Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Creative Ideas

Ideas about creativity and the creative process.

Try it Different
Ruts. It is human nature to get in them. They are safe and comfortable. These days, safe is sometimes welcome. But ruts become boring and our work starts looking all the same. We do not grow as an artist if we are stuck in a rut. A great way to shake ourselves up and break out of a rut is to try it different. Force ourselves to “break the rules” we impose on ourselves. Do something we wouldn’t normally do.
When we try it different, sometimes we learn new things about what we like and want to do. A great photographer, Karen Hutton, says “Whatever you usually do, try it different.” This is wise advice. It is self-help to maintain our edge.
Different lens choice
An easy way to start slow is to spend a few days using a different lens. Something you don’t normally use. This makes you look at your surroundings differently. It is amazing, but a simple thing like this can change your point of view enough to freshen your images.
I discovered over the years that I naturally have a “telephoto eye”. That is, I tend to zoom in on details rather than shooting wide angle views. About a year ago I got an awesome 24-70mm lens for my new camera and it has become my standard lens. I now shoot the majority of my images with it. My POV has changed to adopt its range.
Perhaps that means it is time to get a super wide angle or go back to telephoto. Just to “try it different”. 🙂
Different time of day
Ah the magic hours, the golden light within an hour after dawn and an hour before sunset. It is beautiful. It is warm, the sky has great color, and the light is horizontal so it emphasizes texture and form. I tend to go crazy if I am in a great location at those times.
But I see it presented as a “rule” that you never shoot between those times. Especially for landscapes. This is so bogus. The goal is to find the right light to create the effect you want for the subject you have chosen. I sometimes find the best light is at high noon. There is not a hard rule.
Experiment. Work backwards from the light to the mood and subject. For example, you are out at, say, 1 pm. It is a sunny day with harsh light streaming directly down. Figure out what kind of mood is emphasized by this light and what subject would work best in the light. Look around with this mental filter and you may be surprised. Deep canyons often fit this. Also, vertical walls or buildings where the harsh parallel light shows off interesting texture or shadows. There is always something.
Here is a short but good article that discusses choice of light. It emphasizes that “good light is light that matches your goal for a photo“.
Do you find that must of your work is shot at the golden light time? Habits can be re-examined. Experiment. Learn to see the possibilities of different light.
Different composition choices
Now this is getting harder. I suggest you start shaking up some of your fundamental style beliefs. Photographers tend to spend years agonizing over whether or not we have a “style”. When we convince ourselves we have one, we’re afraid to step outside of the confines of what we believe our style is for fear of being lost again. The more mature we become as an artist the more we understand that we are our style.
Compositions are made up of our choice of subject, lighting and mood, arrangement of forms, contrasts, and exposure. I recommend that you give yourself permission to play with all of these and more.
If you are a landscape shooter, spend some time doing people, street photography. It will sharpen you eye and reflexes and it can be a joy. If you pride yourself on “perfect histograms” start playing with high key (overexposed) or low key (underexposed) images. It helps to impress the point that an exposure is proper if it creates the effect you want. A perfectly shaped histogram may be completely wrong if you were going for something else. An image is for the effect it has on the viewer, not its technical perfection.
I have a love of super detailed, “crunchy” sharp images. To explore that, I have challenged myself to experiment at the other extreme. I now sometimes do projects with little of no sharp or even identifiable subjects. Sometimes they are motion blurred or out of focus. Sometimes they are post-processed beyond recognition. I have come to love many of them and it has helped me discover new spaces I want to work in. The image with this blog is an example.
Grow
Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We listen to what a teacher tells us and follow it without judgment. We get into patterns and stop questioning. Our work becomes routine, habitual. We stop learning.
But just like we may be our own worst enemy, we can also be the agent of changing ourselves. Start experimenting. Take workshops. Study online courses. Read books. Tryout what other people tell you, but only keep what works for you. Examine yourself and your work, clearly and without bias.
Does the work you are doing today look exactly like what you did 10 years ago? You may be satisfied with that, but for most of us, if we’re not growing, we’re dying. I know that my artistic vision is an evolving thing. It is always a little out of my grasp, so I have to follow it and try to keep up. I like it that way. I’m growing.
Stay fresh
Artists work on the edge. If we have just done work we like, we are compelled to better it on the next project. We are usually our own measure. That is, to see if we are getting better we compare our current work to our past work. It is part of staying fresh. We have to keep ourselves invigorated, rejuvenated, challenged. It is how we do our best work. We are driven by curiosity. The “what if” questions keep leading us in new directions. Habit kills thought.
“A good shock often helps the brain that has been atrophied by habit.” Napoleon Hill
How about you? Do you have a process for challenging yourself, for questioning conventions and norms, for keeping yourself sharp? A significant part of this is forcing yourself to sometimes try it different.
September 2, 2020
Dealing With Plateaus
Plateaus are not only common in the landscape, they happen metaphorically in our lives in various ways. A simple dictionary definition of the type of plateau I am discussing is “a state of little or no change following a period of activity or progress“. In other words. we’re stuck for a while.
Life is not a linear progression. We’re not always moving forward to achieving goals and bettering ourselves. No matter how good our intentions or our will power, there are plateaus where things go level for a while.
This is frustrating, but something to accept. The plateaus are probably necessary to let us regroup and “catch up”. Kind of like getting a good night’s sleep. Usually we go on and start progressing again.
Like losing weight
Some of us have a body type that easily puts on weight. When it gets bad, we have to take some action to get our weight back in control. I hope you don’t have this problem.
Dieting is a futile activity. It doesn’t work long term. My strategy is cutting back eating to what I need and getting more exercise. But this is not a rant on dieting.
As I lose weight I hit plateaus sometimes. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for them. I haven’t changed what I’m doing. It’s just that sometimes the same actions do not get the same results. Sometimes my weight even goes up with no discernible cause. It can be very frustrating if I don’t remind myself that this is natural and expected.
Plateaus in our art
Progressing in our art is kind of like losing weight. We work at it diligently, but sometimes it is an up and down process and sometimes we get stuck at a plateau. I think we have to accept it and keep working.
We can’t force it. Inspiration, creativity, the muse, whatever you call it is not a constant part of our life. We don’t know why it chooses to visit us sometimes and not others. But that is the way it works.
As a matter of fact, what I observe is if we get too frustrated and try to force the creativity to happen, we are very disappointed with the results. Let it be and wait for it to happen.
Be persistent
We can’t force the creativity to come, but we can do things to encourage it. When we’re on a plateau, of even in a valley, I find it helps to train, to learn, to seek inspiration from other’s work. This is a great time for study, reading, reflection, trying new things. Not a discouraged resignation that our creative life is over. If a plateau is kind of like sleeping, get a good sleep. It helps a lot of things and life looks better in the morning.
Keep working, just don’t focus on the truly creative work at this time. I know I always have a lot of filing and cataloging to do. Re-evaluating portfolio selections and changing things around. It is a good time to contact galleries and submit to shows. Do the dreaded marketing that I put off when I’m “too busy being creative” to do it. Maybe even catch up on my bookkeeping. Yuch. But is needs to be done.
Accept the dark times, they will end
Know for a fact that the dark times will end. Trust that your creativity is not “used up”. Creativity breeds creativity. If you have been creative in the past it will happen in the future. Probably even better and stronger.
A plateau is a temporary stage. Our mind will decide when it is time to move on.
Use the plateau time wisely. It will help you come out the other side stronger and better equipped to move on.
Relish the joy of moving to the next stage
Finally it happens. One day you wake up with a renewed vision, a new point of view, an eagerness to resume work. Rejoice in it. Fill your work with the new vision.
You are rejuvenated. All is well. You are still an artist.
Enjoy. Do your best work. Know that the cycle will repeat and more plateaus are coming. But trust that they are temporary and you will come out even better. That actually gives you hope.
And I hope I will break through my current weight plateau and achieve my goals. 🙂
August 19, 2020
What You See
An amazing artist, Karen Hutton, said “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” This is very wise. We cannot always control our environment. We cannot always surround ourselves with astounding subjects and grand scenes. Our environment should not control our art. Even when we are looking at a grand scene we should see it differently than others.
We can’t always control what is around us
It is easy to say to ourselves “poor me, I’m stuck in [fill in the blank]; I can’t take time off to go to the Grand Tetons to shoot amazing landscapes, so I guess I can’t do anything.” Get over it. An artist explores the subjects he can find around him.
Adapt. Reframe the possibilities. What you see should be a trigger. Your surroundings are a canvas you can create on.
Get excited about the environment around you rather than disappointed about where you are not. It is hard to put me someplace where I can’t find great images. That is not bragging. I’m curious about everything I see. That leads me to explore with a good attitude. My curiosity helps me seek out visually interesting things.
That is not to say we should be equally excited about everything. Each of us is called to by different types of subjects and situations. Flowers, for instance, do not excite me to do much. I know they are a great subject for many people, but you will very seldom see me present a flower image.. Unless I figure out something to do with it that I consider “interesting”.
You don’t require an amazing subject to make art
I am the artist. I can’t not look for image possibilities wherever I am. It is not my subject’s job to be so dramatic and interesting that I can just lazily point my camera in its direction and make a great image. I might even say that the more difficult a subject is to “capture” the more it excites me. I have to work at it.
The image is created in my mind. It is my reaction to the subject that forms the picture. Artists over the centuries have made wonderful pictures of bowls of fruit or fields of wheat or city streets.
Monet is a good example. Except for some time in the Netherlands and England, he found most of his scenes in a small area of northern France. He could take something I would walk by without noticing and make a great picture of it. That is making art, not just finding it.
And isn’t that what we should be doing? Shouldn’t an artist make art out of what is around?
What can you do with what you see?
Using Monet as an example again, he narrowed and narrowed his focus down to the point where he spent the later part of his career almost exclusively painting scenes of the lily pond in his garden. But he perceived art and drama in the intricacies of the color shifts and light at different times and different seasons. His images of this are amazing.
That subject doesn’t really excite me. I would love to see his gardens, but if I went there I would shoot some images to record his famous garden, maybe try to do a study of the shapes and colors, but it is unlikely I would create any real art there. He has already done it and that is not where I should spend my time.
But some things jump out to me that escape most other people. And they do not have to be grand scenes.
Nearly every day I wander around my little town. Of necessity, this is where I spend most of my time. I try to keep my eyes open and attentive for things that interest me. I’m not always successful, but a day seldom goes by without taking some pictures.
When you are “stuck” in one fairly boring location, you learn to scale your perception accordingly. I learn to be aware of smaller, more subtle things. After seeing the same scene a hundred times I sometimes suddenly perceive it differently. Maybe this is kind of what Monet did.
Everyone sees different
As Karen Hutton said, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” We all see differently, or at least we should. If we train ourselves to understand and express our vision and feelings for the subject then our artistic interpretation will be unique.
Do we want to make images that are simply a record of a location or would we prefer to show the way we perceive it? One of the problems that de-values photography for many people is that much photography is it is just a camera pointed at a scene. If we cannot reveal our emotions or our beliefs or our point of view then there is seldom anything special about it.
Do you want to be one of the photographers fighting for tripod space to record a famous scene at the perfect time of day with the perfect lighting? Or would you rather turn around and find something interesting the other direction? Something they would not see because they were fixated on the iconic scene?
Maybe that is a foolish question, since so many people are intent on shooting the same image over and over. But for me, I would rather be the one seeing something different. As Apple said in their famous ad campaign, Think Different.
What do you see?
August 5, 2020
Chasing Trophies
I’ve come to wonder about people whose goal is to win prizes or duplicate famous shots. What is their reason for shooting? Is there a joy in recreating a shot someone already did? What motivates you? Are you satisfying your personal vision or chasing a trophy in a competition?
Prizes, rewards
I have to admit I used to chase prizes. Back when I was involved in my local camera club we had monthly competitions. Usually with a defined subject. I would spend hours thinking about the target subject, planning shots, and executing them. I must say that I got good at winning blue ribbons (I have a stack of them in my basement).
There was a discipline to this that was good training. Those days were not wasted. For anyone wanting to be a commercial or portrait photographer this is good exercise. I believe we had an exceptional camera club that generally did a lot of good.
But I got to a point where my vision went a different direction. One problem with our club or any organization that is “judging” art is that it has a culture and value system that narrowly filters out work that does not conform to their norm. Whether this is a local club or an international competition it looks to me like this is true.
So in our local club, I quickly learned what would place well and taught myself how to win. I am ashamed to admit that I helped perpetuate the culture by spending years as a judge critiquing other entrants and helping inculcate them. The day I was the first to win a blue ribbon with a heavily Photoshopped image was a time of soul searching for them and me. I decided I was going my own way and following my vision regardless of their likes and dislikes.
Recreate great images
Many people seem to see popular or well known images as a pattern or template they feel they should use. I have seen people researching where and when certain images were made. They want to know what equipment the artist used and how they processed the image. All with the goal, seemingly, of going out and shooting the same image.
Why?
That image has already been done. You may, at a chance, do it better, but it is still a copy. It is another artist’s work that you imitated.
Maybe imitation is the most sincere type of flattery, but it does not help the imitator. You are not using your creativity to make wonderful new works. You are not showing the world what you see. I suspect that people doing this feel that they do not have sufficient creativity or vision to come up with their own unique work, so they copy other artists.
An exception
Every rule has at least one exception. That is a good reason to avoid rules.
In 1998 Colorado photographer John Fielder began a major project to recreate many of the famous Colorado images of William Henry Jackson from the 19th century. He drove 25,000 miles and hiked 500 miles to locate each Jackson image – 156 in Vol 1 – and stand in exactly the same spot as Jackson to create a parallel image of what the scene looks like now.
In this case, Fielder was a well established photographer with his own vision and a huge, respected body of work. This project was creative and historical, documenting the changes that had taken place in a little over 100 years. Fielder could not be accused of being imitative. It has become the most popular Colorado regional book of all time.
Few of us are is the same position. If you are working on a project of this significance, good for you and best of luck. I would never imply that it is being an imitator.
Guided tours
I have heard photographers bragging that they offer guided tours to take clients to famous spots to recreate well known images. Really?
I can’t fault them for trying to make a buck if clients will pay for it. It is plenty hard to support yourself as a landscape or fine art photographer and any sources of income are welcome.
What I can’t believe is that customers will pay to be guided to these locations and told how to recreate these scenes. At the end, maybe they had a fun outing, but they have a bunch of imitation shots. These are somebody else’s work. The person who took the tour is kind of a passive tool, basically like a camera that somebody else is manipulating.
Wouldn’t it be better to be inspired by these great pictures and use that as motivation to go create your own unique work? Be yourself. Express your own vision.
Workshops can be a great experience. The right instructor can do wonders to educate and motivate you. I would stay away from template formats, where the instructor is trying to mold you to take exactly the images they take.
What is your reward?
Is the reward a prize? Is it a copy of a famous scene on your wall?
I guess I am not sufficiently competitive. I don’t see the “game” as a contest where there is 1 winner and everybody else loses.
The reward that matters to me is how I feel about my work. If it won prizes or was copied by other people I guess that would be satisfying. But that satisfaction would quickly fade. What remains is my work and the joy I feel in it.
In my long life I have discovered repeatedly that I get much better long term satisfaction from things I really earn and from the works of my own creation.
So enter contests if that motivates you. Get a guide to help you create your images if that helps you. But make sure you are making your images. Make them because it is your vision, not to please or imitate someone else.
Are you being your own person in your work? Let me know how it is going.
July 22, 2020
Terrible Images
This is a follow up to my previous post “Kill Your Darlings“. It is too big a subject to let go that easily. There is a time and place for making terrible images. Even to seek to do it. Terrible images can be a springboard to new insight and growth.
One of my heroes I quote often, Jay Maisel, said
“I used to tell my classes when they raved about my work and compared it to theirs, ‘Believe me, I’ve taken more terrible images than all of you put together.’ The trick is not to show them to people.”
Experiment
I believe that experimentation is one of the most common and valid reasons for making terrible images. Many of us photographic artists spend a long time trying to discover our style. But once we have done that, I believe it is a mistake to settle down and only shoot to that style for the rest of our career. We need to push ourselves is different directions. View the works of other artists. Do things to make ourselves uncomfortable.
I am always reading articles and looking at videos to get new ideas. Making myself get out and try some of these ideas I pick up is necessary to see if they work for me. Sometimes they do, but sometimes I just make terrible images.
I have determined for my own values that if I am not growing in my concepts and techniques there is no reason to keep going. Keeping an uncomfortable edge to my work keeps me asking questions. It keeps me fresh. I do not want to keep shooting the same picture over and over.
Shoot a lot
As Jay Maisel hints in the quote at the start, shooting a lot of images is one of the keys to having good ones. The reality is that for even the best of us, the percentage is depressingly low.
No, just walking around and pressing the shutter every few seconds will not lead to some gems. It might make a mildly interesting time-lapse video.
Doing good work in any field takes practice. The infamous 10,000 hour rule is not a truth, but it is generally true. Any discipline takes uncounted hours of practice in addition to formal training. I believe it is certainly true for photography.
It is important to get out every day and practice. Practice seeing, discovering subjects, planning shots, framing compositions, executing good images. Sometimes you should even use a camera. ☺. The point being that you don’t always need to be actually taking pictures. You can practice while walking to the coffee shop or driving down the street. It is a mental discipline.
But it is a physical discipline, too. And it is very helpful to use your camera every day. Just having it in your hands helps sharpen your senses. Carry it everywhere. Actually using the tool builds muscle memory. And coming back and having to edit what you have done closes the loop. It makes me evaluate my work and really think about how I have done.
Edit ruthlessly
Ah, editing. The point of my previous post on killing our darlings. I believe this is probably the second hardest part of photography (the hardest being marketing).
Shooting a lot of images means having a lot to edit. This can get to be a real time sink. And it can be depressing. I’m trying to look at it, not as making lots of terrible images, but as having lots of failed experiments.
If you go out every day and make yourself shoot and try new things, most are going to fail. That is OK. A few will succeed. That is one of the things that keeps me going. A few succeed.
The failures should be learned from and then trashed. There is little reason to keep a bad image, unless it helps you remember what your were going for and why it failed.
Even if you are constantly experimenting and expecting large number of failures, there is no excuse for letting down your standards in the editing. Be ruthless. If I get even one “keeper” out of a day’s shoot, I am happy for it. Having no keepers is not a failure for a personal day.
Another insight from Jay Maisel is “It’s my obligation to take out all the ‘wrong’ pictures.“
Be honest with yourself
I like to experiment. I like to put myself in new situations and try out new ideas and techniques. But I have to be honest with myself and admit that most of them do not work well. Sometimes there is a glimmer of hope that might lead me to experiment further with an idea, but a glimmer of hope does not mean an image that should be shown to someone.
I have to accept the fact that the vast majority of the images I make are bad. That is, bad by my standards, which is all I can go by.
Most of them should be deleted. Even of the ones I keep, that may have some personal significance to me, very few should be shown to people. I am starting to understand and accept this.
One of the lessons that has been hardest for me is that a tack sharp, well exposed and focused image may well be worthless. It probably is. If it does not have something useful to say it does not matter how technically perfect it is. I owe it to you, the viewer of my images to only show you one worth looking at and considering.
Don’t fall in love with them
So I know I am going to throw away the vast majority of the images I take. I know I will throw away piles of technically perfect images. I know I will throw away away most of the experiments I make.
Because I know that, I have to keep from falling in love with them all. That’s hard. I made them. But the digital ecosystem is littered with useless bits. I have to do my part by cleaning up as much as I can.
I said in the previous blog about this that I go through many rounds of edits and culls. I really try hard to delay falling in love with any of my images until they have survived several rounds and seem to be contenders. I am not always successful. There are times when I just love an image. I try to not let that bias the objectivity I need in my edits, but of course, love wins sometimes.
Not falling in love with them is more a goal than a hard rule. But the hard reality in photography is that most of what I produce is not really good and is destined to be deleted or buried deep in my filing system never to be seen by anyone other than me.
But if it hurts and they are going to be thrown away, why shoot lots of terrible images? I don’t know of any way to improve beyond where I am or to expand my vision without experimenting and then ruthlessly editing. Terrible images are necessary.
July 15, 2020