Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Fear

  • Excuses

    Excuses

    Excuses, we have them for every occasion. There’s nothing interesting here. It’s too hot. It’s too cold. I’m too busy. The weather is not right. I don’t like this light. I’m not good enough. I’m shy. It could go on for a page or more. Excuses are our way of letting ourselves off the hook when we are scared or don’t want to do something.

    As a heads up, this is about the dreaded topic of marketing. In case you want to stop reading now. 🙂

    Why make excuses

    Excuses are a way of absolving ourselves of responsibility. We shift the blame to someone or something else. It lets us off the hook. We didn’t fail, it was “their” fault we couldn’t do it.

    Have you done that? I sure have. We don’t want to feel bad about ourselves. After all, we have a self image to nurture. The problem is when we rely on excuses to not do anything.

    Fear

    A lot of times we make excuses because we are afraid of doing something. Contact that gallery? No, they wouldn’t want my work. Submit for that show? No, I’m not good enough.

    Fear of failure keeps us trapped in our own prison. We build a cage of excuses around us to protect ourselves from failing. But we can become trapped in a cage of our own making.

    But we’re thinking about it wrong. What we fear almost never happens and not achieving our objective is not the same as failing.

    What we fear

    I believe a lot of us artists are introverts. We shun confrontation and don’t like to be criticized. Even if we are not introverts most of us do not like these things. So we fear that if we put our self forward we might be rejected. People might even think bad of us.

    Here’s what I am learning: we will be rejected, again and again, and no one really knows who you are or cares enough to think bad of you. That sounds harsh, but it should actually be somewhat comforting.

    I apply for a show and my submissions are rejected. I don’t know why. They do not give a critique. Perhaps what I entered doesn’t appeal to the juror. Perhaps they had different styles in mind. Maybe the juror was in a bad mood at the time. I cannot know. But what they didn’t say was “you are a failure; I hate your work; you are not worthy of being an artist; don’t ever enter this event again”. No, it was just a rejection. Get over it and go on.

    Trying

    You know the old Yoda line “Do or do not. There is no try“. It is a great line, but kind of misleading. Like Luke in the scene with Yoda, if we do not believe we can do it, we are probably right. The reality is that for most things, trying is all we can do. We cannot always create the outcome we want as long as we are dependent on other people’s decisions.

    Trying does not mean we doubt ourselves. It means we recognize that many of the attempts we make will not succeed. And we’re willing to live with that.

    It’s the trying that we fall short on. We’re afraid so we never try. We get a rejection so we stop trying. Persistence is required in order to succeed.

    As I have said before, “build it and they will come” doesn’t work. We have to let people know about ourselves and our work. This is called promotion. It is called marketing. That is not a bad word. It is what makes us recognized and successful.

    Just do it

    For years I had the attitude that I love doing art but I hate marketing. I am shy so I am not good at it. People will eventually recognize the worth of what I do.

    Ain’t going to happen.

    People are not out there waiting anxiously to “discover” me. They do not know I exist and don’t really care. I have to take definite and active steps to make them aware of me. It may take many attempts before they will take a serious look at my work and see something they like. This is called “marketing”. I now see it in a different light. Rather than being a distasteful thing I should do, but don’t, I see it as an exciting opportunity to promote myself and be recognized.

    No more excuses.

    The great Wayne Gretzky famously observed “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” You cannot succeed unless you try. I have finally internalized that. Just coming to believe that made it far less distasteful. Starting to do it and discovering that a rejection is not fatal and no one blacklists me for trying has made it far easier as I go along.

    Try something. Act quick. Learn from your mistakes. Keep trying. Believe in yourself and never give up.

    You haven’t failed unless you don’t try. Stop making excuses. Just do it.

  • I Don’t Know

    I Don’t Know

    How did it get to where we think we are supposed to know everything? Why is it wrong to say “I don’t know“? I think it would be horrible to believe I knew everything. Where would be the opportunity for discovery? To be able to let my curiosity run free? I am quick to tell anyone I don’t know, if I don’t.

    Fallacy of certainty

    Believing we have to know everything is a trap. It will doom us to failure and disappointment. I would say there are 3 general classes of knowledge:

    1. Our values.
    2. The things we interact with on a regular basis.
    3. Everything else “out there”.

    As a person you have to know your values. Those things you will not bend. At what point will you fight for what you believe? These are the bedrock principles we build our lives on.

    In the next circle, we all do our jobs and use a lot of technology every the day. We probably drive a car or use a computer for various tasks or bank or shop online. It is important to being able to function in society that we understand enough about these things to be able to use them. That doesn’t mean we have to have a deep understanding. I was an engineer in the technology/computer industry for a career, and I absolutely know I do not fully understand all aspects of everything I use. In most cases it is OK to just understand enough to efficiently get the task done and minimize surprises. Maybe just to know enough to know how to not be stupid.

    Then there is everything else. The world is so big and interconnected and complex that no one knows how or why most of it works. I don’t understand micro or macro economics, and I’m not sure anyone else does, either. NFTs still seems like a Ponzi scheme to me. I don’t understand why people become zombies when they enter politics. Why do bad things happen to good people? I don’t know and I will never figure it all out. Nor do I have to.

    No one knows even most of everything

    We listen to the talking heads on the news spouting meaningless information with full confidence. We know they are probably wrong, but they speak with authority. Therefore, we distrust ourselves. And after a while we realize they don’t know anything, either. When neither side of the debate or the “experts” can be trusted, we tend to check out, become cynical and angry. Don’t forget, though, that they have an off button.

    There is a saying called Sturgeon’s Law that says “90% of everything is crap”. I have my own corollary to that: Sturgeon was an optimist.

    If most of the information you get is bad, what do you do? Hopefully you start to trust yourself. Learn to research things that are important to you. Research means even listening to people whose opinions you don’t like. You can’t just listen to your favorite guru who says things you like to hear. Make your own decisions. Build enough knowledge to trust your instincts and decisions. Don’t believe anything you hear until you check it out.

    Curiosity

    Too much ranting about heavy stuff. Let’s talk about art!

    After a long time of working up to being an artist, I have concluded that I have to follow my curiosity and trust my instincts. Sounds simple, but it is sometimes hard.

    I have spent time at times doing things in a way that they would be accepted by other people. It wasn’t entirely wasted, but is seemed kind of phony, and it was. I realized I was making someone else’s art. I don’t do that now.

    But do we follow the fashion of the day? Do whatever we have to do to be accepted by the ones who style themselves as the opinion leaders? Who anointed them with this divine authority? They are just people with opinions.

    I find that most of my best work happens when my inspiration is to ask “what if?” or when I say “I have never seen this like this before”. And do something with it.

    Adventure

    Do you lead a boring, monotonous life? Or is every day a new adventure? Much of the choice is ours. It depends on our attitude.

    I believe that artists have the opportunity to lead lives of adventure and excitement and personal growth all the time. Even if we never leave our town.

    Adventure is exploring and finding new things that excite us. We don’t have to go to exotic locations to find that. Our point of view determines our adventure.

    Nearly every day I go walking in the areas around my studio. I always take my camera. It is covering the same ground. Occasionally I create a new route, but there are only so many variations. Sometimes I get bored with it. But I am coming to realize that when I am bored I am not letting my curiosity roam free. If my attitude is better I am likely to discover new things or appreciate something for the first time. The same with driving through Kansas. It can be a nice adventure.

    Artists are on a journey of discovery

    As artists, we should be explorers. Not discovering unknown lands, but finding new things about ourselves and the world we live in. These discoveries could be as close as our back yard.

    To do that, we need to be always asking questions: What is this? What else is it? Can I see it different? What if this was combined with that? What if …?

    At the root, all of these questions are based on the assumption that I don’t know – but I will explore it to see where I can take it. Not knowing is fundamental to being creative. When we don’t know, it should excite and inspire us.

    Forget about the rest of the world that is pressing in and telling us what we should see and believe. We are capable of deciding for our self. Being an artist means being comfortable with high levels of ambiguity. And the accompanying joy of finding new answers or showing the world something they have never seen.

    Be yourself. Trust yourself.

  • Over-processing

    Over-processing

    How much post-processing is too much? Is less better? Is there some magic boundary you shouldn’t cross? Over-processing is a controversial topic for many photographers.

    Purity

    Ah, purity, respecting reality, make no changes. This concept and value system is instilled into many photographers, especially landscape artists. I still follow Nature Photography Network. The images are often very lovely. But there is generally, to me, a sterility to them. Most photographers who post here are afraid of departing from literal reality.

    In this group, as in many landscape forums I have seen, there is a real negative feeling about cleaning up distractions, adjusting color to be anything other than the actual original, compositing, or anything else that is not strictly faithful to the original scene. It reminds me of some film photographers who used to make prints with the film rebate showing to prove the image was not cropped.

    The problem I have is the fear to depart from reality. Fear is not a good guide for art.

    What is photography?

    Is photography to be a literal recording of reality? Some people believe that it is. I used to be in this group, way back. As a matter of fact, the camera club I used to be a member of went further to say that a nature image must not show any “hand of man”. That is, there could not be a trail, a contrail, an old mine, anything not completely natural.

    But what is photography, really? I see it as an art medium. Composing interesting images from “real life” scenes in front of a camera is just as valid an art as painting scenes that exist only in the artist’s mind. Just as the painter only includes what is necessary to further the image, the photographer eliminates what is distracting, either in camera or in post processing. The goal and only real measure is the final image.

    In impressionism or modernism or post-modernism or any of the other isms, the artist freely pushes the medium to its limits to give his preferred interpretation of reality. And that, to me, is a key thing that makes it art – it is an artist’s interpretation of the world.

    What prevents photography from doing the same thing? A modern sensor can record a scene in very high resolution, and our software tools allow us to “correct” color and noise and other artifacts to a high degree., Does that mean it is the place of photography to create images that are constrained to faithfully depict reality?

    Is there a line you shouldn’t cross?

    Is there a line, a limit, not to cross? Probably, but it is different for each of us. As an artist, we need to be able to figure it our for our self.

    Our post-processing tools are amazing. They allow a level of control unheard of a few years ago. There is sage old advice, though, that says just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Anything can be misapplied to create garbage.

    It is easy to go to the computer and over-saturate and over-sharpen and re-mix colors in garish ways to make an image into something I would never show anyone. But that line where I have gone too far is personal to me. It would be different for you.

    Go for it

    As I mature, I find the line is moving our toward the horizon. That is, I am finding interesting ways to express my vision using post-processing “excesses”. Is my vision moving or am I learning to use the tools better? I don’t know for sure, but it is probably both. What we discover we can do influences the notions of what we want to do.

    The image with this article is a completely natural scene that has had what I would consider “moderate” post-processing. I like it much better than the bland original.

    These tools that can be used to create horrible garbage can also be used with great subtly and finesse. Like with a painter, the same paint and brushes can create a useless smear or a respected painting. It comes down to the artist’s vision and how the tools are used.

    Maybe asking if the image is over-processed is not the right question. Maybe the question is did the artist realize his vision? And did the vision resonate with me?

  • Try and Fail

    Try and Fail

    No, I’m not saying try “to” fail. If you have been there trying to do creative work, you know that you will create a lot of failures along the way to some good work. In creative work we often do not clearly know where we are going. That leads to a lot of failed experiments and dead ends. When we try and fail, is that bad?

    Attitude

    Our attitude about failure will have a lot to do with our results. A reality for many of us is that, if we are not failing, we are not stretching ourselves and developing new skills or vision. As creatives we cannot play it safe. We have to be risk takers.

    I love a quote from a blog by Benjamin Hardy. He was talking about Molly Bloom and said “The moment you realize you can try and fail — and that everything will be okay — then you are free to create.“

    This is a liberating event in our creative journey. Failure isn’t final. Failure leads to growth. When you fail, no one comes and takes away your camera or your brushes. No one even laughs at us. Realizing we can fail and go on with no consequences frees us to try without worrying much about failing.

    Learn by doing

    We don’t upgrade our skills and exercise our creativity just by thinking about it. We have to take action. But just taking random action will usually lead to random, unwanted results. We need a way to follow a path that will take us to desired results.

    You are probably familiar with the “do it, try it, fix it” loop. It goes by different names, but the concept is pretty much the same. This is an excellent process for improving things.

    The basic idea is you try something new. Then you evaluate the results, Was it a success or an improvement? Decide what, if anything, you want to keep of this experiment to incorporate into your tool set. Then, based on the evaluation, plan what to try next. That becomes the basis of the next experiment. It is important to realize this is a cycle, meaning it continually loops and repeats.

    Evaluate

    At the evaluation stage many experiments may be tossed out. They did not take us in the direction we want to go. It was a failure, but that does not mean we failed. We just tried something that we decided didn’t work for us.

    This is part of a process. It is a deliberate plan to systematically push the limits. To do that, we will try a lot of things that don’t work out satisfactorily. The failures are expected, planned even. Not something to be ashamed of. We should be happy to know we tried. Now we are free to do another experiment in a different direction.

    Freedom

    Freedom is at the core of the process. We are not just trying random things and mostly being disappointed with the results and insecure with our creativity. Instead, we are following a deliberate process of improving our self and our art. And knowing we can try anything with no fear of failure is extremely liberating.

    It is easy to get discouraged and think of our self as the failure. We have probably all felt like a fraud who has no right considering themself an artist. Remind yourself that we have to change and grow creatively, and to do that requires a lot of risk taking and failed experiments. Following a process like outlined above makes it a methodical plan. It help us keep in mind that the failure is not a personal failing but a necessary and expected outcome of the growth process. It can be exciting. We can risk more when the fails are not catastrophic.

    The image with this article is an experiment. It is probably not what it appears to be. I will leave it to you to decide if it was a failure. I have my own evaluation.

  • Failing

    Failing

    Most of us fear failing. We often avoid taking a risk because we don’t want to fail and feel bad about ourselves. This is a deep seated behavior that is hard for most of us to overcome. Fear of failing can paralyze us.

    But I feel that, if you are an artist, you do not have the luxury of always playing it so safe you can never fail.

    Fear failure?

    Most of us fear failure in most things. Maybe almost as much as we fear public speaking.

    Are you a perfectionist? Are your expectations so high that you cannot try new things for fear that you might not do a good job? Does even thinking about the possibility of failing give you rapid heart rate, chest tightness, trembling, dizziness, lightheadedness, sweating?

    Or, sorry I’m getting very personal with myself now, are you afraid you are a fake? That you are not good enough or able to do what you profess to do?

    Do not believe the labels other people want to put on you. They are quick to want to do it. Did you get rejected for that exhibit you applied for? It doesn’t mean you are a failure. Did a gallery reject you? They were just looking for something else. You can’t really be a failure unless you accept that you are.

    Accept disappointment

    Not getting the recognition or sales we are seeking hurts. Being rejected by the ones we seek approval from is painful and discouraging.

    We have to have a core of confidence in our ability that will keep us going. Our belief in our self must be stronger that the negative messages we get from the outside. Otherwise we will either give up or we will believe that our art is not worthwhile the way we want to do it and we will change to try to become someone else’s idea of an artist. That is living a lie.

    We must persist. There are very few true “overnight successes”. Here are some examples from authors. They seem to keep score more.

    JK Rowling’s Harry Potter was rejected by 12 publishers.

    John Grisham’s A Time to Kill was rejected by 16 publishers before he decided to get an agent. The agent eventually rejected him as well.

    Chicken Soup for the Soul, by Jack Canfeld and Mark Victor Hansen, was rejected 140 times.

    Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected 30 times.

    These are just anecdotes, data points. Your mileage will vary. But isn’t it great that these people persisted despite what must have seemed like overwhelming failure?

    Redefine

    Perhaps your expectations are wrong. Maybe you won’t be the next Joe McNally. There are very few of them.

    It could be time to change your metrics. Are you defining success as huge sales? Is success for you to be rock star-famous or published in National Geographic? Try looking at it in terms of the satisfaction you get from what you create. Whether you get fame or rejection, the inner evaluation of your art is your own.

    Maybe the failures are a necessary part of our growth and maturing. They can reinforce our will to succeed and our belief in our self. It is part of growing up as an artist.

    Seek failure

    I’m kidding, right? Who in their right mind would seek failure?

    Well, when we put ourself out there, that is giving the world an opportunity to reject us. To consider us a failure. We have to do it, to persist, to accept that the rejection will come because we need to have our art seen.

    “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” – Sylvia Plath

    We should embrace the rejections and failures as steps along the way. It is never fun or easy, but we need to get used to it. Keeping on trying even after rejections helps us overcome fear of failure. If we retreat into our shell and refuse to try anymore we will consider ourselves failures. We will believe that self-talk.

    Plus, we learn from the experience.

    Learn from failure

    Whenever we are learning something challenging there is a time of testing ourselves to see if we are getting it. If we are studying math, we solve problems and take tests. If we are learning Karate we spar and go through testing to measure our proficiency. When we are learning music we are asked to do recitals to demonstrate our capability. The exercises develop our skill and the tests not only prove our ability, they develop our mental toughness.

    If we never confront our fears we will never know what we are and what we are capable of. This is easier for some of us than others. It is pretty hard for me. I don’t like it. But I force myself to keep on. I may grumble and be in a bad mood for a while after getting a rejection, but I know I have to keep on.

    Perhaps the real thing we are learning is how much we believe in our self. Do we consider our art worthwhile and worth the pain?