Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Art

Critique Your Own Work
It is important to be able to honestly critique your own work. Can you objectively see it as others do? I believe it is a learned skill.
It will be critiqued
Every time we look at our images, we are critiquing them. When our friends or even our spouse look at them, they are critiquing them. They will probably keep their real opinions to themselves, but inside their head, they are being honest.
And, of course, when we approach a gallery or enter a contest, we are explicitly inviting critique. The gallery manager or judge is seeing hundreds or thousands of competing images. They will be brutally honest and severe in their comparison and criticism. They are only going to choose a handful of the many competing entries they are given.
Even if we are just posting on social media to show other people where we are and what we are doing, they are forming opinions of the pictures. I would theorize that, if you care at all about images, it is impossible to look at a picture without forming an opinion. And everyone who looks at yours does it.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
First do it ourself
That may sound harsh, but I believe it is reality. Since it will happen, shouldn’t we jump in and be the most severe critic of our pictures before others do? Shouldn’t we eliminate weak pictures and fix the problems in the others? If we are very deliberate to only show our best images, that will save us embarrassment and make us look like a better photographer.
You will never see my unedited images unless I am teaching a workshop on editing and want to prove a point. I shoot a lot. Most are not great. And I don’t even intend some of them to be very good. Some are purely experimental. “What if” moments where I am exploring to see if what I did seems to lead in a useful direction.
It is common to make several shots of a scene. But I will typically pick only 1 as the best. That is the only one you would ever see. And even then, the best of a set still may not be a very good image.
And it is much more than the technical perfection of an image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Study
My friend Cole Thompson believes in what he calls “photographic celibacy“. He does not look at the work of other photographers so that he is not influenced by them.
That does not work for me. I consider it valuable to study all forms and genres of image making. There are things to be learned from photography and painting and movies, graffiti and magazines and advertising. Most any genre from Renaissance to Romanticism to Impressionism to Abstract to post-modernism can give us insight in how other artists have chosen to express their ideas.
Read books where artists discuss their thought process. Go to museums and galleries. Cultivate friends who have artistic perception. Take in as much as possible.
But learn. Don’t follow.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Learn your taste
We are artists. That means we have a point of view to share with the world, and particular visual styles we use to do it. We each must find and understand our values and style. These preferences guide our photographic decisions.
If you are new at photography, it is natural to look at an artist and say we want to make work that looks like theirs. That is OK, for a while. Copy someone we are studying to internalize how they do it. But it is important then to re-center ourself and decide what, if anything, of what we learned we want to adopt to our own art.
Maybe it is nothing. We may greatly admire their art, but conclude it is not applicable to what we feel and want to do. For example, I really like some of Joel Grimes‘ portraits. But it is unlikely I will ever do an image in his style. I don’t shoot portraits, and the edgy, high-tech style is not mine.
My point is that, with lots of experience and practice, I am learning how I see and what kind of images I want. Anything that makes me better at that adds to my skills and is valuable. Anything that doesn’t may be interesting and educational, but probably not valuable.
Give it some time
We are all basically using the same tools. It is not the technology that differentiates us.
Famous jazz musician Miles Davis said, “Sometimes, you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” This is probably true of any art form. I believe it is true of photography.
We learn and practice and imitate other artists and chase “likes”, but eventually, if we persist, we learn to be ourselves. I don’t think there are shortcuts (sorry). If you have been at it for a while, you are probably not producing the same type of work now that you did 20 years ago. Hopefully, you are now creating images that are uniquely you.
Each of us is a mix of genes and education and experience and values and motivations, tempered by our unique life experiences, and wrapped in a frail human body. No one else’s mix is the same as yours. That’s why we should not try to “be” some other artist we admire. We can’t. We can only authentically be ourselves.
But even when we learn to be ourselves, that doesn’t mean our work is good. The sad truth is that most of the trillions of photos shot every year are unexceptional. We must learn the skill of critically evaluating our own work.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Make a portfolio
An excellent way to examine yourself and understand where you are artistically is to put together a portfolio. I find that I am not as critical as I should be unless I do this. Pretend you are going to submit your portfolio to a gallery. The portfolio can’t have more than 20 images.
That limit is the problem and the beauty. It is not difficult pulling out 300 pictures you like. Forcing that down to 200 hurts some, but isn’t too much of a problem. Then grit your teeth and make the cuts down to 100. This is getting painful. You are having to cut some of your favorite pictures.
Then it gets hard. You think you can’t possibly take any more out. But the goal staring at you is 20. From here on out, you are having to do serious self-examination. Each image must be scrutinized more carefully. Every one must be justified to stay in the select set.
Liking, even loving an image is not enough. We must objectively decide if it is a strong piece of art on its own. Is the technical craft and the composition solid enough to stand up to criticism? Does it go beyond a record shot, having that “something extra“?
This is painful. When it gets down to about 30, every one you eliminate feels like you are giving up one of your children. Each picture must compete head-to-head against every other one. The weaker must be eliminated. You try to talk yourself into cheating and keeping 25 or 30 for the portfolio. But push on. Cutting the last 10-20 images is by far the most difficult. But also, the most instructive.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Self-examination
Congratulations! You have put together a portfolio! The regret over the ones eliminated will fade quickly. You just eliminated them from this portfolio. You didn’t delete them from your disk. Now it is time to reflect on what you have created and try to learn.
Just look at your images for a while. Consider each one individually. Why do you like it? How is it better than all the ones you eliminated? What do you learn about yourself from it? Then reflect on the whole set. You might be surprised to discover a harmonious style or approach, even though each may be a different subject.
Forcing yourself through the process of narrowing down a set of good pictures to a very small set of great pictures is an excellent way to learn to critique your work. Having a fixed goal forces us to make hard decisions instead of being vague.
You will probably discover that you have a set of images that you are proud to show anyone. Ones you believe will stand up to close examination by experts. And that you have a style that is your own.
Critique your own work, severely. Be such a severe critic that you are sure you will not be ashamed to show anyone the survivors. And make sure your work proves you are human, not an AI.
November 26, 2025
Image Quality
As photographers, we often obsess over image quality. The highest resolution, the sharpest focus, the best light, the best composition. All these things are important, but is that really what defines image quality?
Technical perfection
Photography is more closely tied to technology than most other 2-dimensional art forms. Our cameras embody sophisticated technology. Our editing tools are leading edge, sometimes AI driven.
The field seems obsessed with specifications and details. What is the MTF of this lens? Does this sensor have 14 bits of dynamic range or only 12? Should I go to a 100 MPixel medium format system to be a better photographer?
I have chased all of this at times, and I still have that tendency. A couple of times recently I have gone through the specs and lens choices for medium format, longing for a move up to the “better” gear.
Underlying all this is the belief that better technology will give us better image quality. But a more technically perfect image is not necessarily a better one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Composition rules
The visual arts seem to accumulate a large set of rules meant to guide our work. These are generally sound principles, based on long history of practice and evaluation. Most of them are good, except for the “rule” part.
The “rule of thirds”, for instance, helps balance compositions and give some dynamic life to an image. Same for rules like leading lines or diagonals or don’t center the subject. All are good advice to keep in mind. The problem comes when it becomes an absolute rule. When a gallery or a photo club judge rejects our photo because it did not conform to one of the standard composition rules, then we are in the wrong place.
Know and use the rules, and understand that you can freely “break” them whenever you feel you need to. Guidance like these “rules” are good general advice. But general advice does not apply to each individual case. You are the artist. Your decisions create the image. Trust your intuition.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Work the scene
Other advice I have heard recently is to work the scene to develop it into the best shot. We are counseled to take many exposures from different angles and maybe with different lenses, with the objective that by shooting all this variety, one of the shots will be “best”.
It is probably true that one will be best, but is this the best, or only way, to get there? Let’s work through a scenario. Say I am there with lenses of 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm, 100mm, and 200mm (full frame equivalent). Let’s further say that that I have access to shoot front left from ground level, center above ground level, front right at eye level, and rear center at ground level. Just those individual choices give 24 shots to take. Then throw in bracketing for aperture and exposure and composition and that gives possibly hundreds of shots. For one scene.
It is true that if you do that, you may occasionally be surprised by the one you select as best. It is a great learning exercise if you are developing your style and vision. And a good exercise to go through occasionally to check yourself.
But I generally know what I want. I have the experience of shooting and viewing hundreds of thousands of images. My preferences are established, but flexible. That is, I experiment frequently so as not to fall into a rut. But I do not need to shoot hundreds of frames of one scene to get to what I would consider “best”.
And ever worse, I fear that blindly following this “work the scene” advice will lead to the best possible shot of a mediocre scene. Meanwhile, we miss the better, more imaginative, more creative scene because we were over-concentrating on one thing. I prefer to use my judgment to frame the best shot and go on to find the next, even better one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Disappointment?
I have done all of these. For years I chased technical perfection. During my time in a camera club, I faithfully followed the composition rules. I shamefully confess that as a judge I criticized some images for not following the rules. And at times I have ended up with piles of images bracketing one scene to insensibility. Usually with the result that I kept one of the first ones I shot and threw the rest away.
Many of these efforts led to technically good images that are lifeless and disappointing. They do not capture my reaction or relationship to the scene. There is no depth of insight. Only a very small fraction are printed and hanging on my wall now.
I have had to completely rethink what “image quality” means.
Image quality
These observations are strictly my personal judgments. I have no authority over your artistic values. As artists, we each should come to our own conclusions.
I have seen that many of the famous photos and paintings in history are not technically perfect. But something about them elevates them above the crowd. What is that? I know I have images shot with inferior cameras with cheap lenses that are “better” than many taken with much better cameras. This makes me wonder what image quality really means.
Now days, we are inundated with images. Most are adequately sharp and well exposed. What makes one stand out among those trillions of bits of noise?
We must reevaluate what it means to be a good image. It is no longer the obscurity of the location or the difficulty of the shot or the perfect composition or the sharp detail. None of those are enough, by themselves, to make an outstanding shot. In a Substack article, Lee Anne White said: “There are always photographs that are technically solid, but missing that something extra“. Ah, that something extra is so hard to describe.
Photography is a craft as well as an art. We must strive to do an excellent job of technical perfection, composition, etc. But those things are not the something extra that make an outstanding image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Something extra
In the crowded and noisy world of images, it seems that what we look to now is an emotional attachment. Something must touch us personally. To do that, it generally had to touch the artist, too. We must be able to let our emotional reaction to the scene come through our image.
Maybe this is what Cartier-Bresson meant by the decisive moment. Perhaps this is what Jay Maisel means by the gesture of something. Either way, an idea is that the subject is expressing something. We must be in sync with it and ready and able to capture the best expression of that.
These instances sometimes happen in a fleeting moment. Perhaps we can anticipate them and be setup and prepared. Sometimes it is a singular event, and we have one shot at it. But either way, we must recognize and react. We must understand what is happening and be mentally and physically prepared to capture it.
And being prepared involves understanding our emotional involvement with what it is. We must recognize when that gesture is best expressed to us, and pounce on it.
Of course, images do not have to be of a fleeting moment to be good and express an amazing gesture. There are those that are static scenes, where you can linger over it to wait for the right light or weather.
Still, what the viewer relates to is your feeling about it. Why did you take this picture? Why did you select it out of all the others?
Paraphrasing Jay Maisel: “If the thing you’re shooting doesn’t excite you, what makes you think it will excite anyone else?”
If an image meant something special to me, and I can capture that and make you feel what I felt, then there is a chance the image is meaningful to you, too. That it embodies the “something extra.” Isn’t this what image quality is about?
November 19, 2025
What Does It Mean
We’re artists. Artists create art. We’re told art is supposed to have meaning. Do we always know what does it mean?
High art
We’re repeatedly told that art has meaning. It should educate or challenge or at least raise questions. To many, art should support a cause and try to change the world.
But when we read artist statements and gallery statements, it can seem they are speaking a different language. One too high for us commoners to understand. Therefore, we are not in the inner circle. But remember, they are selling a product. The more elite it appears to be, the higher the price it can command and the more collectable it is. I understand, but I don’t like the game.
This is from the point of view of photography, because that is the main art I understand. I can somewhat understand that if you have a very labor-intensive product that takes weeks or months to create, it may be necessary to do whatever you can to make it more valuable. And putting all that time and work into it makes you want to believe it must have great artistic significance. After all, if I can create a finished photo in a few hours but you need weeks to create your painting, the painting must have deeper meaning, right?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Where does meaning come from?
But where does meaning come from? Do I put meaning in when I create a photograph? Or does the viewer assign meaning to it? Or is there even meaning at all?
Maybe all of those.
Sorry to be vague, but that is the way it seems to me. There are no clear, definite answers. Like many important things in life, the answer is “it depends”.
I think sometimes that I have meaning in mind when I make a photo. Sometimes not. I am occasionally surprised by meanings that viewers of my images describe to me. I have to try to keep a poker face while I’m thinking “where did they come up with that?”
And when I read some artist statements about images I can’t help being a little skeptical. They must be incredibly deep thinkers to have visualized all of that meaning and symbolism at the instant they took the photo.
But I typically do not operate on those lines.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Whose meaning?
This brings up the question of whose meaning are we talking about? As the artist, I may have visualized a meaning at that moment. This would be based on my cumulative feelings and experiences. But each viewer will form his own interpretation of meaning in the image. And each may be different, based on their own feelings and experiences. The viewers are experiencing the image in a different context than I shot it.
As the artist, do I have the right to decide the meaning and require everyone to line up with it? I don’t think so. The picture is mine, but each viewer’s meaning is theirs.
An art critic or curator may analyze one of my images in detail. They can talk about the composition and lighting and placement of elements and use of color and how those formed or contributed to the meaning. They could go into the symbolism it contains. How the symbols connect to some event or period and what meaning that has.
I might say thank you for complimenting my (probably instinctual) compositional design. But at the same time, my BS meter will be pegged. Maybe at some level I was aware of the symbolism and meaning he describes, but maybe not.
Do I create meaning?
I have often wondered if I create meaning in an image. I believe I occasionally use symbolism. Occasionally I touch on themes much larger than my work. But it is not my style, when making art, to be heavy-handed on meaning. I probably was unaware or only dimly aware of any symbolism when I make the image.
For example, a Sierra Club photographer might show hunters clubbing baby seals for their fur. This brutally makes their point, and it has “meaning” in the context of their cause, but it is not necessarily art. It is propaganda photography.
My art always expresses an opinion. But I do not believe I should try to force my opinion on you. If you look at my image and come to the same opinion I had, great. If not, I hope you form an opinion that makes you appreciate the image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do I know what it means?
I am continually asking myself if I even know what an image means. This is especially true when I am editing and culling images. We all occasionally ask ourselves “why did I take that?” But at a deeper level the question is “what does it mean?”
I often have to say, I don’t know. It triggered some emotion. Maybe that emotion was just that it was pleasing. But I know that sometimes I had a feeling that it had some meaning I might not have been able to express then.
I’ve stopped trying to over analyze my images as I am shooting them. That can come later during editing.
And another aspect of this I find very interesting is that the meaning or worth of an image often changes for me with time. I usually use a technique I call slow editing. That is, I try to wait for days or weeks before doing serious edits. This lets the emotion of the shoot fade and allows me to examine the images in a more detached way. Obviously, I don’t follow the common practice of downloading daily and rushing some images out to the eagerly waiting internet.
A side effect of slow editing is that my opinion of some images changes between the time I shot it and the time I edit it. Sometimes dramatically. I have been known to throw out most of a shoot that I thought was going to be significant. On the other hand, there have been times that an image I was about to throw out ends up being my favorite of a shoot. My understanding changes. A realization grows of something I must have been drawn to when I captured the image, but it did not break into my consciousness until I gave it time.
So, do I know what my images mean? Maybe over time, after reflecting on them long enough, I might have a glimmer of understanding. Perhaps I see a connection to my beliefs or values. I might, occasionally, even say an image has meaning.
But in general, I resist the presumption that my images “mean” anything of themselves. If I or a viewer give them meaning, that is wonderful. Meaning only makes sense for a human.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Make art
So, what about meaning? If you are making fine art, I recommend not worrying too much about what does it mean. Instead, concentrate on making what you consider to be your art. Pictures without art are advertising or propaganda or snapshots. Art without obvious meaning is still art.
I try to be gentle about conveying meaning to my viewers. To me, being heavy-handed robs an image of depth. Viewers will assign meaning to it. Or they won’t. It is fine with me if they just like it.
And worrying too much about meaning when I am shooting robs me of much of the emotional attachment I felt at the time. I don’t appreciate a meaningful but lifeless image. I want my images to feel fresh and lively and maybe, in a way, humorous. Sometimes just being pretty can be enough.
Make the best art you can. Put your feelings and intensity into it. Let yourself be surprised by the meaning. The best ones will have meaning, because it is an expression of your deep attachment to the subject. Your viewers want to see the meaning you felt. And they are free to create their own meaning.
November 5, 2025
Photography Isn’t Creative
Photography isn’t creative. I know, those are fighting words. Please put down the pitch forks for a few minutes and let me explain the distinction I see.
A medium
Photography is a medium, not something magic. Merriam Webster defines the aspect of “medium” I am referring to as “A means of effecting or conveying something; a mode of artistic expression or communication”.
I know artists who express their art by taking pictures, some who put paint of a canvas, some who sculpt, others who make fabric creations, some who write or create music or make videos. I have known some who build art from scrap metal, even some who cut out bits of paper and create designs on a wall with them, and one or two who dance. These are just some I know personally.
These artists all use a different medium for their creation. The medium sets parameters about what the resultant creation is: large, small, heavy, light, 2 dimensional, 3 dimensional, persistent or transient, etc. But the medium does not create the art. It is the mode through which the art is expressed
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Cameras don’t create
A camera is a tool of the photographer. Some people think photography is not art because you just point a camera at something and press the button and capture it. When you do this, you usually get pictures that look like you just pointed the camera at something and pushed the button. No life. No excitement. Not that much interest. A record of something, not art.
Luckily we have not gotten to the point that AI-equipped cameras try to make art all by themselves. It is still up to the photographer as artist to make the creative decisions.
These decisions are what shape most of the outcome.
Skill
Photography is a medium and a technology. As such, it has limits on what it can do. Some things can be done very well and some things are difficult or impossible. For instance, it is difficult to create 3D images photographically. Not impossible, but difficult.
Amazing things can be done by a craftsman wielding their tools expertly. As a photographic artist, we learn to think photographically, to internalize how to use the technology to create what we visualize. How to use our tools.
But what I am describing is a process of an artist using tools to create art. The tool does not create the art. It helps express the artist’s will.
A general flow for photography is establishing a concept, visualizing the intended result, capturing the image, and refining it on the computer. Which of those stages allow creativity?
Trick question. All of them.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
People create
A paintbrush does not create a great work of art. A chisel does not produce an amazing sculpture. And a camera does not produce an amazing, creative photograph.
It is the artist using the tool that receives the credit, because it is his creative vision that applies the tools skillfully to achieve his intent. Every artist or craftsman I know appreciates excellent tools and likes to use the best he can afford. The quality and precision of great tools makes the creative process more of a joy when you know how to use them well.
Same with photography. All the photographers I know love to talk about their tools. They long to have the highest quality cameras and lenses, the best computer and monitor. But they also recognize that these things are only tools. Good tools might make their work a little easier, but it doesn’t change their art.
But the tool does not do the creative work. Photographic technology is a medium. If we are using a camera we must understand the strengths and weaknesses of the medium. As creatives, we must know how to use the medium to achieve our goals. That is very different from just taking a picture.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The medium isn’t the art
So the medium is the channel we use to create or deliver our art. Nothing more. It is a “means of effecting or conveying something.” What we convey is our artistic vision. How we use the properties of the medium is part of the creative process.
The way we express our vision may be different in a painting versus a photograph. We may have to choose the correct medium to achieve certain outcomes. You would have a challenge to express your music as a painting, for instance. Or maybe that would inspire you to push the medium of painting in new directions.
Note: AI isn’t people
An elephant in the room in conversations about art and creativity is AI. Let me go on record as saying, in my opinion, AI does not and cannot create art. It can make nice pictures that are very useful for advertising and utilitarian use. But it can never create, because computers can’t think, or feel, or appreciate art.
AI models are trained using data from existing work. This is a major ethical question being debated, but not the issue here.
Everything the model “knows” is work that has been done in the past. It will not be inspired to create something new. Inspiration requires a consciousness. Only humans are able to do that.
AI can be useful as a helper, just not as a creator.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Photographic art
Despite being maligned and excluded from the ‘inner circle” of fine art by established interests, photography continues to make inroads as a recognized art medium. Photographic artists continually push the limits of the medium and use those limits to inspire their creativity. Much of the creative discovery is at the limits of what can be done.
Photography is just a medium. As that, it is not creative in itself. But artists can product creative works using it. The medium influences the art. The art uses the medium.
Postscript
As I write this, it is the day of the 50th anniversary of the release of the movie Jaws. The story behind it is fascinating. I would like to share a few highlights I have found that are relevant to today’s topic.
Jaws was conceived as a low budget horror movie. It was given to an almost unknown director named Stephen Spielberg. But 2 unanticipated things happened that set it apart and allowed it to become one of the iconic movies of history.
First, Spielberg collaborated successfully with a relatively unknown music writer, Jon Williams. Many say half the impact of the movie was the famous theme song.
But of even more interest to me is that a huge factor in what the final product became was that the mechanical shark didn’t work. It was cheaply made. No one had thought to test it in salt water. Because it didn’t work reliably and he felt it looked pretty dumb, Spielberg showed it a lot less than they originally planned. Surprisingly, this resulted in greater drama and made the shark more menacing. Overall, the movie was a great success, partly because of a balky mechanical shark.
A great artist, creatively adapting to the limitations of his medium and budget, unexpectedly created something wonderful. Something that is still recognized as great 50 years later. Creative problem solving. That is inspiring.
July 2, 2025
Photography is Human
Photography is a human activity. It is by humans and for humans. Why else would anything you call art be done?
By humans
Photography is a uniquely human product, as is all art. Humans have an innate desire to record and to express. We preserve memories or pour out what we feel or even just want to make something “pretty” or significant.
No other creature feels a need to produce lasting works of visual art.
I do not believe it is just because we have opposable thumbs or have mastered tool making. It is much deeper than that.There is something we feel and have to express. We want to leave some record of our passage through this life.
And this is a near universal, spontaneous need. It just comes out because we are human.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
For humans
Who do we create art for? Isn’t it always and only for humans?
There is no need to make a large landscape mural for your dog. He will not appreciate it. He may be your best friend, even almost a surrogate child, but he won’t even notice the art you created for him.
But don’t assume quantity of views is a valid measure of worth, or that we have failed unless we have public showings attracting large numbers of people. I am an example of that. I have had showings, but I am clear that my main audience is myself. That is, ultimately, I am the one who gets to approve my art. But, then, I am a human. My art is for humans.
I believe you can have a rewarding satisfaction of being an artist even if you only show your work to a select set of friends. The value of our art should not be measured in the amount of publicity we get or the number of collectors holding our work.
I love it when other people see my work. Some are even kind enough to make encouraging comments. That is a kind of connection and validation. It feels good since it comes from humans.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Uniquely human
Humans create art for other humans. We are the only creatures who can value or even recognize it. Unlike your dog, people can be touched by an image. Viewing it can translate to multiple feelings and emotions in another human.
Animals don’t create art. Fish don’t either. Only humans. We have a need to create.
If we visited some tribes making cave art in France 20,000 years ago and asked them why they did it, what do you think they would say? I doubt they would say they were decorating the cave so that when they moved out and a bear moved in, it would be happier. No, they would probably just say they felt a need to create and to record events and to establish aspirational goals for younger people to follow. And because they liked it. That is human.
Whenever we live and wherever we go we feel the need to paint on our walls.
The largest AI model might, with good prompts, make a picture that would be acceptable for some uses. But it could never step back and look at it with satisfaction and think “Wow, i like that”.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Not just taking pictures
To be clear, I am only talking about photography intended to be art. What is often called fine art photography. There are other kinds.
I guess that most of the photographic images captured daily are taken by machines. Try to picture the vast amount of automatically captured imagery. Police surveillance cameras on every corner, speed cameras, security cameras on every business and house, dash cams, body cams, Google Street View captures. More than we can probably imagine.
There must be millions of hours of video and millions of still images captured by robots every day. However, none of those robots are emotionally attached to the images. The machines did not feel excitement or sadness or awe when they “looked” at any of the frames. They did not feel anything. And the machines did not take the images with the goal of causing happiness or warmth or longing or any other emotion in human viewers.
Those automatically captured images are not art, and they are not for humans, really. Some may be used by humans for a particular purpose, but none of it is printed and framed and hung on their wall to be called art.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
First, live life
Before we are artists, we are humans. In life we experience joy and success and sadness and loss. We grow from these experiences. Our values and life views develop. It gives us a point of view. Sharing this point of view is called art.
Don’t photograph just to be technically perfect. That is shallow and dead. Photography is a beautifully technical craft. Technical skill is required to make an interesting image, but it does not by itself make an image great. Machines can do technical perfection.
Don’t photograph to “make art”. That is a false goal. Photography is a perfectly valid art form. However, if we don’t have anything to say, we will say that. Make images that are art because you are an artist and have feelings or a view that you want to share with your viewers.
Photography that is art comes from life. Living and experiencing is something only a human can do. Don’t give up your humanity to machines or algorithms. Live the life only you can live. Be who only you can be. Let it come through in your images.
It’s not about metrics or hits or any other numbers. It is about you seeing and expressing something and being able to help other people to see and feel it too.
Postscript
Steven Levy of Wired Magazine recently gave the Commencement talk at Temple University. A topic on graduates minds is will they lose their jobs to AI. Steven addressed this and had what I consider an insightful observation.
In his conclusion he said “The lords of AI are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make their models think LIKE accomplished humans. You have just spent four years at Temple University learning to think AS accomplished humans. The difference is immeasurable.”
You are a human. Art is a human activity. Only you can make art.
April 30, 2025