Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Craft

  • Light

    Light

    Maybe it seems silly to talk about light and photography. It seems obvious. But light is one of the things many photographers obsess about, worry about, plan around. Good light, bad light, golden hour, etc.

    As photographers we need to need to be very aware of light. We cannot make photographs without light. The light we have at any given time strongly influences the pictures we make. Let’s talk about awareness of it rather than trying to tell you what light you should or shouldn’t use.

    “Good” light

    Good light. Ah, the holy grail. Many people search for it all the time. I know photographers who will not take their cameras out unless the light is “right”. Sometimes, I confess, I do it myself. You know, its a blizzard out, I won’t bother. The light isn’t right.

    This very elitist view is unfortunate, but people come to the attitude honestly, because that is what many instructors teach. They say you have to research a location, find the exact right time of year and angle of light for a particular landscape subject. Then hope the weather cooperates on the one hour window have you allowed yourself to shoot your subject.

    And “golden hour”, the prime time for all outdoor photographers. Many people are taught that it is worthless to even try to shoot after the sun has been up an hour and until an hour before it sets. Learn to think different. You are needlessly limiting your opportunities.

    If your thing is shooting portraits perhaps you prefer an overcast, soft light day. This makes gentle, even, predictable light for excellent results. No doubt, but how many of those ideal times do you have? And how many good opportunities do you miss because the light is not exactly the way you want?

    “Bad” light

    Photo instructors teach, or at least imply, that there is bad light that should be avoided. The harsh light of midday is a prime example. It is made to seem that no self respecting photographer goes out to try to shoot when the sun is high overhead. The shadows are harsh and the light is flat and boring. At least, that is what they say.

    Or maybe it is a uniformly overcast day with a bright but featureless sky. Terrible we are taught. There is little tonal separation and the sky is flat and boring. You can’t shoot good landscapes then.

    Or after sunset when there is no direct light and the exposure times are getting long. That is another time people pack up their equipment to leave.

    Or even if you are shooting in midday (shame on you) but you forgot to being your 11 stop neutral density filter to being the light levels down enough to do a 10 second exposure of that waterfall to streak the water like you intend. That must mean the light is bad. Or…

    Adaptable

    OK. If you have held on this long you will probably get that I’m suggesting that light is not good or bad, it just is. Use the light you have. Embrace it and figure out the best way to use it. In most of the examples I cited above the photographer had a fixed expectation of what they wanted to see and shoot. If the light did not match their expectations, it must be “bad”.

    Most of us do not have the resources of, say, National Geographic funding our shoots. If we take a trip to a location we have been wanting to photograph, we can’t just hunker down and wait it out for a week or 2 if the weather is not what we wanted. We have to be flexible and adaptable.

    If we get to our location and it is closed for some reason, we cannot change that. But we can find something else maybe even more interesting. Same with the light. Figure out what works right now. What you end up with may be better than what you planned.

    Try practicing this flexibility. It is a great creativity exercise. An attitude and practice is what Jay Maisel calls “going out empty“. That is, leave your expectations at home. Just wander around and learn to see things that are interesting. Things the light works for. Things that excite you. In doing this you develop the skill to be able to work with what you have before you. To let the conditions, including the light, guide what you do. But no matter the conditions, to be able to make interesting pictures.

    Street photographers are probably better at this than most of us. They have to be adaptable. Light not working here? Move. Can’t find the subject you had in mind? Get interested in what is there. They are used to letting their creativity guide them to good shots.

    Awareness

    I’m afraid too many instructors train their students to be internally focused. To have a preconceived idea of what they are going to shoot and to reject anything else. There are certain times when a fixed idea of what you want is required, but for most of us, it does not have to be the normal pattern.

    I encourage you to instead be aware of the light, of the surroundings, of the activity or the scenes around us and flow with it. Use your creativity to make something interesting out of what you find rather than coming home disappointed because you did not find exactly what you intended.

    Take the photo at the top of this article for example. Midday, flat light, hazy, featureless sky, not what I would usually look for. But I think this works. 🙂

    Maybe it is too far of a stretch, but it seems to be an attitude of gratitude. Be thankful for what you have and learn to find surprises that delight everyday. Who knows where it will take you?

  • The Histogram

    The Histogram

    Please permit me to rant briefly. I get incensed by the practice of most photo instructors to “dumb down” what we do. They assume people are incapable or afraid of anything technical. So they give a very short and often unintelligible description of something we, as photographers need to know, then go on. One example of this is the lowly histogram.

    I’m sorry to have to tell you, but all art has a technical component to it. Photography is one of the most technical.

    The histogram is like taking your temperature or looking at a graph of your portfolio performance. It is data that does not mean anything in itself but it is very useful to check. In this case, the histogram is just a measure of our image. It is valuable, but it is only one of many possible measures.

    What I hope to do here is do what your dad probably did (or should have done) in this situation – tell you to get over it. You need to know this, so get on with it. 🙂

    Not high tech

    The histogram is not a complex, fancy piece of technology. It is just counting and marking.

    Let’s say for simplicity that your image is black & white and is 8 bit depth. You know that this means the image is a grid of pixels, each having a value of 0-255. Now you decide to go through each pixel one at a time and keep track of a count of each pixel value you find. You come to a pixel that has the value 87. Go to your row of 87’s and increment it by one. You know, like

    Keep on going. If the next pixel is 127, go and increment the count for that bucket.

    After you count the values of all the pixels, you will have up to 256 groups of counts. Now, draw a graph (technically a column chart) or put the data in Excel and have it graph it. If you put the numbers 0-255 on the x axis (the horizontal line) and draw a point above each number corresponding to the count you made for that number, you will have a histogram.

    That’s all it is, just a count of the number of each pixel value. The actual number in each bin does not matter. What counts is the overall shape of the curve.

    An example

    Here is a fairly balanced black & white image and its histogram.

    People would call this a “good” histogram. It shows that the tones have counts from very close to 0 to almost 255, a full range from black to white The tones are spread fairly evenly. There is a bump in the distribution of the light tones – the right side- which is natural because there are big areas of snowfields and light gray clouds.

    There is no magic. You could manually follow the pattern I described and derive this yourself. It doesn’t “mean” anything of itself. It is just a way to get some information about your image.

    Descriptive, not prescriptive

    This is where people get confused, partly because they are misled by their instructors. The histogram does not tell you if you have a good or bad image. The histogram is descriptive, not prescriptive. That is, it is just information for you. It does not grade your image or tell you you exposed it wrong.

    IN GENERAL, if your histogram shows values bunched up far at the left or far at the right, that is a warning sign. It is telling you the image may be too underexposed or over exposed. Those values at the extremes show that you may be losing data that cannot be recovered.

    Whenever you see this situation it is a warning flag, not a stop sign. It may be necessary for the effect you want.

    Expose To The Right example

    You often hear the advice to “expose to the right“. This is good advice in general. It means bias your exposure higher – more histogram to the right – as long as there is no clipping of the highlights. This is because of some of that scary technical stuff you need to know. The dark areas of an image are more subject to noise. If you have to boost the dark areas that magnifies the noise. The best results are often obtained by overexposing a little and reducing the exposure of the whole image in post processing. Digital data retains more information when you are scaling it down than when you are scaling it up.

    Expose to the right is an example of a good way to use histograms. I always have the histogram view turned on in my viewfinder. As a matter of fact, possibly the single best reason to go to mirrorless cameras is to be able to get a real-time histogram. I always check it, before and after taking a frame.

    Let me emphasize again that this is information for you to use and make your own judgment. Do not let the histogram take your pictures. Keep artistic control.

    Yours can look anyway you want

    It is not unusual for me to shoot images that have a “bad” histogram. When I do this it is deliberate and I do not have to answer to the data police (yet).

    One class of very low key images is night photography. Often these are nearly all dark with only a few points of light. This is an example:

    It is hard to see at this size, but you can tell what is important from the histogram. Most data is clustered at the dark end. There is a spike at the brightest whites. These are the stars. Your instructor would tell you it is not a good histogram, but the image is exactly what I wanted. An image is properly exposed if it comes out the way you want.

    At the other extreme, a high key image is almost all white. This fence in a snowy field is almost all bright values:

    The distribution (the arrangement of the data values) is skewed way to the right, but not overexposed. But there is a spike at the left representing the black fence posts. Very high contrast. This is the result I wanted, so it is correct.

    These 2 examples of “wrong” exposures should broaden your understanding of what is allowed. Anything that matches your intent is a properly done image.

    A great tool, but just a tool.

    I hope I have given you a better feel of what a histogram represents. It is just an overall look at the data values in the image. It is there for information to help you make the images you want. A histogram is neither good or bad. It is just information. Other people have given their own interpretation of histograms and their importance. This is a good one.

    I am very thankful for the invention of histograms and their availability in modern cameras and post processing tools. It is an indispensable tool. I use them every day. But remember it is a tool. It is not there to tell you what you can do. You are the artist. Only you can decide the result you want.

  • Reality

    Reality

    As an artist, is reality our goal? Should we focus on depicting reality perfectly? Is art just a representation of reality, or is it something more?

    Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. – John Lennon

    Can a great image be “real”?

    To be honest, no. A 2 dimensional image expressed using pigments or pixels is not the same as a real scene. But you say, “yes, but the image ‘looks just like’ the original”. Actually, in most cases it looks either the way the artist remembered it or how they wanted it to look or how they wanted you to think of it looking.

    All photographs must be processed a lot to be presentable. Even Ansel Adam’s famous prints are based on many hours of darkroom work for each one. And for Ansel or any of us, the prints produced of an image change over time. So either reality changes with time or art is not reality. That is, as the artist’s vision and taste changes, the processing of an image changes to reflect it. This represents the artist’s interpretation, not reality.

    Is reality the goal?

    I don’t know of any genre of art where reality is the actual goal. Let’s say you are shooting images of birds for a birding book. Is reality the goal? I would say no, you want images that allow the reader to see the important characteristics of the bird. If that means distracting elements must be removed or colors enhanced or “corrected”, then these will be done for the sake of clear communication.

    The beautiful landscape print you bought to hang on your wall because it reminds you of a favorite place is not “reality”. Colors are enhanced, contrast is boosted to make it more dramatic, even mountains may be “stretched” some to make them more pronounced. None of this makes it a fake. It resonates with you as the way you remember it.

    This article will use a lot of quotes. I want to make the point that this idea is not just my ravings.

    “My goal as an artist is not to try and replicate reality , but to cross into the world of fantasy. This is a much easier sell because reality is what we see every day. The world of fantasy is a way of escape.” Joel Grimes

    “Fine art photography should be an escape from reality.”  Joel Grimes

    “A photograph is not reality, it is at best, a representation or illusion of reality.” Joel Grimes

    One reason Joel Grimes has credibility with me on this topic is because he is color blind. Yes, a color blind photographer. And he is famous and well respected. Rather than considering it a handicap he uses his color blindness to further his artistic vision. He is obviously not trying to duplicate reality when he does not even see the same reality most of us do.

    I’m not suggesting we all try to copy Joel Grimes’ work. I will not. It is very good, but it is not me. My hope is that you will see that reality can be a false goal.

    Did it really look like that?

    I get asked this a lot and I often struggle to answer. The obvious answer is “no, of course not”. But I have to try to read the questioner to try to determine what they mean by the question. Is the questioner just naive because they do not understand the process of art? Do they really believe that the picture should look like the reality? Are they wistfully hoping there is a place that really looks like that? Or are they trying to “trap” me into admitting that I “faked” the image?

    Usually I reply with a fairly generic answer like “that’s the way I saw it.” When the question is asked like this it is probably not the time to get into a long discussion of art vs. reality.

    But you probably understand that reality is not my goal and that all images are heavily processed. Never accept a picture as truth.

    Reality

    What, then, is the purpose of an image? In a way this is another way of asking what is real. I will go out on a limb and say that the artist helps bring reality to an image by their interpretation. The great Australian photographer Tony Hewitt says to “Look at the everyday ‘real’ in an entirely different way.” And he does this very successfully. His images are “of” real scenes, but they don’t look like what you would have seen standing there with him. They are more.

    A photograph is more than its subject. The real challenge is to make something out of nothing. Geoffrey James

    It is my responsibility as an artist to try to make you feel what I felt about the subject. If you see an image that is just a factual portrayal of a scene it will not hold your interest for long. But if I can give you an emotional connection it will have lasting power.

    Resonance

    Let me introduce the concept of resonance. In physics it is sound emitted from an object based on its vibration. That’s precise, but cold.

    Think of a bell. Strike it and it rings with a certain sound and it continues ringing for seconds. That is the bell’s response to the energy you gave it with the strike.

    In an artistic sense, I see resonance as the thought or feeling or memory invoked by a piece of art. Something about the work “resonates” with you – it, in effect, makes you vibrate or tingle. This resonance can happen when I am able to convey to you the emotion I felt when I discovered this scene and captured it.

    A resonance like this goes beyond the surface image. You feel a connection or it produces an emotion in you that makes you keep coming back to look at it. This is what I seek to do.

    This resonance is different than just “reality”. It is more important than the reality. What you feel is what you will remember. This is the significance of the image.

    Reality

    So, perhaps the “reality” of an image is the way it made you feel. This was your subjective reaction to what the artist gave you. It is your interpretation, your internal processing that lets you buy in to it and embrace it. It becomes reality through your personal response.

    Do not confuse what is visible with what is real: despite a degree of overlap, they are not the same thing. What’s real about an expressive image is never its objectivity, but how it is subjectively perceived.  – Guy Tal

    It may be a misconception to talk about art as “real” or not. Art cannot, of itself, be reality. The reality is what you create for yourself based on your emotional reaction to the work that the artist put his effort into.

    So, the “Real World”, what is it? Where is it? I believe that for art, the “real world” is our personal reaction to the piece. Was the artist successful in making you feel what he felt? Did you feel something completely different but meaningful to you? If you didn’t feel anything, you won’t remember it or have any attachment to it. We create our own artistic reality through our personal reaction.

    I believe it is my duty as an artist to help you feel my emotional connection to an image. If I can do that the image will become reality to you in a whole new way. If I cannot do that, I have failed and the image will be unimportant to you.

    So in a sense, reality is my goal. But it is not the reality of a faithful rendering of what was in front of the camera. It is the reality of trying to have you share my emotional reaction to the scene, and having you reawaken this feeling whenever you see the picture.

  • Inspiration

    Inspiration

    Inspiration, or lack of it, is a fear and concern for almost all artists. If we’re not feeling inspiration right now we fear we’ve dried up and our days as an artist are past. If we’re awash in inspiration we may feel overwhelmed.

    I’m mostly going to discuss the lack of inspiration, since that is what we typically fear.

    Be open

    If “the muse”, or whatever your view of inspiration is, doesn’t seem to be hanging out with you, what can you do? My experience is be patient and spend your time wisely while you’re waiting.

    Open yourself to stimulus. Take a walk. Read a book. Watch a training video. Look at another artist’s web site and/or blog. Visit museums or galleries. All these things can energize you and refresh your spirit. We are all different in our makeup, so what works for me might not work for you. That’s OK. Keep trying things until you find something that pumps you up.

    Creativity exercises

    When your “normal” work doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, it’s a great time to do some of those personal projects you have wanted to get to for a long time. Do something different. Something outside of your normal style or subject matter.

    It’s a complete no risk venture. If you decide it is a complete failure, fine. Now you know. Write that one off and try another. Jay Maisel once said “If it’s not working, go have a good glass of wine and then try something else.” But if you love the results maybe you have learned something new about yourself. Maybe it will stretch you and even take you in a new direction. Doing something is better than doing nothing.

    If you are a traditional landscape photographer, try something like street photography. It will be so different that it will make you reevaluate a lot of things. If nothing else it should be refreshing.

    Do you pride yourself in tack sharp, crunchy, high detail shots? Great. I love that, too. But spend some time doing blurred images. Do handhelds at slow shutter speeds, even introducing intentional camera motion. No, really. Try it. You may see whole new opportunities and new creative possibilities.

    I have talked before about exercises like going out with one lens. Give it a try. It forces a new thought process on your creativity. You will have to reevaluate some things about your composition and style. Some of them may influence changes. But even if not, it is something fresh and different that may energize you.

    A sense of wonder

    My work is strongly influenced by a sense of wonder towards the world around me. Honestly, sometimes I don’t feel it. The wonder and inspiration is gone. What can I do? I can’t make interesting images if I don’t feel excited about things.

    One thing is to give myself permission to acknowledge that I’m in a slump. I am very lucky to be what is called a “fine art” creator. As such, I don’t have to perform on schedule. Clients do not contract me to create something to their specification at a certain time.

    That is not accidental. I spent a long career working for other people and having to be driven by external demands. When the opportunity came, I re-molded my life to give myself freedom. I realize this may not be possible for you, but I’m being honest about my situation and the options I have.

    Giving myself permission to not have to create takes a lot of pressure off, but not all. I really don’t like not feeling wonder. It is frustrating and sometimes scary. I get impatient, wanting to move on NOW. Part of what I have realized is that patience has to be balanced with action.

    Confidence to wait

    Over many years of experience, I have learned that inspiration will return. It is important to develop the confidence that you are creative and that the feelings will return, probably even better than before.

    If you were creative in the past it did not just get used up. Creativity is not a fixed quantity that you exhaust. It is a skill and an attribute of our wondrous minds. But life is cyclic. You have ups and downs. sometimes you have to just “hunker down” and ride it out. That implies being content to wait, to be patient. You can do that if you believe it will come back.

    I believe there are things we can do to open us up to allow the creativity to flow again, but we cannot force it. If we try to force it we will get frustrated and disappointed and afraid. It will seem like the more we try to make it happen the further away it is from us.

    Giving yourself permission to not have to do the greatest work of your career today does not mean sit and not do anything. Action is important.

    Put in the reps

    As I said earlier, I believe there are useful things we can do to open ourselves to feeling the inspiration again. Things like going for walks or going to museums or looking at the work of other artists. And creativity exercises can help to stimulate our subconscious.

    But a simple and often overlooked thing is to “just do it”. Practice, practice, practice. Put in your reps. Don’t worry if you are not producing masterpieces. A great basketball player will spend hours a day in the gym just shooting baskets and practicing layups. That is not “game level” intensity. But it trains the muscles to do the right thing. That builds confidence and mastery over time.

    At this point, though, don’t overthink the problem. That will make you freeze up. Let it work itself out. I often quote Jay Maisel. One of his quips is “Don’t overthink things in front of you. If it moves you, shoot it. If it’s fun, shoot it. If you’ve never seen it before, shoot it.”

    Magic happens

    I find that when I make myself get out and do something, it is like the basketball player who can do well in the game because he did the practice. For me, the click of the camera shutter is a kind of magic. It is a sound I subconsciously associate with creativity and making images. Things often start to flow, even when I did not feel “in the mood” going out. Even if they don’t, it is good for me to be out practicing.

    So inspiration is not the end all. No inspiration does not necessarily mean just sitting in our room moping. Get up, get out, do something. If you are moving and taking action you are much more likely to start feeling inspiration. You don’t have to do your best work every day.

    To close with another Jay Maisel quote: “If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.”

    How do you deal with slumps of no inspiration? Let’s talk!

  • Obsessive Clicking Disorder*

    Obsessive Clicking Disorder*

    How many images do you click off of a scene? Why? Our wonderfully fast cameras have enabled this thing I have heard called “Obsessive Clicking Disorder”. When we see a scene that looks promising we can blast away at 5 or 10 or maybe 20 frames a second to “make sure” we get the shot.

    I claim that that is often self-defeating, even lazy.

    Machine gunning

    So we point our camera at the scene and machine gun it for 30 frames. We are afraid we might miss “the moment”. Machine gunning is a brute force technique.

    Think about the shooting metaphor. A rifle allows a skilled shooter to place a single clean hole right where he wants it. A machine gun sprays bullets all over the place in an uncontrolled way. The single rifle shot is elegant and controlled and disciplined. To me it is craftsmanship.

    Those of us shooting fairly static and predictable subjects can usually take the time to wait for the right moment and fire off just one or two or a few frames. And, of course, if you are taking long exposures you’re not going to be firing away at high speed. Less can be more.

    Bracketing

    Another time where lots of images are captured is bracketing. In certain situations this is completely appropriate. Our marvelous sensors have a great dynamic range, but sometimes scenes require more. Exposure bracketing might come to the rescue by allowing an HDR compression of the range.

    Do very many of your situations actually require this? I couldn’t put a percentage to my work. But I know it is only the occasional high contrast situation that forces me to use it. The extra work and the varied results of HDR processing make me try to avoid it where possible. And scenes with movement are often not good candidates.

    Be aware

    But what is the alternative to obsessive clicking? How can you get the shot of the fleeting moment?

    To me the answer is being aware and attuned to the action going on. If we train ourselves to anticipate the “decisive moment” and be ready for it, we can capture it and know we have it. A good DSLR is fast (10-20 mSec to trigger an image capture, maybe even faster if using electronic shutter). Compare that to machine gunning at 10 frames a second. That is one image every 100 mSec. But within the regular, unvarying 100 mSec ticks a person can move a few inches or blink. You are just hoping that the odds will work in your favor. And often they do.

    An alternative, though, is to focus on the moment, the gesture. You might be amazed at the ability you can learn to recognize and capture that peak time when the gesture and the eyes and everything is right. Triggering the shot then will usually get the scene you hoped for.

    Gesture

    The incredible Jay Maisel describes this as waiting for the gesture. That is his version of the decisive moment. When we get in the flow and are completely attuned to the subject we can usually anticipate when these great gestures will happen. Wait for it. If you are concentrating, you will have time to press the shutter and get it.

    “Such moments are fleeting, requiring more than fast autofocus and reflexes. It demands that the photographer be able to read a scene as it’s playing out. He or she had to understand that all moments evolve, having a beginning, middle, and end. With that understanding, the photographer can anticipate that peak moment where all the visual elements or light and shadow, line and shape, color and gesture culminate in a moment that can only be captured in a fraction of a second.” Ibarionex Perello

    I find this is a wonderful and rewarding skill to learn. It is precise and immersive. You become highly engaged in the scene and the action. You learn to grasp the whole gestalt while still triggering on that perfect instant. It is a great feeling.

    Have you experienced it? You know it’s coming. You are in the right place to view it. Almost, Wait for it. NOW! When you hit the shutter you know you have the shot. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment to know you captured exactly the gesture you were anticipating.

    There is a time

    Do I ever blast away at high speed? Well, actually no. I stopped doing that when I didn’t have any more family doing sports that I was shooting. I do use exposure bracketing at times. On occasion I even take exposure bracketed panoramas.

    I recognize that there are times when any of us will take lots of frames. I’m just trying to convince you that machine gunning is a sort of backup plan, not a primary strategy.

    As an example of where I would do it, I love taking images of reflections in water. This is a dynamic scene that never repeats. I may take a several frame sequence to capture variations of reflections so I can choose the one that works best for me. But by the argument I used before, this is not an attempt to capture a peak moment by brute force. I expect each frame to be an excellent image but hopefully one will speak to me as the best.

    Be disciplined

    At the root it is about being disciplined. Closing down our options and forcing ourselves to take one frame of the decisive moment is kind of like the exercise I recommended of going out with 1 lens. It requires us to practice and develop our skill and use our mental quickness rather than brute force.

    I believe mental discipline and the ability to make fast decisions is required for photography. Learning this skill will, I believe, help us make a higher percentages of images we are proud of.

    This is just my own value, but I have discovered that if I can help it, I really don’t want to spend the time editing through 500 shots only to throw 400 of them away. At some level it seems to me that I am shooting randomly and grasping at straws rather than being deliberate and disciplined about my work. Photography is an art and a craft. Training and experience and discipline will improve our art.

    Try it. Let me know who it goes after you practice a while.

    space

    *Yes, it is a pun on Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I know that is a potentially debilitating disease that 1-3% of the population has. It is not something to make fun of and I am not doing that or denigrating anyone suffering from it. I am just using this well known phenomenon to make a point.