I shoot with Olympus. Photographer Stanislav Puchkovsky 2: When you shoot, you should think you have more than a thousand frames to spare

The story of his success – how it all happened, what contributed to such rapid progress, as well as what equipment he uses to shoot – Stanislav Puchkovsky also known as Sean Archer Sean Archer . tells our site. The conversation, which originally took the form of a dialogue, was led, recorded and structured by Dmitry Krupsky.

Photo: Stanislav Puchkovsky

Stanislav Puchkovsky

Hope

I guess I was lucky – I’ve always had a talent for drawing. At school I was the best at drawing, it just kind of worked itself out. I didn’t go to art school, I just somehow I knew how to do it right away, it was easy and I was good at it. That’s why I went to the architectural institute, because it was a natural choice – if I can draw, I’m going to the architectural institute. And one of the main subjects there is academic drawing. At least eight hours a week.

It was a big course. We started with plaster balls, triangles, cubes. I think it’s very important for any photographer to see and understand how light falls. Then came plaster bas-reliefs, plaster heads, statues. We used to draw skeletons, meticulously work on anatomical models, and only after that do we move on to living people.

Naturally, all of this gives you an understanding – first and foremost, of composition. What many photographers don’t realize in principle. It takes eight hours to make a good pencil drawing. And you just have to seat the man as comfortably as possible, because eight hours you’re going to draw it. You have no right to make a mistake. You have to frame it right away in the picture.

Photographers often choose the wildest poses, without thinking about how the person looks in the picture. Nowadays, you can shoot a lot with digital, so they do it any way they want. My brain is conditioned to shoot right away. To make a frame as clear as possible, as simple as possible, and for a person to be as good as possible in the frame.

When you’re shooting, you don’t have a thousand frames to shoot, you try to make it look like you’re drawing every frame. Of course, I also take a lot of shots, I get 300-500 on average from a photo shoot, but I try to compose every shot correctly right away.

After college, I did a lot of TV, commercials. I was also head designer at one of the biggest TV channels outside New York – here in Yekaterinburg. And when you work in television design, what do you work for? On the screen. You line up the entire composition carefully in this rectangle. Photography is a rectangle, too here too, composition is very important, you also work for the rectangle. And besides, of course, while I was there I mastered Photoshop, the most important program for a photographer.

I’ve been interested in photography for a long time, too. But as a consumer, as a viewer. I liked looking at good photos, so I made a special folder on my computer, where I saved a couple thousand pics. Some cultural baggage.

But to take pictures myself, I didn’t even think about it. Because that’s how we usually imagine a real photographer? He’s got expensive equipment, high-end gear, lenses… There’s bound to be a studio, and powerful and expensive lights there. It shoots only famous people, cool supermodels. And only if you work like that for ten years, you can become a cool photographer. That’s roughly how I imagined it all.

So I bought my first camera – and it was a mirrorless Panasonic Lumix G3 – more for fun, like a gadget. Taking pictures of trips to the country, friends, things like that. I didn’t know anything about the picture itself. I didn’t know what the focal length was, what the shutter was… it also had some kind of speed… I had a lens with variable focal length, so I put it in a certain position because it looked so pretty. I didn’t know what aperture was, what ISO was. What’s more, I didn’t even bother to look into it.

And then a friend of mine asked, “Take a picture of me. It was based on what – I am a professional designer after all, I should know “how beautiful”. So I decided to give it a try.

I have to say that mirrorless cameras are very user friendly. If my first camera had been a DSLR, I don’t think it would have been that easy.

I turned on the automatic Portrait mode, took some pictures… and because I know roughly how to frame the shot and I know how to work with the shot afterwards, I started getting good pictures pretty quickly. Then I started taking pictures of my friends and acquaintances. Who else is going to come to you if you’re an unknown photographer?? Only those who trust you personally.

After two or three months I wondered if I was really good at it, or if I only thought I was. How do you check it?? To post pictures on a special website, where there is voting, rating. The most visited site in America is Photosight. I started with it. I wasn’t at all sure if I was good at anything, so I took a pseudonym. I used to write ARCHER archer, marksman when I had to enter a nickname in computer games. I remembered that in the nineties thriller “Without a Face”, the main character’s name was Sean Archer, and I used that alias – Sean Archer. And one of the first pictures I posted was voted “photo of the day in America”!

At first I was shooting with a 14-42 kit lens:

I have both favorite and very popular shots that were taken with this lens:

That is, in principle, you can shoot with a kit lens if you have artistic flair, composition and processing skills to make a really decent shot.

Still, three months after I started shooting, I realized that I needed a normal lens. And I think I was truly born as a photographer when I bought the M lens.Zuiko Digital 45/1.8.

The first day I had two shoots with a fixed lens:

It was, of course, an absolute step forward, because the 45/1.The 8 is a great lens. I say that without any advertising, I bought it with my own money. It’s small, but it’s very good and it’s perfect for portraits, even in tight quarters. Because I only shoot with natural light, and usually in my home, just light from the window.

When I put that lens in, I felt like I was buying a new camera. Because the pictures went way up. It was a breakthrough for me, it was like a miracle. And that’s around the time I started posting pictures to 500 Pixels.com . It was started in Canada by immigrants from America who are into photography. There are now four million users from all over the world, 40,000 to 50,000 photos a day. I liked the design of the site, the photos are so beautifully arranged, I thought that here I will have a beautiful portfolio.

But suddenly one of my photos became the leader of the rating, the most popular photo of the site. I was blown away by it. To succeed in such a competitive business that so many people do!

The way the world works these days, if you become popular, as a rule, it means a certain income. I didn’t think so at first. I believe that 500rx is the place where I can build up a beautiful portfolio. And it turned out that the site rating. At one point I noticed that I was “number one” in popularity on 500px. My portfolio’s already got 16 million views, 650,000 likes, 55,000 subscribers. No one else has that much, and there are very strong professionals from all over the world out there.

I started to get printed by the world’s major photo magazines, there are already six magazines out with my covers and great interviews. These magazines are sold all over the world, in every kiosk. I receive photos of localized editions from everywhere, from New York, Istanbul, Sofia, Rome, Paris, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

What it’s about? It’s kind of popular with print. If you are printed in magazines like this, it’s like a certificate – that’s it, man, you are officially a recognized photoportraitist, photomaster. And it makes a huge difference to thousands of people all over the world. So many people came to me for help – how to do this, how to do that, how to do that?.. I was getting five to ten of these questions a day. At first I tried to respond, but I realized that it was unrealistic. And I also realized that you have to take money for it. Then I started giving lessons in photo processing, thanks to my fluent English. It’s fun to connect with people from all over the world. It’s both profitable and interesting, we communicate on different subjects. I thought at first that doing it for a living would be boring, but it turned out to be a buzzing, mutually interesting. Especially when people show their photos afterwards, and you see their real progress. It’s great, it warms me up, it feels good.

And it never gets boring. I’ve already said that since childhood I loved and was able to draw. It’s a talent that I’ve obviously always had, and I’ve managed to realize it in photography. Now I feel that this is one hundred percent my business. Absolutely, to and fro. I found myself in it. I’ve never had so much satisfaction from work, not only from the process but also from the result, whatever I’ve done in my life before. When you get to this level… People from all over the world write to me, tell me the words of gratitude, admiration.

Like, man, you’re cool, you’re a role model, I want to learn that too, thank you, keep working, and so on. It’s really encouraging! When you realize that you’re doing something that a lot of people like and are inspired by, when you get that kind of feedback every day, it’s so gratifying, it’s indescribable. It removes any middle-aged complexes, anything. After all, whatever we do in life – work, creativity – all in the end is done for the approval of others. And when I got it right… Naturally, it never gets boring. That’s very cool.

From a British profile magazine What Digital Camera told me – no one cares when you shoot cool with a cool technique. But when you shoot such popular photos with a simple camera, using only natural light…

Really, everything with me is very simple. The room I’m shooting in is twenty square meters. It’s a living room, I have a sofa and a TV. It’s a normal apartment, top floor, south side. There’s a glazed balcony outside. There’s good light coming into the apartment, slightly diffused.

It’s a brick house, the walls are really thick, and I could put two models on the windowsill. Big windows and good light allow you to shoot quite well.

As a background, I just have wallpaper on the wall, called “Venetian plaster”. They give a little bit of texture – like it’s a slightly cracked, old plaster. But it’s not for photography, it’s just how I designed this room.

The model often stands near a window, the light comes in from the side:

Another scheme I use at home is just to put the model in front of the window. The wall is far away, and thanks to the wide aperture the background is blurred:

I didn’t take photography seriously at first. I didn’t shoot RAW, I shot everything in JPEG. Because on a mirrorless camera you see everything before you even take the shot. If you see too much light, you rotate the dial a bit, the camera adjusts, the picture’s good, you shoot. Basically, you need the “raves” to pull out the picture when you’re underexposed, or overexposed – there’s a reserve of light. And if you have a good shot right away, exposure is right, you don’t need RAW at all. So I’ve never even bothered with that, I’ve been shooting everything in jpegs.

I started shooting RAW when I bought a Canon 6D full frame DSLR. That was my next step… because with the Panasonic G3, I have to admit, I only got good shots on a sunny day. If the weather was bad, if it was dark I cancelled the session because the camera couldn’t handle it. Then I bought the 6D because it works very well at high ISO.

And that’s where I ran into the fact that my old principles don’t work. I didn’t like the auto mode there. The picture on my Canon was not good. It was always going to be the wrong thing all the time. I was overexposed, the colors were bad… And the main thing is that on Panasonic I saw it BEFORE I pushed the button. And with the Canon DSLR, you only see the result AFTER.

I’ve learned that if you want to shoot with a DSLR you have to shoot in manual mode. Then I got into it, and that was it – since then I’ve only been shooting on a DSLR in manual. For every shot, everything is manual. A slight change in the weather – I’m rearranging everything. And on a dreary overcast day indoors, of course, the Canon did well.

And of course I’ve learned how to work with a DSLR, and I’ve learned how to shoot in manual mode. Now I know all the details and nuances, I’ve changed from a beginner to someone who knows a lot about photography. But I think it would have been a bit difficult for me to start with a DSLR. The mirrorless, on the other hand, was very simple.

Of course, I don’t deny the DSLR as a segment of the. It has a lot of great cameras, professional and everything. But the fact that they are less friendly and require a deeper knowledge of photography itself is, in my opinion, without a doubt.

And in July 2014, Olympus came to me and offered to shoot with the E-M1 camera, complete with 75/1 lenses.8, 12-40/2.8 and the familiar 45/1.8. And what I did? I decided to test the Olympus the same way I once did the Panasonic. I didn’t bother figuring it out, took a model, went to the countryside, and I just took pictures in auto mode. And these are stills from my first shoot:

The camera did a brilliant job, I was surprised myself. It’s a hard situation, against the light… Of course, the girl’s face was dark. It couldn’t be brighter because I don’t use flashes or reflectors… of course I processed it so it was brighter, but all the details are there! It’s not like I drew them. The camera kept them. And that’s where Olympus surprised me. Almost immediately, in automatic portrait mode, it started shooting so well.

Over time, of course, I’ve gotten to grips with this camera as well. And now I like to shoot with the E-M1 in manual mode. Because now I’m all grown up, I like to have everything under control. And I’m adjusting the picture absolutely to myself in the process. I like that the E-M1 has not only a screen, but also an electronic viewfinder. And I can see everything right away, even before I take the picture, which is a huge plus compared to SLRs. I immediately set the ISO to what I want, set the aperture… and then just jog the dial if the light changes, to adjust the shutter speed. So I just started shooting in jpeg again! I used to shoot in “raves”, but I’ve realized I don’t need them, because my frames are normal. I can easily take a jpeg image from the E-M1 and send it straight to Photoshop for post-processing and get good results.

By the way, the 75 millimeter lens is an absolutely wonderful lens, I’m wildly excited about it at all. When I tried it I realized that I’d better take the E-M1 and 75/1.8. This despite the fact that I have one of the best lenses on my Canon, the Elka 135/2. But in my opinion, the 75mm gives a much cooler picture. Very soft bokeh, very beautiful, very dense picture. I tried it and I knew it was mine. The picture is sharper on the Canon.

I’m not trying to trash Canon now and never will. It’s just different. Different camera gives different picture. For me the Olympus is definitely better in nature, it’s my 100% choice. Not to mention the fact that it’s smaller and lighter. And when it comes to the 45/1.8, there’s no question about it. The camera with it is almost like a point and shoot, it’s only half the size of the 6D and other similar cameras.

Olympus is also good with stabilizer. I can shoot pictures at half a second shutter speed… a second even. The picture is stiff, you press the button and nothing is blurred. For the highest ISO settings though – Canon’s full frame is probably more powerful there, but this is compensated for by the excellent stabilizer in the Olympus that lets you shoot at slow shutter speeds.

I sometimes use screen focus by touch as well. I usually shoot with viewfinder, I got used to it, but sometimes I use screen, when I need to shoot from a different angle. With the flip down screen you don’t have to bend over, you just poke your finger and it takes the picture.

I have a bunch of shots with E-M1 right now, including in dark conditions. Of course, it is a huge step forward compared to my first Panasonic G3. I can shoot in very dark conditions and I don’t have any complaints about the picture.

If you try to compare the Zuiko 45/1.8 i 75/1.8, of course the 75 is cooler, but it needs more space, it’s for space.

It’s good for big portraits… That’s the most I can do at home with a 75

And the “body shot” on the 75/1.You can’t shoot 8 in an apartment. Here’s a comparison with the same girl, but already with a 45/1.8.

If I suddenly had to choose only one of these two lenses… I guess if I lived in California I’d take the 75/1.8 and went shooting outside, but we have a long winter, have to shoot a lot indoors… and from that point of view, I would choose a 45/1.8.

By the way, about the lenses – recently I took E-M1 and 12-40/2 lens on a trip to Europe.8. I never got such good shots of my trip! This is the first time I’ve ever shot a landscape, my hometown of Yekaterinburg:

I shot on auto, it turned out well, so I took this kit on the trip – it’s small and very handy. I had enough of the 12-40 for life on any trip.

It was also very convenient to work with a tablet on the trip. It connects via wifi, there’s wifi built into the E-M1. When you run the wifi, the camera on the screen draws a QR code. You take a picture of it with a tablet and it immediately connects. You can open the pictures directly on the tablet, browse through them on the tablet, delete unwanted pictures, and download them to the tablet and process them in some way with Olympus software or a third-party application . It’s very convenient. You take a tablet and you do everything, it’s very convenient.

In fact, when I took a job as a photographer I remained an artist. Just kind of picked up a new tool, the camera. Like a new paintbrush, or a can of paint. So it doesn’t matter to me if the light in the picture was really set up when I took it or if it was just photoshopped in later. It’s the results that matter.

Of course, there’s an important point here – the source has to be of good quality. You can stretch out the light, the color… but if you have a blur, defect, loss of detail or poor composition, you can’t fix it, you can’t stretch it out. Of course it’s useless to work without a good source. In any case, you have to reach a certain level as a photographer to get good results that you can work with next.

There are people who believe that the only real, correct photograph is the one taken straight out of the camera. Like, catching a distant castle against the setting sun is cooler than making the same picture in photoshop.

But in my opinion, it doesn’t really matter how or what you catch. Only the result is important. Of course, there are different fields, and this does not apply to photojournalism, where everything must be documented and honest. When you film a war or children under bombing, if you change or fudge something, it’s elementary perjury, just cheating. As for artistic photography, then, excuse me, it is only the result that counts. It doesn’t matter if you were sitting in the snow somewhere and dying, or if you did it all at home… The result is the only thing that matters.

Why I don’t think a picture straight out of the camera is, as some say, the only true photograph? If you take the same spot and photograph it with five different cameras and different lenses, you get five different pictures. Moreover, even the best camera in the world with the coolest lens will be infinitely farther from reality. Reality is three-dimensional, to begin with. The reality is amazing in the detail, the depth. It’s something that will never be in any photo, even the best one. Any photograph is a pale copy of reality. Even if you take a good picture of a beautiful sunset, it does not compare with what you see with your eyes in reality. So I think the job of processing is to bring back what the shot actually looked like.

For example, I photographed a model – her eyes in real life are deep, rich blue, they’re bright, juicy. I look at the picture – well… they’re pale. Just pale, they’re not really like that. And my task is to return this perception of reality, which was in fact. I believe that we’re not improving a photograph, we’re bringing it back closer to reality. Because reality is a hundred times cooler than any picture. For me, Photoshop is as much a tool as a camera or lens. It’s on a par with that.

How you get there, how you do it is nobody’s business. Except for some very crude manipulation. If you see a picture and it seems natural to you, it’s normal and good. If you see something really unreal that breaks the laws of physics, then it just goes into the “photo art” category. Which is also okay, but it’s in a different category. For me, photography is when you work with a single frame. Although once in a while I might add something… this shot from Rouen for example:

I added the tower in the background. For what? Because it makes the frame look so much cooler. If it was just a piece of white sky, that would be cool? No. And now I’ve inserted a turret, it’s a beautiful shot, chic. I’m not hiding it, because I think that a photographer now, just a photographer as it is, is no longer needed. This profession is dying out, no one will need it anytime soon. But if you’re a “photographer, dash artist” then you’ll be in demand. Now cameras are getting cooler, processors, automatic modes, too… Processing programs are available to everyone. As a result, just anyone can make a good shot now. Twenty years ago, you had to know a lot to get a good shot. Nowadays you don’t have to know anything.

DSLRs have already got Live View, and handy flip-down screens, touchscreens… Everything that makes life more convenient will sooner or later appear on all cameras, the most so-called professional. Manufacturers simply have a conservative approach, they have a loyal user base, but they understand that they are losing in this war. So sooner or later everything will be there and even the most sophisticated cameras will be easy to handle. Anybody can handle them and that’s why “just a photographer” won’t be needed, everyone will be able to take normal pictures.

I think that nowadays the artistic part means a lot more in photography. It used to be that your technical skills and the artistic part were maybe fifty-fifty. Then the artistic part became more and more important. Now your technical skills make up maybe twenty percent, but eighty percent of your artistic skills. A photographer’s technical skills will soon mean very little. That’s what’s happening now, it’s the creative part that’s coming in first. That’s the secret, in my opinion, of good photography.

Technically, it’s all going to be automatic, you can’t get away from that. Imagine the level of automation in cameras twenty years ago and now. The E-M1, it’s full of all kinds of technology. Here’s an example… I was asked by an acquaintance to shoot the interior of a bar. The bar is dark. I took the E-M1, and there’s a mode where it takes several shots at different exposures and stitches them together. I think it’s called “handheld shooting” or something. And what do you think?? Great images, great detail. I didn’t take any effort at all: I turned the mode on, pressed the button and got a great picture.

And that goes for any genre, like street photography. A good street photographer is an artist, he sees these shots. Another person walks by, it’s an escalator, what’s the big deal. And he can see!

I can see the girls too, I can see the angle, the way they look… Ninety percent of my pictures are not models, they’re just girls. They don’t have acting training, they don’t do anything on camera. It’s completely my job from beginning to end – find the angle, find the light, find the eye position, the head position.

And everything is completely improvised. I never prepare for a shoot, not at all. Usually a girl just comes to me with a bag of clothes, and that’s it. Everything is born in the process. I see something and I try to catch it.

Of course, I also pay a lot of attention to image processing. However, my photos are improved in terms of improving the picture, but not the girls! I remove skin imperfections, of course. Like a pimple, for example: today it’s there, tomorrow it’s gone! – Why don’t you take it out??

I agree that naturalness should be maintained. I’m all for that naturalness with both hands! You know, there’s probably a very popular technique now called frequency decomposition, a so-called fashion style. Of course, it’s beautiful and clean, but agree – from reality, it’s infinitely far away. It’s a completely unnatural image. If you open my pictures, I think you’ll agree that even in large portraits – yes, the skin is clean! – But notice they look natural. You can see the texture of the skin, everything in its place. I don’t have the kind of processing that makes the skin look unnatural.

You can see all the freckles… all the texture of the face. Yes, it’s clean. Of course, I’m working on it – I’m removing some spots, unevenness, pimples, wrinkles, and some problems. But all the texture is preserved!

And I’ll also say this. When you communicate with a person – a girl, for example – you look into the eyes, you have a purely human look, you focus on the eyes. Even if you have pimples, you don’t usually notice them. It’s just a subconscious thing. If the girl is beautiful, you’re enjoying the facial expressions, the emotions, you’re looking at her in movement. Photography is a soulless thing. Here you take a picture – and you pull that frame out all over the monitor, at twenty megapixels. Naturally, it’s a flat picture, with flat light, and you often see all the pimples, all the wrinkles. But in reality you don’t see them, you just don’t pay attention to them. And you don’t look that close, in reality you’re not nose to nose with the person. That’s what I mean when I say I’m bringing the picture back to reality. I bring back exactly the perception of a person as we see them in real life.

Here’s an example. And notice – I didn’t touch the girl. Initially you take a quality source, and work only with light and color. Light and color work wonders. You don’t improve the girl, you improve the picture.

You also have to understand that my photos on the 500px site are a portfolio, a showcase. Naturally, I don’t put all my shots there, but the most successful, the most popular. Of course, I take pictures of all kinds of people and not everyone is equally photogenic. But you can get a good shot out of almost any model. I’ve got a lot of pictures of regular customers on my 500rh, not of models, but of people who come to me.

You can take a good picture of each person, or a bad one. Lots of people take photos of the same models that I do, and the results are completely different. You have to see – the beauty, the angle… plus good processing – all of this allows you to see and show the person as he really is. Here:

You had to see it to make it look like this – like a statue. I had to find that angle and everything. Everything worked to make her look like a sculpture. Of course, you can take a bad picture of the same model. I have to find a way to show it better.

As for processing techniques… First of all, I don’t use a graphics tablet for processing. I have a tablet, but I don’t really like it, so I just work with a mouse. What’s more, I don’t use any frequency decomposition, masks… I used to be a designer, I know how to work with graphics. Of course I’ve studied and tried specialized techniques for photography-I’ve tried everything, I don’t like it all. It seemed to me – an unnatural result, it’s difficult, painful, long. And I came up with my process. Basically simple methods, working with layers and elementary processing.

I will not go into details, of course. But with me it’s simple. One photographer told me he used to work at least four or five hours on an image. And after he worked with me, he had that time reduced to half an hour. The result is… pretty much the same.

I did it all by myself. When I started working with photography, I started to find my own way. And I’m a lazy person, so if I saw how to do something easier, I did it that way. I’ve found a few simple ways, that’s what I use, but there’s basically nothing else.

Before I had my doubts – who knows, maybe it only seems to me that it turns out well? But after looking at the covers in the world’s leading magazines, I realized that this really works one hundred percent. And it works on any photo – a portrait, a landscape. The method of work is the same.

What can I recommend to beginner photographers??

First of all, you have to look at more good work and absorb it. Remember, I spent a year and a half just collecting images before I started taking them myself. Secondly, to attend courses on artistic drawing – I think it’s very useful, it gives a lot.

Learning the rules, angles, lighting, watching good movies, etc. You have to soak it in like a sponge, understand the theory and try to understand why in this photo the person is positioned correctly and not in this one. It all affects the subconscious, how your picture will be perceived.

And you should probably also look more often at the classics – Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Vermeer. The classics never get old, they are still very relevant. These pictures are immortal, because everything is right.

I won’t say anything about my plans. After all, I was planning something there two years ago when I bought my camera? And how life turned out? “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”.