Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Artistic Process

Switch On
What engages your creativity? What gets you up from the chair and out the door shooting. I have discovered I have a trigger to switch me on, and it is so simple I barely recognized it.
Need to shoot
I think many of us who shoot for the joy and the creativity of it tend to stay in a mindful state. When I am driving or riding somewhere it seems I am often looking at everything passing with a view to framing and composing shots. Mentally, I click off a lot that I wish I could see.
At this stage of my life journey, I feel a need to shoot. To capture what I see, and to bring some new creativity to it. It is a frustration to me to see interesting scenes and not be able to shoot them. But I am not always doing it and moving and in the flow.
Sometimes there is a kind of inertia holding me back. There are times I feel too busy, or my thoughts are on something else. This is part of life and often unavoidable, but sometimes it is just a kind of procrastination. I’m not feeling in the “mood”. At those times when I could and should be thinking photography, I sometimes must kick-start myself to begin shooting.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Permission to shoot
I have discovered that I sometimes need to do something to motivate myself. As I write this, it is 93°F out, on the way to 103°F. That saps my energy.
I need a way to increase my desire to shoot to the point it overcomes my inertia or dislike of the weather or the time involved or whatever it is that is holding me back.
One simple technique I have learned is simply to pick up my camera. Sounds silly and too easy to be of use. But it often works on me.
I haven’t done any deep psychological analysis on myself, but I believe holding the camera – or even the camera bag – gives me permission to take pictures. The weight of the physical object is real and compelling. I am familiar with it and comfortable with it. I like the way it feels in my hands. We have history of doing good work together. Something is awakened and barriers are set aside.
With a camera in hand, or even in my camera bag, I am a photographer. An artist. Photographers are expected to take pictures. I should be out shooting. It becomes the easier path.
Wherever I am, on a city street, in an airport, driving down the road, I should feel completely secure and justified taking pictures. If I am looking foolish staring at something other people do not see, that is OK. They are not artists, or at least, they’re not me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Nothing interesting
I am mostly over worrying about what other people think. What matters is the art I can create.
A favorite story of mine is a time I was on a trail near where I live. I think I had my tripod set up to shoot a tree by a river. A woman walking by stopped to see what I was shooting and pronounced “I see nothing interesting here”.
I almost burst out laughing. For her to dismiss my vision just because she could not envision what I was seeing seemed ridiculous. That helped me to be much less concerned about other people’s opinion when I am pursuing an image. Rather than shaming me, it reinforced my independent streak.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
When I pick up my camera a switch turns on and I am now in a focused mode of seeing. What people think, fear of looking silly, or of calling attention to myself (a nightmare for an introvert) no longer matters. Of course, I will not be rude or offensive. That is not my nature. But within reason, I will do what I feel compelled to do.
Creativity
Just picking up my camera does not mean I am in a super creative zone. I may have to start shooting a while to get the energy flowing enough to fully engage my mind. But I find that just a few shutter clicks somehow releases most of the chains binding my brain and I relax and start flowing.
As my inspiration, Jay Maisel, said: If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it. I consider that whatever trick I use to get me motivated to start framing images and pressing the shutter release is worth it. Then things start happening.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Pick it up
So, when I am not in the “mood” for photography, just picking up my camera will usually jolt me out of my lethargy. Somehow, it signals me to switch on and get into seeing images.
To follow up on where I started earlier, I reluctantly put on my camera bag and went out in the heat. We had a nice walk and even shot a few images. It was not as bad as I expected, and I’m glad I made myself get out. To be prudent, I did shave a few miles off my normal outing and took extra water.
Do you have a trick you use to get going when you don’t feel like doing it? Picking up my camera is my signal to switch on. What about you?
August 6, 2025
The Camera as Teacher
We often are told that as photographers, we need to learn to see. Yes, but… There are probably at least 2 parts to that, learning to be more mindful and learning to see as the camera does. In this second case, the camera will show us what it can do. We need to understand the camera as teacher.
Seeing
If we don’t see a scene and recognize its potential, then we will not photograph it. This type of seeing is based on perception and attention, not the quality of our eyesight. I advocate this type of mindfulness in many of my writings.
This kind of seeing can be learned and practiced. A camera is not even required. David duChemin had an intriguing statement in Light, Space, and Time: “We see through the lens of our thoughts.”
I recommend that we become so obsessed with our art that we see almost everything as a potential image and be plotting how to capture it best. Obviously, there are some times and scenes we would not want to do that, but it can be our default behavior. It is good training. When I am driving or walking around, I am usually playing a “what’s here and how would I capture it” game in my mind.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Seeing as the camera does
Seeing potential shots around us does not assure we will execute them well. There is a huge difference between how we see the world and how our camera records it.
As we become serious about our art, we must become serious about learning our tools and medium. These are our means of expression. A pre-visualization of the greatest scene we have ever imagined is not much use if we cannot realize the shot.
The camera has its own strengths and weaknesses that characterize what it can and cannot do. Any medium does. This is not a limitation so much as a creative opportunity.
Our eyes
Our eyes are marvelous devices. And when I say “eye” I consider the whole path from the lens into our brain. Our visual system.
I will not try to. analyze this, only point out a few ways our visual system is completely different from a camera.
Our eyes and our camera both have a lens and a “sensor”. The eye’s sensor is the retina. This is about the extent of the parallels.
Our camera has a flat, 2-dimensional silicon sensor that captures the scene all at once, in parallel. That is, the entire sensor is exposed to the light coming through the lens while the shutter is open, and this makes one image capture. The pixels are all equally sensitive to light.
Our eyes, though, are not uniformly sensitive. There is a region of the retina that has the most resolving power (the fovea). So, unconsciously to us, our eyes are always scanning our field of view. This process is called saccade. Our 2 eyes jump and focus together momentarily on a point. Then we move on to another point. We repeat this several times a second.
Through this process, our marvelous brain works with our eyes to paint this information together into a smooth, seamless visual sensation in full 3D. We effectively have real time HDR, panoramic vision, and image stitching – in 3D.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Meaning
Even more exciting is that our brain also constantly tries to make sense of what we see. Scientists postulate that we utilize a bottom-up then top-down analysis process to understand scenes and to develop meaning. And we do this in. milliseconds.
We tend to see what we pay attention to. If we are looking for something or if we are concerned about something, we see it more readily. The brain constantly attempts to give us the meaning we need in what we see. The process seems also to be directed by our knowledge and expectations.
Our cameras do not search for meaning. At least, not yet. Eye tracking is not meaning. People detection is a focus aid, not meaning.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The medium of photography
All that helps to let us see that the camera does not see like we do. So if we want to use the camera as a tool for our art, we must learn what it does. Then we can use it for what it can do and stop wishing for what we would like it to do.
We point our camera at a scene and press the shutter, but the results are not what we expect. Was this a failure on our part? Perhaps it is better viewed as a learning opportunity.
If we used a very fast shutter speed, movement in the scene was frozen. This is different from what our eyes perceive.
Maybe we used a very long shutter speed and discovered that all the motion is blurred. Again, our eyes do not perceive this.
Or we shot it with a wide aperture of, say f/4, only to find that much of the image is out of focus. But we are used to our eyes “seeing” everything in focus.
If you hand hold your camera you may be disappointed to find that many of your frames are not as sharp as you intended. After all, our eyes seldom perceive things as unsharp, but in the camera there is a balance of exposure settings to juggle to get a crisp image exposed properly.
We pointed the camera at a brightly lit daylight scene and found that some highlights were overexposed, and some shadows were underexposed. Our eyes usually see everything correctly exposed. The automatic HDR we employ can lead us to forget that the camera can’t do that.
Through experiments like these, and many more, we eventually learn how the camera will capture a scene under almost any condition. It takes some experience, and a lot of thrown away images. The camera gives us feedback by faithfully recording the scene according to how we adjusted it. We may not always be happy with the result. Failure is a great teacher.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Limitations help define art
But eventually it is no longer mysterious. We learn to control the tools we have and make them work for us. Our camera becomes a means to realize our vision.
Along the way, we discover something marvelous. These limitations we had to learn to work around are opportunities for artistic expression.
For instance, we have a whole new perspective on time. The camera can slice time down to thousandths of a second to stop motion. Or it can keep its shutter open for seconds or more to show the effect of motion over time. Our eyes and brain cannot do this, so now we can open whole new views on the world.
We can intentionally underexpose a foreground to create a dramatic silhouette. Or we can intentionally overexpose the scene to produce a dreamy washout. Basically, we can alter the exposure values to any degree we wish to create the effect we like. They do not always have to be “correct”. What we see with our eyes is almost always correct.
We can superimpose multiple layers or remove distracting elements. Want to feature the form of something? Black & white is excellent for that. With the right tools we can peer into almost total darkness or shoot a picture of the surface of the sun. We need our camera and software to do these things. Our eyes can’t.
A good tool is a force multiplier. It allows us to do things we could not do unaided.
As we listen and let the camera teach us what it can do, we discover new artistic possibilities. Maybe we want to use them. Maybe not. That is up to us and how these things fit in our vision. But the toolbox becomes larger and better stocked as we learn more.
So, when you look at an image and think “Wow, what just happened here?”, maybe that is an opportunity to discover a new feature of the world of photography. One that you might be able to exploit to your advantage. The camera can become our teacher.
July 30, 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
Ethics of Editing
I thought this question was completely discussed and laid to rest. But just in the last week I have seen 3 posts questioning the ethics of editing images. Not really saying it is wrong, just questioning it in general.
Let me give you my conclusion so you can stop reading if you disagree: the question is wrong. It is not an ethical issue for art.
Are photographs special?
Because of its nature of recording the scene in front of the camera, some people still assume that photography is some kind of “pure” imaging form. That is, that what you see is reality. It is not and never has been.
You would never make that assumption of a painting. It is clear to everyone that it is a constructed image. Even if it was painted as “plein air”, the artist would leave out things that distract and freely put in things that “should” be there.
Just because the sensor (or film) images everything in the field of view of the lens does not certify that the resulting image is “truth”. And speaking of the field of view, changing it is a valid and common way to change the story you are telling. Zooming in on a small part or moving to the side a little may completely alter the message of the image. Is that ethical?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Modifying darkroom prints
Prints were routinely modified even from the days of film and darkroom printing. Filters made serious modification to tonal renderings in the captured negatives. Negatives were spotted to remove dust (or distractions). Dodging and burning further altered the tonality of the original scene.
If you are familiar with Photoshop, you know that one of the layer blend modes is Screen. Do you know where this name came from? A way of compositing film images was to project 2 images together onto a screen, then re-photograph the resulting combined image.
Photographers are resourceful. They find a way to make the image they need or want to make. Even if the result departs from the original.
Modifying digital images
But it is so much easier to alter digital images. Does that somehow make it unethical to do it?
We have wonderful technology in our computers and image processing software. But would we be better artists if we printed our images “straight” – unmodified in any way?
No, we would not. Digital sensors are amazing, but the straight output of a RAW file is bland, low contrast, probably with a bad color cast, and it has dust spots and distractions. You could never sell an image like this, and it would be foolish to even show it to viewers in this state. Other than to make a point about how important correction is.
Even black & white prints are an advanced modification of color images. It is no longer a throwback to simpler and more pure times.
We are expected to correct the color and contrast, to remove spots and distractions, to alter the lighting and tonality to make it more pleasing. You could never win a contest or be admitted to a gallery without doing at least those steps.
Beyond that, pixels can be processed and combined much more freely than film images ever could. To say that it is wrong to do that with digital images is like saying that writing should only use the grammar and vocabulary of 19th Century English, because it was more pure.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Why do it?
Is it too simple to say, “because we can”? Simple but true. We can. Pixels are raw material. They can be modified or combined or stretched or colored at our will. The same way that a painter can use any colors or put any brush strokes down on his canvas.
What we choose to do depends on the image. Sometimes we compose the “final” shot almost entirely in camera. We recognize what we want to do, and we can make it happen in the field. These images still need a lot of work to bring out the quality we want, but the result may be very close to the scene as shot.
But sometimes I go out shooting what I call “raw material”. These images are deliberately not intended to be a finished image by itself. They become parts blended or composited together with other parts to form a final image concept. Is that valid? Is it ethical? To me, completely.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
When not to do it
There are times that images should be labeled as “truth”. If you are representing the work as photojournalism or documentary, it should relatively unmodified. Relatively in the sense that it may be cropped or spotted or exposure balanced. Things like that that do not seriously alter the result that is presented to the viewer.
Even so, there are the issues of point of view and field of view. I discussed field of view. For journalism what the photographer chooses not to show may completely change the ‘truth” of an image. And anyone, even a seasoned journalist, has a point of view they bring to the shoot. That POV determines how they represent the scenes, what to feature, how to frame it, etc.
So, we must accept that what we see is the truth from their point of view.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Ethics?
One of the articles I read recently asks “how much we can ethically alter a photograph?” My response is that only photojournalists and documentary photographers should be expected to “tell the truth”. Other than that, there are no ethics involved. The concept does not even apply to art.
All other photographers are creating something artificial. The resulting image is a creative work of fiction. Trying to say that there is some artificial ethical limit on what they do is like saying all writers must only tell the absolute factual truth. I hope not. I like reading fiction.
There are many reasons for creating images. A few uses of them should maintain a semblance of truth. Most do not have any link to truth.
My images are only truth in the sense that I created them (no AI involved), they are my product, and they represent what I felt or believed at the moment. Any ethical questions are within my mind and based solely on my values. If anyone else raises an ethical concern about my work, I thank them for being interested, I might want to find out their concerns, but I would tell them to apply their ethical anxieties to their own work.
Of all the things there might be to worry about in the world, the ethics of altering my images is not one of them.
The real ethical dilemma
There is a serious ethical issue that needs a lot more discussion. That is AI generated work and creating images that deliberately lie about events. But I am out of room here.
June 18, 2025
Too Many Photographs?
Do you shoot too many photographs? Can we shoot too many? I think this is a question we can only answer individually. A lot of it depends on why we are shooting.
Easy to do
We are blessed with amazing digital technology that allows us to frame and compose and take photos rapidly. And some of our cameras can vacuum up 20 or more images a second if we want to. Memory cards are so large now that we can keep stuffing images into them for days and days.
This is one of the things I love about photography compared to other arts. The way I shoot is usually spontaneous. See it – take it. Maybe think about it some and try some alternate compositions. Maybe.
Working like this fits my personality. I have shot for so many years that much of the thought process of composition, exposure, etc. is subconscious.
But a downside of this is that it is easy to shoot a lot of frames. Sometimes more than I ever intended.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Travel
One of those times when we take many more images than usual is when we travel. Everything seems new and different and special. We are compelled to shoot. And we do.
On a 3 week trip to France I shot over 4000 images. And I think I am rather disciplined. I know people who take many thousands more images than me on a trip.
This is not a problem, unless it becomes one for us. It is fun and exciting. A benefit of traveling as a photographer is to take new and interesting images. We reward ourselves by putting our self in a “target rich” environment with our photography equipment.
We seem to give ourselves permission to take more pictures when traveling. I don’t know why. We should feel total permission all the time.
Projects
Another thing that seems to generate a lot of images is a project. Assigning our self a theme or topic to focus on for a time can be energizing. Directing our attention can stimulate new energy and creativity.
But it takes a lot of great candidate images to put together a story line and a few excellent selects for the final portfolio. When we focus on a project we suddenly see opportunities in places we never dreamed. That can lead to a lot of shots.
There aren’t any metrics that matter for something like this. But for something to discuss, I figure that to get to a final set of 20 images for a project I need maybe 100-200 strong images that do a great job of representing the theme. To get to those strong selects may require hundreds of attempts. And this is for 1 short term project.
I have some long term projects that I have accumulated a thousand or more candidate images for. And counting.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Arguments against
It seems to me that the arguments against shooting a lot of images come down to 2 things: cost and time.
It is said that shooting digital images is free. This is not true. If you care about treating your images as an important asset, they have to be managed and curated. This is an overhead expense we have to consider.
Cost
Disk space is getting pretty cheap, but that is offset by the quantity we require. I have an obscene amount of disk space. My main image storage is a 20TByte RAID disk. It is roughly half full. In addition, I am a fanatic about backup. A Time Machine backup runs every hour incrementally backing up to an external hard disk. In addition, I have another large network RAID disk for backup plus yet another external drive. These get complete backups of my images and Lightroom catalog every night.
And once a week I run a backup that I keep offsite for more safety.
Rotating magnetic drives wear out and have to be replaced. I have a stack of bad ones waiting for me to get into a mood to smash with a sledge hammer. I almost got there this week. SSD’s have an advantage of speed and reliability and I am in a slow process of switching to them as the price gets more reasonable. I don’t have a stack of them to smash – yet.
This setup is definitely not cheap and has to be managed.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Time
But that is “just” money. There is another hidden cost that sneaks up on us.
It takes a tremendous amount of time to load, examine, cull, sort, tag, and file all these images. And then the promising ones require a lot of editing. This can add up to a major time investment.
Without a disciplined approach to managing our images, we basically end up with a “shoe box” full of pictures. A very large shoe box where is is almost impossible to locate an image we have in mind. Can you quickly locate your best images? How do we search for candidates for a project if we have 10’s of thousands of random files on the computer but no organization system?
I spend more time selecting and filing and editing than I do shooting. And I shoot almost every day.
I consider this a major unaccounted cost of shooting. The cost is in time. Time that is necessary to spend, but that we cannot apply to more creative parts of our art.
Learning/growing
Have I convinced you to shoot less? I hope not. That is not my goal.
I believe the benefits of shooting a lot outweigh the costs. I just believe in being upfront about the costs so we can make an informed decision.
For one thing, improving requires a lot of practice to hone and refine our skills. Our vision will only develop over time as we come to understand what we like and are drawn to.
Cartier-Bresson said your first 10,000 photos are the worst. I think that is true, but it does not mean your next 10,000 photos will be great. Just better. It takes a lot of practice.
Photography is a combination of art and craft. Both of those improve with practice. but only if we are honestly evaluating our work. Be your own worst critic.
Linus Pauling said “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas and throw away the bad ones.” I think this applies to photography as well. Are all of your shots keepers? I hope not. If they are, you are not out on the edge pushing yourself to try new things.
Shoot a lot, experiment, do foolish things that probably will not work. Who knows? That is one way discoveries are made. And it can be a lot of fun.
Why
But most fundamentally, why are you shooting? Is it to make money? Is it to get likes on social media?
Know what your goals are. I cannot criticize your goals. That is your personal choice.
I can say I have come to understand that in my life, my goal in making pictures is the joy of creating something that gives me pleasure. The satisfaction of being creative and creating something I consider beautiful or interesting. Selling prints is welcome and a pleasant validation, but not my driving motivation.
I am my main audience. If other people like my work, that is nice and it makes me feel good. But if they hate it, I will still create for myself. If I like my images, I am still being successful, even if everybody else dislikes them.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
No
So no, I’m not shooting too many photographs. They are for me. You will see few of them, so you do not care how many I shoot.
I shoot when I travel. I shoot for projects. Just walking around my hometown gives me all the reason I need to shoot something interesting. Something that no one else was likely to see in the same way.
My art is an important creative outlet in my life. It keeps me young (relatively). Art makes me think and keep a mindful attitude in the world around me. It feeds my curiosity.
This is worth it to me despite the cost and time involved in keeping up with it. Whether I shoot many or few images does not matter. What matters to me is the art I am able to create and the satisfaction I get from it.
I sincerely hope you are able to get as much joy from your work.
April 2, 2025