Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Art

  • Eliminate Scale

    Eliminate Scale

    Photography makes it easy to visualize the world differently. By using various lenses and changing our position we can get closer to or further from the subject and we can change the composition dramatically. A technique I like to use sometimes is to eliminate scale to give a fresh view of a subject.

    Not intimate landscapes

    Intimate landscapes are popular and common. This is simply getting in close to a section of a landscape. It allows us to call attention to shapes and colors and relationships that would be lost in the immensity of a wide landscape scene. It is a classic technique and I use it a lot. I love it.

    But this is not what i am talking about today. Most often in an intimate landscape, it is clear that the scene is a segment of a landscape or nature view. We get in closer to isolate the part we want to call attention to, but we keep the context of the overall landscape. If I make a close view of a rapidly flowing stream, it is clear that the context is a cascade in the mountains.

    Aerial Photography

    It is popular to make abstract aerial landscape shots. They can be beautiful and compelling. The shapes are organic and pleasing yet the scene is somewhat abstract because we can’t place what it is. Some well known photographers like Peter Eastway and Tony Hewitt are known for this technique.

    Drone photography is also increasingly popular and available to more photographers because it is a lot cheaper. Drone photography is typically done at a few hundred feet elevation, as opposed to conventional aerial photography that is typically up to a few thousand feet.

    The common characteristic of these is that the views are looking down, usually straight down, to a relatively flat plane. Scale references are usually missing, so the viewer is left to imagine the size of what is being seen. That is part of the fun of viewing them.

    Macro

    Jumping much further down the scale, another technique to eliminate scale is macro photography. This usually refers to images that are life size or closer. A life size shot is termed 1to1. This signifies that the image is the same size on the sensor as it was in real life. For a full frame sensor that means shooting a scene that is 24mmx36mm. That is getting close. Macro photographers routinely get much closer than this.

    This type of shooting tends to get very technology-heavy. There are special optical techniques with extension tubes and bellows and reversing lenses to give the required magnification. Special tripod fittings are used for focusing, because the whole camera system has to be moved to focus. No auto focus here.

    Lighting is another consideration that gets difficult. Macro photographers use multiple flash setups with bounces or ring lights or even light tubes to direct the lighting to the very small area being shot and eliminate glare.

    On top of that, macro shots have extremely small depth of field. It is more and more common to use focus stacking techniques to record many, sometimes hundreds, of “slices” at different focal points. Special softwar combines it all to produce a final result. I have a friend who designed and built a robot system to automate macro and micro photography with steps of microns.

    I am not saying these things as a negative against macro photography, I am just trying to place it in context of what I am discussing. Macro images are often great and intriguing because they show a realm we do not see with our eye. But I don’t have the patience to do it seriously. I prefer a more spontaneous style.

    Pseudo-aerial

    The particular kind of scale elimination I am talking about today I call pseudo-aerial. I haven’t seen the term anywhere. As far as I know, I coined it.

    I do not lay out the big bucks to book a plane or a helicopter for a shoot. And I have not gotten a drone yet. I already said I don’t have the patience to do serious macro work. So I figured out a way to do my own brand of simulated scale-less images that mimic aerial photography.

    I find small scenes with interesting shape or texture or color and with few if any clues for size and typically shoot straight down from a standing position, basically about 2-3 ft above the scene. The results are my own brand of abstract aerial photography that I call pseudo-aerial. It is sort of the macro version of aerial photography.

    One advantage over true aerial photography is that subjects I shoot are often static. I can spend more time composing and moving freely, compared to being in an airplane. And I can spend longer on a scene, maybe waiting for the light to become “right”. Of course, the subject does not actually have to be horizontal, as long as I can get perpendicular to it.

    Challenges

    There are some challenges, but they are pretty minor. Making sure my feet or the tripod feet are not in the frame is something to always check for. Likewise, being careful not to let my shadow intrude in the scene.

    I often shoot these without a tripod. Without a tripod there is the balancing act of leaning out far enough to be perpendicular to the plane of the image and get my feet out of the frame and not fall over while making sure the shutter speed is fast enough to stop and motion. Yes, I have been off balance. Embarrassing but not yet damaging.

    A bigger challenge is to visualize a small scene as if it were an aerial shot. Making sure there are no clues of scale, like grass or twigs or leaves to de-mystify it. Imagining the final image printed to check the impact and interest. Dare I say “pre-visualizing” it?

    Example

    I will make it concrete with an example. The image presented today is one of these pseudo-aerials. It reminds me of an angry sea breaking on the beach, changing color over the sand and diminishing the violence.

    In “reality”I shot it at my local car wash. The camera is upside down on the center console of my car, pointed up through the sunroof. In that position I had to use the camera’s app on my phone to view and control it and take pictures. Very little was done to the actual image data except to color it to match the effect as I visualize it.

    A lot of experimenting (and luck) was needed to get the timing of the water and soap and brush movement to get an effect I liked. Plan to throw a lot away. But when it works, it can create a unique and interesting scene.

    After describing my pseudo-aerials as shots looking down at a small static scene, I turned it upside down to show an example shooting up at my sunroof at a dynamic scene. I wanted to emphasize that the original orientation and details don’t matter. What matters is if the final result will be accepted as an abstract aerial shot. To me this does.

    I like pushing the boundaries of the medium. This technique to eliminate scale seems to me to be a rich area for exploration. I intend to pursue it a lot more.

    What do you think?

  • What Can it Be?

    What Can it Be?

    You saw something that excited you. All your experience and great camera gear was used to capture it. You poured your heart into representing what you felt. Now what? For fine art, no matter what we felt, now we have to make the best image we can. We have to let go of what we saw and figure out what can it be. Now it takes on a new life.

    Capture time

    When I am in the field with my camera, I have to use all my skill to compose and create the best image I can. I’m speaking for myself, because all my work is captured outside. The same idea would apply in a studio.

    Something caught our eye. We were reasonably sure there was a subject there worth spending the time on. We completely fell in love with what we saw. That is great. If we can show that emotion and enthusiasm to our viewer, they should be drawn to the image just as we were.

    So we work the scene. Design the composition. What is the best position to capture this? The right lens to use? Decide when and where the light is best, Does the background and foreground need work? What depth of field does this need? Work through the technical settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, expose to the right but don’t burn out the highlights. It is on a tripod, of course.

    In the field the process becomes a pleasant dance intertwining the technical details, the changing light, compositional tweaks, and the “decisive moment“. If we are new to it, there is a lot to try to think about in real time. If we are extremely experienced, we tend to get in the flow and let our subconscious take over. Either way, at capture time, we are intensely focused on getting the shot.

    Associations

    This (potentially) great image we just shot has a lot of personal baggage attached to it. We bring back all the associations we had in the field. This image has meaning for us in various ways. It may remind us of something significant from our past. We might be proud of a compositional trick we used that we have been wanting to try. It could be one of our favorite places we love to go back to. Or possibly our association is how cold or hot or wet or windy and uncomfortable it was.

    Every image has associations from when and why we created it. We have memories, feelings, expectations.

    But guess what? No one cares. Sorry. Well, the associations may make the image significant to me, but that is a don’t care to someone else unless I have a chance to tell them the story of why it is special. I seldom get the chance to describe my feelings, except in the image itself.

    The reality is that my viewer is going to look at the print and decide what they feel or like, without having those associations I have. They see it fresh and in a completely different context. The image has to stand on its own and be accepted for what it is.

    Letting go

    So I’m back in my studio working on an image. At this point, I’m working on the image to be seen and appreciated by someone else, not myself. To get in the right mindset for this, I have to let go of the associations I feel for the image. The image has to stand on its own.

    This is not saying I should forget the feelings and emotions I had. No, they are important. They form the base of why I responded to the picture. But what can I do to help my viewer see something of what it meant to me?

    A technique that works for me is letting the image age. If I wait long enough before processing it, there is time for the raw emotions and the visceral experience to develop context in my mind. It helps me to see past the excitement of what I felt and look at it with more objectivity.

    Let me give a not entirely made up example. Say I trekked in to a beautiful spot through deep snow. I’m standing on fairly slick rock at the precipice of a canyon. It is snowing lightly and very windy. I’m a little concerned about the wind and the slick rock sending me over the edge to a 100 ft fall. It is very cold. I’m tired and chilled, but the scene is beautiful. Worth the challenge and discomfort. I love it.

    As I snap the picture, all these feelings are imprinted in my memory along with the image. The difficulty and stress and physical sensations impart more importance to the image than it may deserve.

    It is all new in post

    My point is that in post processing, our job as an artist is to finish the image into something our viewers will appreciate. We have to be free enough of our own associations that we can look at the picture and see what the viewer will see.

    The feelings we felt and bring with us are still extremely important. This is the reason why why we made the image in the first place. But the viewer does not know what we felt unless we can convey some of that in the image itself.

    What can we do now, sitting at our computer in a warm, comfortable studio, to bring those emotions to the viewer?

    One thing I am learning is that I have to let go of a technician’s purist view of the reality of what the scene was. We have a wide array of tools available to us in post to make the image stand out without destroying the “truth” of the scene.

    We’re expected to remove that offending tree or boulder that interferes with the sight line or takes attention away from the part we want the viewer to concentrate on. We can do color and brightness correction to get the overall tone to match what we felt. Dodging and burning will do wonders to change the perceived tonal values and let us emphasize or de-emphasize areas.

    Crop it to a different aspect ratio? Of course. There is nothing sacred about the camera’s default crop ratio. Stretch things in one dimension? Sure, the wide angle lens made the mountain range seem less impactful than I remember. Stretch them some. That is not being false.

    Pre-visualization

    Many authorities say we should always pre-visualize our images. I take this to mean we should have worked out the details of what the final print should look like before we take the picture. That works for some people, not for me.

    I’m more ADD. When I am in the field, I like to be in a flow state. I shoot instinctual, emotionally, drawn by what inspires me at the moment.

    Of course I have a good idea of what I will end up with based on my experience and knowledge of the technology. I usually can predict how far I can push something. This is in the background, though. I try to not spend much conscious time thinking about the details while I am shooting.

    Two images

    So for me, every shot basically creates 2 images. The first is what i see and capture in the field. The second is how I interpret and morph the final print. They can be very different.

    Both the images are dependent on my mood, perception, mindfulness, creative flow, health and intent at the time. All images are interpretations of a scene. If I went back to a scene another day, I would shoot a different picture. If I post processed an image I love a second time, I would probably end up with a different result. It is art. It is subjective. There is not right or wrong, only better or worse.

    All of this is to try to convey our feelings and impressions to our audience. A straight, unprocessed image will never let my viewer see my intent. Like a movie, what matters in the end is the effect it has, the feelings it makes us feel. My image has to stand on its own and be accepted for what it is.

  • Judging Art

    Judging Art

    Who gets to judge art? What criteria do they have to use? Is it objective? This is a difficult subject and I will probably step on some toes. Judging art is something we all do. When we see art, we judge it. How should we do it?

    What is art?

    A widely heard definition of art is that it is “an object created by human skill and imagination.”. This immediately eliminates AI generated “art”.

    This is actually a pretty good definition, but it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Basically if the artist says it is art, it is. This includes the picture on your fridge your 6 year old drew

    But 2 people can go out to the same location and paint the same scene and we will look at them and say one is valuable and the other is much less so. Why is this? Does it have to do with the skill of the artist, their creativity, their choice of color palette?

    Even if we acknowledge them both as art, we will judge that one is “better” than the other.

    Is Photography art?

    Let me take a side track to address photography; a subject near and dear to me. I am a photographer, so I may be accused of bias.

    I will hedge some and claim that photographs can easily be art, but not all photographs are art. Billions of photographs are taken every day (yes, Billions). The vast majority are selfies, friends, or food shots. These are taken as a record of something. Even the person snapping the picture does not consider it “Art” in the formal sense with a capital “A”.

    But a few images are taken to be art. They are created by human skill and creativity. These images seek to show us something new or in a different way. The photographer is expressing something fresh and unique.

    These rare images are art. Every bit as much as a symphony or a sculpture or a painting.. You may disagree that much skill is involved, but try it. Try creating photographs at this level. This isn’t getting to the top 10% of the photographs taken, but rather something like the the top 1 in 10,000,000. I consider creating a great photograph a life altering exception. If you can do that regularly, you are truly a top performer.

    Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

    Ansel Adams

    Is it good enough to just be “pretty”?

    In Better Photography magazine* issue 111, Tom Putt describes the challenge of selecting images for his gallery in Australia. He laments that local customers want to see “pretty” pictures of the area, but he would prefer more abstract, edgy images that show off his artistry. He even clearly states that the prints that sell in galleries are not the ones that win awards in competitions.

    I share the feeling. If I show what I consider a very creative, artistic image to most non-artists I get a polite “that’s nice”. But if I show a nice landscape to them I get a “Oh, wow; that’s very pretty!”. I can’t criticize them. The landscape is much more relatable to where they are. Mostly it is curators and avant-garde collectors and other artists who value the non-traditional work.

    I used to get upset when someone said my work was pretty. Now I just say thank you. I’m glad to bring them something that meets their criteria for good art, even if I disagree with its true artistic value. I would be happy to sell them something they like.

    Who gets to judge artistic merit?

    So who’s call is it? Who judges the merit of art? Actually, we all do and nobody does.

    Everyone is entitled to their opinion of art according to their criteria and values. Even if the intelligentsia with credentials and large followings disagree, what you like is good art to you. I will no longer try to educate people to show them how their opinion is immature or unsophisticated. Actually, it may not be. I have come to see how they may be educated and sophisticated enough to know what they like. I am happy for them.

    And there will always be the self-appointed gate keepers who want to dictate style and judge competence.

    It is impossible for art, or any of the higher creative activities, to flourish under any system which requires that the artist shall prove his competence to some body of authorities before he is allowed to follow his impulse.

    Bertrand Russell

    The artistic police always tend toward building up their cause and rejecting new or differing work. As a matter of fact, their blinders usually make them incompetent to judge truly new and creative work.

    What is the criteria for judging art?

    When people are honestly trying to judge art, how are they to go about it? They must have some criteria to raise it above just “I like it”.

    This is an area where I feel the gatekeepers are doing artists a disservice. When I apply to a show or a contest or a gallery, I get back a “sorry, you weren’t selected.” or a “congratulations, you were selected.” But in either case there is no criteria stated up front or feedback as to why my work was selected or not. I am getting very frustrated with this.

    In most cases I have to pay to submit to a show. For that fee I don’t get back much value. There may be a theme stated for the show, but no actual criteria for judgment. I feel that we should get back some useful feedback. I am not seeking a full portfolio review, but this should be professional practice. Artists are the lifeblood of galleries and the galleries should be taking a long term view to help develop upcoming talent.

    But even if they are not going to take an enlightened long view like that, I feel that we deserve to know the criteria for judging and how we were scored. Even in my local camera club competitions way back, every photographer heard a discussion by the judges and knew how the evaluation of their entry was derived. When I was a new photographer that was extremely valuable. It should be taken to a higher level now for professional artists. Otherwise we are feeling blindly in the dark.

    Why is some art good?

    So 2 artists are creating art at the some time. Why is one significantly better than the other? It could simply be skill. One of them has studied and practiced far longer and better than the other. Or it could be natural talent.

    I used to write software. Numerous studies showed that some people have a natural talent for performing at a higher level than the norm. In the case of software, even with the same education and experience, differences of 20 to 1 in productivity were seen. I suspect it is similar with artists.

    Or is could be their vision and creativity. This can’t be measured or quantified, but it makes all the difference.

    Where does creativity come in?

    Imagine again the 2 artists standing on the bank of the Seine River in France painting a landscape scene before them. One is an acclaimed Realist painter of the era. He renders a very skillful, detailed representation of the scene. The other is Claude Monet. He sees the same scene totally different. The painting he creates looks nothing like the one done by the man standing next to him, even though the subject is the same.

    Monet’s impressionistic style was initially rejected and unpopular, He was criticized and mocked by the learned critics of the day. But today a significant portion of the people on the planet know Monet and recognize his work. Even after 100 to 150 years we still line up for hours to see a collection of his paintings. On the other hand, I bet you can’t name even one of the popular and well regarded Realist painters of his day.

    This is the edge that creativity brings.

    How about feeling?

    We constantly hear that an artist needs to convey what they felt about the subject. I usually agree with this, although it is hard for some subjects. Most of the time, when I make an image, I am asking myself what I am feeling and how I am showing that to a viewer.

    How does a viewer judge feelings? Isn’t it totally subjective? One viewer can look at a picture and break down in tears because of the associations and meaning it invokes in them. The viewer beside them may say “yeah whatever…” Obviously one was touched and the other wasn’t.

    Was the problem of not reaching the second viewer the artist’s or the viewer’s? Maybe neither. If the artists did what he could, that’s all he can do. We don’t all react to the same things. We all have different criteria of “goodness” in art. Let’s acknowledge that and make it more transparent.

    So, judging

    We all judge art when we see it. Most of us probably are not practiced in introspecting and analyzing our response. So all we can say is something like “I like it”.

    The professional gatekeepers who judge shows and contests and gallery submissions should be held to higher standards. Artists should get better feedback on their submissions. Even if a juror told me “My training and curation experience is in post-modernism; your entry did not fit that style so I was unable to evaluate it well.”, that, at least, gives me some good data. It is an honest response. I know I will not be accepted in a show this juror is judging. Even better would be for the show publication to state clearly that the theme is Urban Decay and the juror will be giving special consideration to post-modernist work. Here is a link to see other shows she has curated.

    If criteria were made clear, even at such a rudimentary level, we would have much better guidance. I would know not to not submit a lovely landscape sunset to a show that was only going to consider gritty post-modern images. Even better, if I got actual feedback from the juror on why my image was or was not rejected, I could learn. I could evaluate where I stand against their criteria and decide if I need to change or find a new venue.

    What judging counts?

    Judging happens everywhere and all the time. What is important?

    As I see it, there are 3 primary audiences to consider. The first is me. I, the artist, must decide how I feel about this image I have created. I must be able to express why it was made and how I felt and what I was trying to say with it. If I can do this and I am happy with the image, that is of first importance.

    The second consideration, I think, is the viewer. They are the intended audience for the image. If someone likes one of my images and purchases it to hang on their wall for their pleasure and to show other people, that is high praise and it does not matter what any gatekeeper may say about it.

    Lastly and least are the myriad of gatekeepers. Those who give anonymous judgment of our images according to secret criteria. Since they are working behind the scenes in secret, they are basically a Star Chamber court.

    I am disappointed when I am voted out by one of these secret courts, but I refuse to take it as a judgment against my work. Since I don’t know the criteria used, I assume my work did not fit the pattern they are “promoting” in their curation.

    So, we are all going to be judged whenever our work is seen. Accept that. Art judgment is not objective. It cannot be. But when someone other than a potential purchaser “votes” us down, ask what criteria was used. Understand the criteria and we understand the judge. Know that these 3rd party judges generally have their own agenda they are following.

    And remember, when we get bad feedback, the judgment is on the piece of art, not us personally.

    Footnote

    • Better Photography magazine is a lovely publication edited by Peter Eastway. Peter is an amazing Australian photographer who justifiably has multiple Professional Photographer of the Year and similar awards. I get no compensation from them. I just want to point this out as a fresh and interesting publication run by extremely knowledgeable and talented artists.
  • Directing the Eye

    Directing the Eye

    Directing the eye is a hot topic with photographers and workshop leaders. Even some psychology researchers. It involves understanding the psychology of how viewers look at an image and techniques to encourage them to look at it the way we want.

    Psychology

    There are certain principles of perception that seem to have a lot of agreement. By understanding the principles, we can use them as tools to increase the probability that people will spend the time to look at our images.

    Understand that these are characteristics common to a lot of people, not hard and fast rules. 2 + 2 = 4 is a rule. Not every individual in every situation follows a principle like “the eye is drawn to the brightest region”. Usually, but not always. So while learning and applying these understandings we increase the chance of people relating to our work, we can’t guarantee it.

    Brightness and contrast

    We are drawn to bright areas and we are drawn to areas of high contrast. Use this to draw people to the area of your image you are particularly interested in them seeing.

    Since we tend to look more at light areas and less at dark ones, that is why vignetting is commonly used to “push” the eye away from the edges of an image and into the interior.

    The lighting wasn’t right to give the effect you wanted at capture time? So what? That is what post-processing is for. Don’t be afraid to change the lighting and contrasts for the effect you want. If you do it skillfully, no one will know. If you don’t… well, it’s a learning experience.

    Color and saturation

    Color also effects how we look at an image. Highly saturated colors attract us. Even normally saturated colors are seen differently. Warm tones seem to advance. Cool tones seem to recede. Placing warm tones next to cool tones gives a subtle 3D effect. This is why at concerts or plays you often see warm light on one side of a performer and cool light on the other. It gives them more shape.

    Spots of color attract the eye, too. If a scene has fairly even pastel or monochrome tones with a few small areas of a brighter color, we are drawn to those colorful areas.

    Lines

    Our eye is a marvelous pattern matching engine. We try to make connections whenever we can. Check out Gestalt Psychology for much more information. So lines, especially diagonal ones, tend to lead the eye to find something interesting the line is leading to. We are actually disappointed when we are fooled and the line didn’t mean anything.

    Wide angle lenses are sometimes used to accentuate this effect by exaggerating diagonal lines and bending them. It is difficult to shoot some scenes wide without introducing diagonals. Make sure to not disappoint the viewer. Provide a target to reward them for following the diagonal.

    Faces and words

    Human figures, especially faces have a high visual weight. We are designed to recognize faces and we have a high interest in them. If there is a face, or part of a face, or even an eye in an image that will be one of the first things a viewer is drawn to. A face trumps most other elements of a picture.

    Likewise with words. We recognize words as information. We’re conditioned to read them. I think it is fascinating that we are drawn to them even if we do not understand the language. Besides, by it’s nature, characters making up words are fairly sharp edged and high contrast. We have already seen that viewers are drawn to high contrast areas.

    Since faces and words are so powerful, we have to be careful with them. Having a person walking through the background or a sign off to the side can destroy your composition intent. Or they can make it if you use them well. The point is, you have to be very aware of them and what they will do to your image.

    Depth of Field

    A simple attention focusing technique is to use a shallow depth of field ( a small aperture number such as f/2.8). We are drawn to sharp areas and tend to ignore blurry ones. A shallow depth of field tells the viewer to pay attention to the slice of the image that is sharp.

    This is a excellent trick to eliminate the complexity of busy scenes.

    Techniques

    These eye catching techniques are means we can use to help make the viewer look at our image the way we want. Many photographers seem to obsess about eye paths through an image.

    Eye tracking studies have been done, where subjects are instrumented with devices that can determine what their eyes are looking at at any moment. These studies produce maps, sometimes called “heat maps’, of the viewing patterns.

    This used to be done a lot for web sites. After all, companies spend a lot of money producing their sites and they want to know if customers are seeing what they want them to see. Eye tracking has also been used to instrument image viewing. Researchers are interested in the order in which viewers see things, what they spend the most time on, and what path they use to scan over the image. Much of the information I presented above comes from studies like these.

    This says that techniques can be used to direct viewers to parts of the image we want them to see. Maybe we can even encourage them to scan the image in a certain order.

    Why direct the eye?

    We’ve looked at some of the principles and techniques that can be used to direct viewer’s eyes. But why are some of us keen to do this? There must be a reason.

    A photograph captures everything in the field of view of the camera when the frame was exposed. This can lead to a complex, even chaotic image. There can be many things competing for the viewer’s attention.

    Sometimes the photographer feels the need to help out by saying “here is what I want you to pay the most attention to.” Eye directing techniques are good for this. This is a good use of the techniques.

    Something else I see, though, I feel is unfortunate. We live in a short attention span world and we tend to accept that as a universal truth. It is said that people only glance at an image for less than a second online, unless it really grabs them. So photographers think they better use all the tricks they can to let their potential viewers grasp the image in 1 second.

    Therefore there is a belief by many that we must make our images absolutely clear and unambiguous and immediately graspable. After all, if we only have 1 second, we better package the information clearly. Maybe that is the case if your world revolves around the ephemeral whims of social media.

    I fear this makes images shallow and boring and is a self fulfilling prophecy. Images have less depth so viewers dismiss them more quickly.

    Introducing mystery

    I follow a different path. Most of my work is intended to be viewed as prints. The relationship between prints and the viewer is a little different. If someone is walking through a gallery viewing prints, they are likely to spend a little more time contemplating each one.

    While I occasionally do work that is very clear and unambiguous, even minimalist, I often do the opposite. Sometimes I enjoy presenting images that are rich in content, that I want viewers to spend time looking at and discovering new things.

    I occasionally even misdirect attention from a subtle interest I hope the viewer discovers. Not to be mean or devious, but to reward viewers, to give them a joy of discovery for exploring more carefully.

    The image with this post is an extreme example. The eye is immediately drawn to the lower left side. That is where the brightest area is and the presence of the high contrast branch silhouette insures it. There is interest there and I hope people like it. But after you’ve explored that and you follow the cascade up to the top right corner you might discover there is a plaintive, maybe melancholy figure under the water. It is not a face, but you see it as a face. There is a moment of recognition that reignites interest and it raises questions, I hope.

    What do you think?

  • Created by Me

    Created by Me

    Generative AI is all the rage now. I suppose there might be some applications for it, but you will not see any of it in my work. What I show is entirely created by me, and I have no plans of ever changing that.

    It’s all around

    The news is full of hype about ChatGPT and Bard and, for images, DALL-E 2. Tech companies are inventing hundreds of billions (yes, “billions”) in it, so it must be about to take over everything, right?

    It is hard to read anything without seeing references to the coming revolution. It is the “next big thing” in tech. MIcrosoft, for instance, has invested huge in ChatGPT and says it will embed it in its browser and all of its applications. With so much press and money and interest, it must be true, right? Maybe.

    But do you understand what it is?

    What is AI?

    I have said before that I am a reforming Engineer. Well, I must admit that at one time I was involved in AI applications. I even believed in it at the time. That is just to say I have some technical background in the subject, so I am not just quoting press releases.

    “Artificial Intelligence” is a weird term. It is definitely artificial. Whether or not it represents intelligence is debatable. To me, there is no real “intelligence” involved. It is just a fancy computer algorithm with a lot of data embedded in it.

    The AI that is hyped today is called neural networks. It is based on a fairly simple structure that tries to mimic the way the human brain is organized by simulating neurons and synapses. Then they train the network with huge sets of data. The connections and values of the neurons and synapses are adjusted to give a desired output for a given input.

    To over-simplify it, imagine a patient teacher trying to train a neural net to recognize an egg. They “show” it a picture of an egg and say “this is an egg” and let the network adjust its values to give a positive output. Then they show it a picture of something else and say “this is not an egg” and again let the network adjust its values to give a negative output. Repeat it over and over thousands, maybe millions of times with different pictures. Eventually the neural net would get pretty good at identifying an egg, if the training data was good enough and extensive enough.

    But so what? The AI does not at that point know what an egg is. It just classifies shapes as being one or not.

    What is the good of it?

    We are discussing generative AI, so I will try to focus on that. Generative AI takes a request to make a picture or song or some such work, maybe based on the style of another artist. You could say “make a picture of a tree in the style of van Gogh”. It would make one. It would probably look like something Vincent might have done.

    If you were generating the image for an advertisement, you might be able to simulate a certain style without the encumbrances of creative fees or intellectual property laws. For you, the user of the image, you get to bypass paying the artist. Or maybe, charitably, you get something you wish the artist had created, but they did not.

    Many companies are very eager to have AI trained to be able to produce minimally acceptable results faster and cheaper than a human. Be aware of those companies that want to get rid of their people and replace them with minimal acceptable results. Have you used an AI-based chat agent to try to get support from a company? My results have been way below minimum acceptable. Maybe search engines is the best application for these bots. Most of the search results already can’t be trusted.

    So for someone wanting something cheap for a practical use, it can be a good thing.

    Is it art? I have my opinion, but let’s get to that in a minute.

    What are the limitations?

    Neural network-based AI only “knows” what it is trained to do. Its abilities are limited strictly by the data it is fed. And I used “know” in quotes because, one of the great limitations of this system is that it doesn’t know what it knows. It doesn’t even know what knowing is.

    AI cannot explain it’s actions. The data compressed into its network has been stripped away from its source. This is going to become one of the major limitations that will cripple it or stop it’s use. So, for instance, when an AI system turns you down for a loan, you cannot force it to explain why. All it can say is that you just didn’t meet the pattern. Lawsuits will come of this.

    And it may produce wonderful seeming results, but it is a cheap trick. AI products are a regression to the average, at best. That is, a large set of training data defines the average of whatever domain is being learned. This is all it knows. It does not understand the difference between unacceptable and acceptable and exceptional results. It does not understand the concepts behind what it is doing at all.

    So when you ask it to make a picture of a tree in the style of van Gogh, its data bank has many images of trees. It has encodings of parameters describing patterns of van Gogh’s style. It can mix them and make something. But it can’t step back and say “Wow, that is great. I’m proud of that! That is good art.” There is no more feeling than a tax form.

    Where does the training data come from?

    This is a little off topic of the quality of the results, but have you considered where this huge volume of training data comes from? Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and many, many others, including your Government, collect and use all the information they can find . This includes public data like Wikipedia or the Library of Congress, but also everything they can scrape up about you. So every network search you have ever done, every web page you have ever visited, all of your email, all of your pictures, your contacts, your contacts contacts, every post you have ever made, your facial images, your job, your salary, your spending habits, all of your telephone calls, everything is just free data to them.

    This is all used without your permission or control. So for an artist, for example, all of their online works can be used to train the AI to do better to try to replace them. And with no compensation or attribution.

    There is currently no accountability for AI or the companies profiting from it. It has been proven that much of the training data used was biased or incorrect, producing bogus responses from ChatGPT. And Google’s Bard got a black eye the day it was announced when it gave false information to a query about the Hubble telescope. No accountability, no ability to explain.

    A passing fad?

    One part of me thinks AI is just another passing fad. It has come and gone before. AI was going to revolutionize the world about 20 years ago or so. It died. Now the pundits are enamored with it again. Most of them are too young to realize it died of natural causes already. But venture capitalists and tech gurus are very quick to throw billions of dollars at “the next big thing”, even if it has been unable to generate any money.

    But no, I’m afraid we will have to live with this for a while. Too many billions have been invested for it to die soon. And it can show some limited tricks. Either you believe AI is a higher and more perfect form of life that will make the world better or you don’t. I don’t.

    Not on my watch

    Lots of rambling, but back to the adoption of generative AI. As far as I can see, I will never use this in my art. This is not like the introduction of digital imaging, where film purists wailed about the passing of a wonderful era. This is not a technology shift, it is a tool that plans to eliminate artists.

    I will use useful tools, like sky selection in LIghtroom or Photoshop, but that is just a force multiplier to get my job done quicker. I could do the same thing myself and I can often get better results. It is like a woodworker using a planer to smooth a tabletop quickly rather than spending hours sanding it. You don’t say the tool created the piece of furniture.

    When you see images from me, they were created personally by me. I don’t and do not plan to use AI to create my art. I don’t think art created by AI is really art, but that gets into the argument of what art is. What I call art is only created by humans.

    Call me a Luddite, but I believe only humans can actually create.