, there was no dearth of listening opportunities for that type of music. That fact still holds true, but I just cannot put on a CD (or MP3) and listen to it, the way I do the other types. May be it is because of the fact that this form of music is improvised and not composed, or it lacks harmony. The “mathematics” of its rhythm is terribly complex, not easy to internalize. This is the case in which I had an early exposure, but the resonance factor, being more powerful, dilutes its effect.

My above theory probably also explains one type of music that I just cannot get into, and that is Jazz. It is improvised, just like the Indian classical music, but without its richness. It is just too loosy goosey for my taste. This is the case of no exposure growing up and no resonance.

   

What future shock?

“There are limits to the amount of change that the human organism can absorb, and that by endlessly accelerating change without first determining these limits, we may submit masses of men to demands they simply can not tolerate. We run the high risk of throwing them into that peculiar state that I have called Future Shock.” Thus wrote Alvin Toffler in 1970.

In articulating the effect of Future Shock, Toffler observed that “US is a nation in which tens of thousands of young people flee reality by opting for drug-induced lassitude, a nation in which millions of their parents retreat into video induced stupor or alcoholic haze…”

Thankfully, this bleak vision of the future has not come to pass. Indeed, the changes have continued to accelerate, perhaps faster than what Toffler might have imagined. And yet the nation seems quite healthy, and population thrives without “opting for drug-induced lassitude or retreating to video induced stupor”.

What happened?

For one thing, human beings have proven to be much more resilient than predicted in the face of onslaught of something new all the time. Contrary to what Toffler said, the parents have not given up and “retreated into alcoholic haze”, rather they have learned how to use FaceBook and iPad.  Young people have not fled reality; rather they have embraced it. They have shaped the future through imagination and hard work. Not only have they coped; they have thrived.

And this is just the beginning, because the very technology onslaught that Toffler feared is helping us cope with itself. Our brain is no longer alone; it now has plenty of help from the likes of Google and Wikipedia. A new study confirms, what we intuitively feel, that Google is changing our brain. It is changing how and what our brain chooses to remember, thereby leveraging its existing capacity (Ref. “The Internet has become the external hard drive to our memory” by Daniel Wegner and Adrian Ward, Scientific American, November 2013).

We have not even talked about implants as a way to cope with the accelerating future. Memory implants will not just leverage our brain; they will expand it---increase capacity and processing power. The Pentagon---DARPA---is already considering restoring combat memory loss using implantable devices. How far do you think is the day when we can purchase memory sticks for our brains from the local CVS?

The problem with predictions such as those made by Toffler, or before that---much before that---Malthus, is that they extrapolate future from present, and do not take into account human ingenuity to meet challenges.  

They are the ones getting shocked by the future.

Set Point

I spent a good part of my career consulting in the transportation industry. One of the projects I did was for a group of telecommunications companies looking to develop some idea of what the societal benefits would be if the country were to be wired for broadband. This was 1991 and their objective was to use the data for investment plus, I am sure, lobbying purposes.

This project was my introduction to the science of traffic congestion, because we were trying to quantify reduction in congestion if people telecommuted (a novel idea then) instead of driving to work.  This would lead to increased productivity, a major element in calculating the societal benefits of improved telecommunications.

We came across an interesting phenomenon---a road remains equally congested even if a fraction people stop driving to work. The reason is that the non-commuting folks, who are reluctant to drive on a congested road in the morning, will now take to the wheels since fewer commuters are on the road. So, the road gets congested again---almost as if it is doomed to some level of congestion. In other words there is a set point of congestion, which is difficult to alter.

The reverse is also true. The road can become so congested that at some point the commuters get fed up and seek alternatives---car pools, transit system. So the congestion gets back to where it was---its set point.

This phenomenon of set point applies to human conditions as well. Behavior psychologists point to our happiness as something that has a set point. According to this theory, we all have an internal set point of happiness. If we try to increase our happiness, say through material acquisition, we will get some temporary improvement, much like the congested road, but in a short time we will be back to our set point of happiness.

Interestingly, just like road congestion, the reverse also applies. If the happiness is reduced, say due to a major illness, financial difficulties or death in the family, it gets back to its set point after the passage of some time.

I am now discovering similar set points in other areas as well. Take anxiety for example. Upon retirement, I thought my anxiety level would permanently reduce. It has not exactly turned out to be that way. As work related anxiety has gone, it has been replaced by that caused by the silliest of things---will I reach the theater in time? Are these the right photographs to enter in the camera club competition? Will a blizzard disrupt our planned trip to Central America?

It looks like I have a mildly anxious set point that I cannot shake off!