Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Emotion

Image Quality
As photographers, we often obsess over image quality. The highest resolution, the sharpest focus, the best light, the best composition. All these things are important, but is that really what defines image quality?
Technical perfection
Photography is more closely tied to technology than most other 2-dimensional art forms. Our cameras embody sophisticated technology. Our editing tools are leading edge, sometimes AI driven.
The field seems obsessed with specifications and details. What is the MTF of this lens? Does this sensor have 14 bits of dynamic range or only 12? Should I go to a 100 MPixel medium format system to be a better photographer?
I have chased all of this at times, and I still have that tendency. A couple of times recently I have gone through the specs and lens choices for medium format, longing for a move up to the “better” gear.
Underlying all this is the belief that better technology will give us better image quality. But a more technically perfect image is not necessarily a better one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Composition rules
The visual arts seem to accumulate a large set of rules meant to guide our work. These are generally sound principles, based on long history of practice and evaluation. Most of them are good, except for the “rule” part.
The “rule of thirds”, for instance, helps balance compositions and give some dynamic life to an image. Same for rules like leading lines or diagonals or don’t center the subject. All are good advice to keep in mind. The problem comes when it becomes an absolute rule. When a gallery or a photo club judge rejects our photo because it did not conform to one of the standard composition rules, then we are in the wrong place.
Know and use the rules, and understand that you can freely “break” them whenever you feel you need to. Guidance like these “rules” are good general advice. But general advice does not apply to each individual case. You are the artist. Your decisions create the image. Trust your intuition.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Work the scene
Other advice I have heard recently is to work the scene to develop it into the best shot. We are counseled to take many exposures from different angles and maybe with different lenses, with the objective that by shooting all this variety, one of the shots will be “best”.
It is probably true that one will be best, but is this the best, or only way, to get there? Let’s work through a scenario. Say I am there with lenses of 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm, 100mm, and 200mm (full frame equivalent). Let’s further say that that I have access to shoot front left from ground level, center above ground level, front right at eye level, and rear center at ground level. Just those individual choices give 24 shots to take. Then throw in bracketing for aperture and exposure and composition and that gives possibly hundreds of shots. For one scene.
It is true that if you do that, you may occasionally be surprised by the one you select as best. It is a great learning exercise if you are developing your style and vision. And a good exercise to go through occasionally to check yourself.
But I generally know what I want. I have the experience of shooting and viewing hundreds of thousands of images. My preferences are established, but flexible. That is, I experiment frequently so as not to fall into a rut. But I do not need to shoot hundreds of frames of one scene to get to what I would consider “best”.
And ever worse, I fear that blindly following this “work the scene” advice will lead to the best possible shot of a mediocre scene. Meanwhile, we miss the better, more imaginative, more creative scene because we were over-concentrating on one thing. I prefer to use my judgment to frame the best shot and go on to find the next, even better one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Disappointment?
I have done all of these. For years I chased technical perfection. During my time in a camera club, I faithfully followed the composition rules. I shamefully confess that as a judge I criticized some images for not following the rules. And at times I have ended up with piles of images bracketing one scene to insensibility. Usually with the result that I kept one of the first ones I shot and threw the rest away.
Many of these efforts led to technically good images that are lifeless and disappointing. They do not capture my reaction or relationship to the scene. There is no depth of insight. Only a very small fraction are printed and hanging on my wall now.
I have had to completely rethink what “image quality” means.
Image quality
These observations are strictly my personal judgments. I have no authority over your artistic values. As artists, we each should come to our own conclusions.
I have seen that many of the famous photos and paintings in history are not technically perfect. But something about them elevates them above the crowd. What is that? I know I have images shot with inferior cameras with cheap lenses that are “better” than many taken with much better cameras. This makes me wonder what image quality really means.
Now days, we are inundated with images. Most are adequately sharp and well exposed. What makes one stand out among those trillions of bits of noise?
We must reevaluate what it means to be a good image. It is no longer the obscurity of the location or the difficulty of the shot or the perfect composition or the sharp detail. None of those are enough, by themselves, to make an outstanding shot. In a Substack article, Lee Anne White said: “There are always photographs that are technically solid, but missing that something extra“. Ah, that something extra is so hard to describe.
Photography is a craft as well as an art. We must strive to do an excellent job of technical perfection, composition, etc. But those things are not the something extra that make an outstanding image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Something extra
In the crowded and noisy world of images, it seems that what we look to now is an emotional attachment. Something must touch us personally. To do that, it generally had to touch the artist, too. We must be able to let our emotional reaction to the scene come through our image.
Maybe this is what Cartier-Bresson meant by the decisive moment. Perhaps this is what Jay Maisel means by the gesture of something. Either way, an idea is that the subject is expressing something. We must be in sync with it and ready and able to capture the best expression of that.
These instances sometimes happen in a fleeting moment. Perhaps we can anticipate them and be setup and prepared. Sometimes it is a singular event, and we have one shot at it. But either way, we must recognize and react. We must understand what is happening and be mentally and physically prepared to capture it.
And being prepared involves understanding our emotional involvement with what it is. We must recognize when that gesture is best expressed to us, and pounce on it.
Of course, images do not have to be of a fleeting moment to be good and express an amazing gesture. There are those that are static scenes, where you can linger over it to wait for the right light or weather.
Still, what the viewer relates to is your feeling about it. Why did you take this picture? Why did you select it out of all the others?
Paraphrasing Jay Maisel: “If the thing you’re shooting doesn’t excite you, what makes you think it will excite anyone else?”
If an image meant something special to me, and I can capture that and make you feel what I felt, then there is a chance the image is meaningful to you, too. That it embodies the “something extra.” Isn’t this what image quality is about?
November 19, 2025
If You Were There
One “rule” I hear about expressiveness is “is this creative, or is it the same picture anyone would take if they were there?” I struggle with this. Should I care what picture you would take if you were there?
Obvious
I think I understand the intent of this phrase. Most pictures are fairly obvious. At least, to the photographer.
You come out at tunnel view in Yosemite, stop, and shoot the scene you see. You are doing the same thing and getting basically the same picture thousands of other people do every day.
Obvious and uncreative. Yes, that is judgmental, but it is very difficult to get creative with such an iconic scene.
As we grow in our artistic journey, we should try to avoid doing the simple and obvious thing. We should find something fresh and creative to add to the image. But at a famous icon location, good luck. It has been shot in every light and every weather.
You might catch an eagle flying by in the foreground carrying a large fish, just as a storm breaks allowing a majestic sunbeam to light up the scene. That would stand out. Some. But wouldn’t anyone else there shoot it, too?
I don’t see you
But here’s one of the things: I didn’t see you there when I was shooting most of the images I like best. Maybe you chose not to be out in the sub-zero cold, or not in a remote location where few people go. I didn’t see you embarrassing yourself too, shooting photos out the window of any of my recent flights. You weren’t around when I was in the junkyard looking for interesting rusty old trucks.
How broadly do I interpret the “if you were there” question? Do I question what a dozen other photographers would have done if they were magically transported to where I am now? I think that the fact that they are not here is significant.
Perhaps it means that what I choose to see and give significance is part of my unique style. What I am drawn to by my own particular mindfulness.
A fact is that there are seldom any other photographers around me when I am shooting. I guess few people care about the things that call to me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
On a recent trip to France we did some short tour groups part of the time. Sure, I would look at what the guide is talking about, maybe even shoot a couple of pictures to remember it. But I found myself wandering off on side trips. The light is great over here. Look at the scene down this side street. That window is interesting. Look at this ancient stone work. Occasionally I would lose the group completely and have to go try to find them. Luckily for me my wife would sometimes come looking for me. I would hate to be a guide with me in the group.
My point is, no one else was tagging along on these side trips. It was just places and things I was being drawn to. No one else. If people had followed me, they likely would have shot some of the same things I did. But they didn’t seem to be called to do that.
I don’t know what you would do
Another, even bigger factor, is that I cannot predict what you would shoot, even if you were there. It has become obvious to me that I am drawn to some things most other people would ignore. And vise versa.
If you were flipping through my portfolios you would likely be thinking to yourself “that’s weird; I wonder why he shot that”. Even if I was shooting at a location you were familiar with, you probably would say “I didn’t see that, or if I did, it did not register with me as being a picture.”
The point being that a significant part of our personal style is our vision – what we are drawn to. What we are mindful of. Some things seem to jump out to me. Other things jump out to you.
This is one of the reasons I don’t trust the test of “if you were there, would you shoot the same picture?” We have different interests and values. If you were standing right beside me, you may well chose to not shoot at all. Rather, you would probably get engaged by something off to the side that I ignored.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Expressiveness
We are told that we have to add our own expression, our own point of view and feelings to distinguish our images. While I believe this, I also don’t believe it is something to worry too much about.
If we are an artist, we have a burning need to express our view. Just do it.
Fall in love with every frame. You are taking the picture because you love it, right? If that is genuine, it will come through. Never try to fake it. You should not have to.
If you are an artist, you make images that express your feelings and beliefs, or at least, what interests you in a scene. If you are a businessperson, you take pictures that you calculate will make the most money. Some of us are a mix of both. Only you can set your own goals.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do my own thing
So I plan to bumble along on my own path, not worrying about what other photographers may or may not do. One reason is that there seldom are any around. Another is that I believe I have a different viewpoint and value set than them.
I’ll be the guy you see stopped along the road shooting a picture of who knows what. I’ll be the geek shooting out the window of the airplane, even at night. You may drive by and see me wandering around out in a snowstorm.
Anything that interests me is fair game. It is the dead of winter as I write this. Today I shot up through patterns of snow on a grid what was part of a sign above a sidewalk. I shot ice patterns forming along a river. Some majestic old Cottonwood trees silhouetted against storm clouds drew me in. I did not see a single other photographer. Not even someone using a cell phone camera.
If you were walking with me, would you have seen these things? Even if you did, would they interest you enough to shoot them? In the cold?
Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not going to bother worrying about what interests you. I have trouble keeping up with what interests me.
I hope you do, too.
February 19, 2025
Have an Opinion
I spent most of my photographic career just recording scenes. But now I think you probably won’t make a compelling image unless you have an opinion and express it in your art.
Just the facts
I started mostly focusing on just the facts. My goal was literal representation of scenes. I wanted to capture what was actually there, with no interpretation. I regret that.
Being an engineer didn’t help. It is very easy to get caught up in technical details of resolution and depth of field. My excuse is that I grew up in Texas and moved to Colorado in my early 20’s. The mountains were new to me and I wanted to record everything I could. I was basically running around saying “Wow, look at this! I never knew this existed!”.
If I had an opinion about it, it was something like awe and excitement about the new landscape. I took a lot of accurate, factual representational pictures back then, but very few are in any of my current collections. Beautiful images some of them, but little depth. Not compelling.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
What makes it special?
What makes an image special or worth lingering over? That is a hard question. Great photographers have been wrestling with that for 150 years. Painters have been agonizing over it for hundreds of years. There are no rules or definitive answers (despite all the rubbish you may find on the internet).
I am not in a position to give you a definitive answer either. If I could it would make my art a lot easier to do.
I think we can agree that some images jump out at us or hold us to linger over them. If we can agree on that then we can agree that there must be some quality or qualities that distinguish one from others.
It could simply be the composition or lighting or the precision of the execution or the decisive moment or something in the scene that grabs our interest. Maybe some combination of all of that.
I am drawn to believe it is all that but more. We see far too many well executed images of beautiful scenes that seem soulless, flat, uninspired. So there must be an unidentified quality that some get but others do not.
It is probably oversimplified, but I speculate that part of it could simply be whether the photographer was excited about it. We tend to be drawn to excitement in others. When someone is telling us a story that happened to them, their excitement has a lot to do with our engagement. If it is just a “I went to the grocery store and got some oranges”, well, we quickly drift away. But if it is “I went to the grocery store and the most amazing thing happened…” then, if they can keep the story going, we will follow.
Could it be that simple with our pictures?
Express yourself
I said when I started my photography I believed mainly in literal representation. It seemed wrong to try to project my feelings or opinion on them. Now I think I was totally wrong. That is why most of those early images were completely forgetable. I wasn’t truly being authentic because I was keeping my feelings to myself.
One thing the great and very quotable Jay Maisel said was “What you’re shooting at doesn’t matter, the real question is: ‘Does it give you joy?’”.
Now I believe that unless I am feeling something strong, it is useless to press the shutter. I want to believe that my excitement will carry through in some of my images. The good ones.
Another quote that guides me is “if it doesn’t excite you, why should it excite anyone else?” I think that is a Jay Maisel too, but I can’t find it. If not, maybe I’ll claim it. 🙂 Either way, I believe it. Why should you care about any of my images unless they came from something inside of me? Not just pressing the shutter button and capturing what is there.
So it is not enough for me to just capture an image of something. I want you to know what I was feeling, how I perceived it. I may have loved it or hated it, but you be able to sense it and participate in it.
It is not only OK for me to express my feelings, I think it is completely necessary to make something good.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Nobody has to agree
But there is a dark side to human nature: when we express our feelings, some people will not agree. I know now that that is fine. When I took the attitude that everybody does not have to like what I did, it was tremendously liberating.
So now when someone says “I like that” or “I don’t like that” I basically ignore the comment. It is no use to me without more discussion. Actually, if someone does not like a picture I love to get into a conversation with them to find our why they felt that way. I will not change my image and I do not try to change their mind, but I am always curious about the reasons for negative reactions.
One of my goals is to create a reaction in you. I’m generally a positive and upbeat person and that is more often the type of reaction I aim for. But I would rather cause you to hate my work than to be indifferent to it. If you are indifferent I failed to move you at all.
I encourage you to fall in love with your subjects. Or find the subjects that revolt you and you want to have changed. Either way, feel something. Strongly. Your audience needs it and deserves it.
Today’s image
This was a quick “grab” shot, but that was because I did not want to disturb or upset the guy looking at me. I was more shy then. This has a lot of feeling for me. I was suffering and I’m sure they were, too. It was in a village in central Italy and it was about 100_^°F that afternoon. We were dying and the only people stupid enough to be out sightseeing. This old couple seemed to have found a relatively shady spot in the narrow street. Hopefully with some breeze. I’m sure that other neighbors would soon gather for their daily ritual.
I fell in love with the area and the way of life. They seemed to have contentment in their circumstances and the pace and traditions of their life. I came away with great respect for them. I wish I would have visited with this gentleman, but the heat was about to take me down and I don’t speak Italian. I’m pretty sure he did not speak English. So I let it go be. I’m sorry for that.
November 27, 2024
A Selfish Pursuit
When you think about it, most art, photography included, is a selfish pursuit. That is, it is about us, the artist. It is our expression. Is that bad?
Revealing what things look like
Go back to the mid 19th Century for photography and maybe a hundred years or more earlier for painting and one major reason for creating a work is to show people a (relatively) objective view of what a place looked like. People didn’t travel much back then, especially just for pleasure.
In the late 1800’s, unless you lived close to them, you would never have seen Niagara Falls, or the Rocky Mountains, or the Grand Canyon, or the Colombia River. Not in person. So there was a need for artists to show us these sights.
Artists like Bierstadt painted rather romantic and exaggerated views of scenery, like the Rocky Mountains. I hate to break it to you, but the Rockies don’t really look like this. A big selling point for photography was that it quickly captured “reality” (whatever that is). So photography brought views of places to a larger audience. This helped cement the false opinion that photographs are “real”.
Its been done
That was then. Now is different. Virtually every place has been photographed. I have a friend who specializes in wilderness photography – places few people have seen. But that is the exception, not the norm.
Now people travel long distances comfortably and relatively cheaply. And it is estimated that about 3 trillion photos are taken a year ( a trillion is 10¹², that is 1 million millions). So nearly every place people want to go has been visited millions of times and they have taken millions of pictures there.
We don’t need another picture of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon just to show people what it looks like. They have seen it. Many times. Too many times.
What is an aspiring artist to do?
Art now is about expression
What there is to do is to show a fresh, new point of view. I won’t say we must make a creative picture. That can easily lead to producing something different for the sake of being different. This leads to a lot of difficult to understand work that may not mean anything, but it is different.
It may be better to suggest we create work that is authentic. That is, it expresses our feeling or point of view and is also well done and artistic. Supposedly authentic work is fresh and unique because it expresses our own uniqueness. I cynically put the “supposedly” comment in because I’m not sure that many people actually have a refined point of view. A lot of people copy what they have seen someone else do.
Anyway, authentic work that expresses us should have a well reasoned and optimized composition, a look that is consistent with our other work, and an approach to the subject that reflects our feelings about it. It does not have to be of exotic locations or subjects unless that is what we are drawn to. Actually, the subject matter can be mundane and common if we have a fresh approach to it.
I have to do it first for me
Therefore, I claim that art is a selfish pursuit. I have to do it for me, to express what is drawing me to the subject. If it is liked by other people, that is a plus. But if I create the work mainly to please others, I lose sight of my own uniqueness. I miss out on bringing the viewer something new because it is something that comes out of me.
So in this special case, be selfish. Think of yourself first. Create art that pleases you. Other people will be drawn to the passion that is obviously there. They will ignore lifeless copies of what they have already seen.
Today’s Image
This was in downtown Denver one time. I was grabbed by the patterns and lines and reflections. I had to do something with it. The herd of people traveling through in a protected bubble, probably oblivious to most of the beauty around them, really got me.
August 21, 2024
Lighten Up
By lighten up I don’t suggest we make more high key images. It’s not a bad idea if you don’t do it much. But I mean to give our viewers more opportunity to figure things out for themselves.
Serious
Most of us take the world very seriously. Of course, there are serious issues we live with all the time. I don’t minimize them. But I learned from an expert in culture that, being an official old guy, I typically have less anxiety than most of you younger people.
Personally, I’m glad. I hate going around burdened down with angst and fear. Instead, when I’m out taking pictures I see joy and hope and feel uplifted.
I’m not trying to change the world with my images. At best, I hope to help a few people have a better day by looking at my work.
But another way to lighten things up it to be more ambiguous. I notice that most of my work has a clear subject. Low ambiguity. Also, not so many questions for you to answer for yourself. This is probably a fault.
Ambiguity
Ambiguity is a marvelous tool. Used sparingly it can liven up our work and give our viewers more challenges and rewards. Ambiguity means being open to more than one interpretation.
I recently watched a video on Creative Live by Renee Robyn. She is a conceptual artist who constructs images as composites of many layers. Some of her work leads to various interpretations. I was interested that she said about one that she asked many people what it meant to them and every one had a different interpretation. And none matched what she had in mind. That is ambiguity.
Ambiguity introduces the option of different interpretation. Of course, that is always possible with any image, but more ambiguity makes it more possible.
Leave questions unanswered
As I get older I find my work asking more questions than answering them. Maybe I realize I know less as I age.
I cynically view that a lot of young people come out of art training thinking they now think deep thoughts and have to raise great questions for their viewers. Later, whether they realize it or not, most of them settle down some and their work says “this is what I see”. Even later, like me, they might come around to saying “these are things I still don’t understand, but I see them different and less rigidly now”.
Intentionally introducing more ambiguity is one way to move away from imposing my own interpretation on a scene. By leaving more room for the viewer to create their own story it becomes more of a conversation.
Say more
It is quite possible to say more by saying less. This is one of the beauties of poetry. Great poetry may introduce deep truths in a few words, but in a way that keeps the reader thinking about it on and off for years.
I have no images where I claim such insight or depth. But I do think that by leaving more for the viewer to fill in from their own experience and viewpoint, there can be more interest.
Giving viewers the clear answer to things can come across like a boring lecture. It may be good information, but it doesn’t necessarily engage you. I have this problem with a lot of landscape images I see (and take). It’s a landscape. Beautiful place, great time of year, I’d like to go there, but there’s nothing else. Nothing left for me to figure out or question.
It seems much more rewarding to hint that there is more depth there to be discovered. To give the viewer a chance to participate, to become a co-creator.
Today’s image
This image is a little ambiguous. I’ll let you figure out what it actually is. I left a couple of strong hints, but feel free to make up your own interpretation, your own story.
March 6, 2024