Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Mindfulness

  • What You Find

    What You Find

    This is heresy, but I recommend most of the time we work with what we find rather than planning extensively and expecting everything to be “perfect”.

    Planning

    It is common these days for photographers to research locations is detail before ever going into the field. And there are lots of tools to help us do it.

    For any given location we can find what time of the year is “optimum”, what time of day is best, even where to stand for the best view. We can research the weather we should be able to expect, the temperature, exactly when sunrise or sunset is if that is important to the shot.

    Then, of course, we can work back to where to stay, what time to get up, where the beat eating places are, etc.

    Basically, then, we can just show up at the right time, set up and take the shot we want, and leave.

    Trophies

    A well planned shot like that can lead to some excellent pictures. If you are a National Geographic photographer out on a 6 month assignment to get a certain picture, that is a great approach.

    I have 2 problems with it

    1. It is collecting trophies.
    2. What about the experience?

    Much of photography these days seems to revolve around collecting trophies. We have to get that signature picture of Half Dome or the Eiffel Tower to post on social media to impress our peers.

    That’s not me. I usually avoid places where dozens of other photographers are lined up shoulder to shoulder, fighting for tripod placements. Those sights are well covered. I do not plan to contribute yet another photo of Half Dome to the world, unless I am able to capture something unique. That is less and less likely when millions of shots are taken of it every year by good photographers.

    I fully realize this is a personal value. It also is rooted in my personality type. I derive satisfaction from creating fresh, creative images that represent my vision. Whether or not anyone else likes them. Some other people need to bag trophies. Checking off the bucket list items is more important than actually having the image.

    It would be foolish for me to criticize them. We are different. I do not agree with them, but I recognize that this behavior is true for many people. You have to do what is right for you.

    What you find

    Taking a good photograph is an emotional encounter for me. Talking about the experience you get is subtle and harder to describe. It is intensely personal.

    If you are the meticulous planner I described earlier and you show up at your target location, what happens if things go wrong? What if the weather is too stormy to get out? Perhaps there are forest fires around and it is closed or obscured by smoke. Maybe a road is slowed down by construction and you get to the location “too late” for the planned shot.

    If things like this happen and you can’t get the shot you planned, is it a failure? Are you disappointed with the outing? Was it a wasted trip?

    I’m not usually so disappointed. I am there to see, feel, internalize – and, oh by the way, make images I am proud of. A sunny day may not inherently be better than a rainy day. Why is a snow storm worse than a warm summer day? It all depends on my reaction and attitude and what I am able to do with what I find.

    How good are you?

    I believe the attitude of accepting what we find and using our skill to work with it is healthy and mature. We cannot control what we will encounter. But we can control our attitude.

    So whether I am at the Eiffel Tower or in my neighborhood, I try to make excellent images in whatever conditions I find. OK, allow 2 seconds feeling sorry for yourself, then put it out of your mind, enjoy yourself, and attack the photo problem.

    For example, recently I went out locally to shoot some pictures of trees. A favorite subject of mine. But it turned into an extremely windy day. Did that make it a waste? No. Have you ever tried to shoot pictures of the wind? It was challenging and interesting after I reframed the problem. I enjoyed it and I like some of the images.

    Making good pictures in unexpected conditions is a test of our craft and our character. Loosen your rigid expectations. Roll with the punches. Make lemonade out of lemons. Insert your own cliche.

    But cliche or not, try it. Be flexible. It surprises me that unexpected pictures in bad conditions are sometimes the most memorable to me.

    Today’s image

    This wasn’t taken on the windy day I described. But it was a much worse day. It was in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, CO. It is not the conditions I came for, but it was what I found. HIgh wind funneling through the rock formations, blowing snow starting to pile up, bitter cold in Colorado in the winter. Sounds like a great day to be out.

    Actually, after I kicked myself out into it and started seeing images, it was great. It turned out to be a very enjoyable experience. I went crazy shooting, when I could keep the snow cleared off my lens. Of course, it took a while later for my hands to thaw out and I was soaking wet and shivering. But I did not notice that very much at the time. All in all, I look back on it as a good time. And I like the image.

  • It Doesn’t Have To Be a Portfolio Shot

    It Doesn’t Have To Be a Portfolio Shot

    Of course we want to build a great portfolio, but don’t stress too much. Sometimes it is best to just go shoot and see what happens. In other words, not every shot has to be a portfolio shot.

    A portfolio shot?

    We all probably have one or more “portfolios” we maintain. Maybe you don’t formally build a physical portfolio box or book. Now days it is probably one or more Lightroom collections (or albums, depending on which flavor you use). That is a separate discussion.

    The portfolio represents our best work. Typically there will be multiple ones for categories like landscapes or portraits or street photography, etc.

    It should be a very limited set. A maximum of 20 works well. If you have 200, either you are a truly exceptional artist or you haven’t edited enough yet. Editing hurts. It is painful to take out a favorite. But the reality is that every one removed makes the remaining set stronger. It is healthy to constantly challenge our portfolio. Test to see if new images are better than existing ones. If they are, replace the old one.

    So my point here is that it is easy to get in our head and not take a picture of a scene unless we are sure it is superior to anything already in our portfolio. This freezes us into fear and indecision.

    Be mindful

    Photography should be a process of mindfulness. We should be present and open wherever we are. This helps us to actually see the possibilities in what is around us at the moment. Being there and being in the moment lets us make the most of whatever situation we find.

    Self-censoring fights against mindfulness. When we pass opportunities because they will probably not make portfolio images, we are building a mental wall to exclude things. It constricts our thinking and leads us to miss great shots that come unexpectedly.

    Practice the craft

    If you are a musician you practice hours a day. Even simple scales train the musical senses. If you are a gymnast you practice hours a day. Strength and flexibility exercise is as important as working on routines.

    Why should it be different in the arts? Our art is part craft. Practice makes us better. We need to be very fluid in handling our equipment. Exposure decisions should be quick. Composition should be almost automatic because we have built such a large base of experience.

    So we need to spend a lot of time just taking pictures. For the practice, if nothing else, even if we discard most of them. It makes us a more virtuoso photographer. The great majority of this practice does not produce portfolio shots. But it sets us up to skillfully make the great shot when we find it.

    Get in the flow

    A lot gets written about flow states. here are reasons for this. One is that it is a simple concept most of us can relate to. Another is that it is a powerful and compelling experience. Everybody seems to understand the basic concept, so I will not define it.

    It is hard to force a flow state. You kind of fall into it and don’t realize it until later. To get there you have to be working – hard. Not working on getting into a flow. Working hard on our craft. That means being out doing it. Not just dabbling in it, but spending significant time and attention. As we immerse ourselves in it for an extended time we may find that we have hit a groove. Time seems to stand still. The stars align, so to speak, and everything seems to work better; ideas come freely; we are on a creative high. We feel good about what we are doing and the results are above normal. It seems to flow.

    Looking back on it with a warm glow we may realize we were in a flow. It is important to realize that the flow is not the goal. The experience we feel and the work we produce is. Flow helps enable that.

    Be surprised

    And by being out and shooting freely with less self-censoring, I often am surprised by what I get. Maybe it is from being more mindful. Perhaps it is when I am in a flow. But regardless of why, I am frequently pleased with images that I thought at the time would be boring. And I am glad I shot them.

    The famous Wayne Gretsky said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I think there is application to our photography. Just thinking about a shot does not create an image. Thinking about a shot and deciding not to take it means no image. But when something tickles your subconscious and you go ahead and grab the shot, you might find gold. Even when you are relatively sure it will not make it into your portfolio, it might trigger another thought. Which might trigger another thought. And so on. It can bring you to a better way to see the subject. We can surprise ourselves.

    So don’t be quite so picky. Be very picky in the excellence we demand in our craft. But be careful in prejudging our shots. Do your best with what is there and see where it leads. It could be that it is not a weak subject that is at fault. It could be that we aren’t letting our self think about it very well.

    Today’s image

    I’m a sucker for these. I love shooting them. You never know precisely what you will get, but the surprise can be fun. I really like this one. It is also a great exercise for working on timing. Being able to recognize a shot and execute it. It fascinates me that a few tenths of a second or a slight movement of the frame can make all the difference.

  • How Not to be Creative

    How Not to be Creative

    You can find suggestions everywhere about how to be creative. I decided to turn it around and offer suggestions on how not to be creative. Is that creative? 🙂 I can’t guarantee that doing the opposite will make you creative, but perhaps they may be warning signs for consideration.

    Creativity

    We all want to be creative (I hope). But what it is? How do you define it?

    We all have different views and expectations. For photography, maybe it comes down to making images that seem fresh and “different” in a good way. They say that everything has been photographed. I don’t buy that. But even if it has, there are new viewpoints or treatments or lighting on our subjects. And there are still lots of things no one has thought to photograph.

    Few of us will create wholly new art genres the world has never seen. Few of us really want to. But we can do work that people look at, come back to, and admire as a whole new way of seeing a subject. We can project our feelings onto the print, giving it our unique stamp.

    We often use the metaphor of the muse inspiring us to creativity. If the muse is with us we are creative. If she is not, we can’t seem to do fresh work. Yes, our creative inspiration seems to come and go; to have highs and lows. I do not believe some imaginary Greek goddesses actually have anything to do with it. It is really happening within us.

    So rather than chasing after creativity, I want to look at ways to stifle the creativity we have.

    Distraction

    If you live in the Western world, you are probably paralyzed by distractions. Our devices and entertainment rather successfully compete for all of our time and mental bandwidth.

    People open their phones dozens of times a day because of fear of missing out (FOMO). We are expected to be online and available to our employers 24/7, even when on vacation. The wonders of the internet has opened up far too many “opportunities” to spend our time and attention.

    But rather than being an incredibly empowering technological aid to us, it has become the master we are slaves to. People are online at work all day then spend many hours at home doom scrolling funny cat videos or new dance moves or movies we don’t really care about.

    So, a great way to subvert your creativity is to be so distracted we do not have time for original thought. Creativity requires quiet time and very limited distractions. In general, the more attention we give our phones and other devices, the less opportunity to be creative we have.

    The technology is not bad in itself. I have 1G fiber and i would not want to let go of it. What we do with it is where we can hurt ourselves.

    Stress

    Another great creativity killer is stress. Stress focuses all of our attention on the problems we are facing.

    The world always tries to keep us treading water. Just a couple of days ago my fuel pump went out, while we were driving in a hard to access location in the mountains. Do you know how long it takes and what it costs to get your car towed over Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park? And do you know what it costs to replace a fuel pump? That can peak your blood pressure.

    That’s just one little example. All of us deal with many sources of stress all the time. It comes with life.

    Like our devices, stress occupies all of our attention if we let it. When we are stressed and worrying, we are seldom thinking creative thoughts. It seems more survival mode.

    So, to kill creativity, give in to worrying about stress. Fixate on those problems. Live with a survival mentality.

    Of course, we can’t just wish our stressors away. We need to deal with them. How we deal with them is up to us. Attitude is a big deal.

    Trying too hard

    Want to chase away the muse? Trying too hard is a good way.

    We should always be trying hard. What I mean, though, is trying to force our self to create something on our schedule. Just sitting there saying “I have to create something; now; do it; right now”. How does that work for you?

    Maybe it works better for you than it does for me. If I try to force myself to be creative it seems to have the opposite effect. I am a total blank.

    Actually, I can often lure creativity to visit me by ignoring it and thinking about or working on something else. I believe artistic creativity comes from the subconscious. Our minds need to be occupied with something not too demanding so our subconscious can be free to wander and think new thoughts. But then we must be conscious enough to realize what just happened and capture the idea.

    Too busy

    Another good way to not be creative is to be too busy. Busy with demanding tasks that occupy all our attention and mental bandwidth.

    The world around us encourages a high level of busyness. What do you say when someone greets you? “How ‘ya doing?” “Man, I’m staying really busy!” It’s almost a badge of honor.

    Being busy is much better than being idle. But like most things, when taken to an extreme, it can be destructive.

    If you are one of those super busy people with a full calendar, how do you find time to be creative? Maybe it is as simple as doing some prioritization and putting some blocks of time in your calendar where you will let your mind relax and give yourself the space to focus on your art.

    Imitation

    The last creativity killer I want to talk about is imitation. Are you trying to make art like your mentor or favorite artist?

    I believe this is a trap because we cannot be them. We can make work that looks a lot like theirs. But this is looking backward at what they have done in the past. We cannot be in their mind and have the same thoughts and influences that will guide them to new work. So all we can really do is copy them. That is not creative. We are not adding anything new.

    Can we learn from other artists? Of course! That is how advancements are made. The critic Lionel Trilling is quoted as saying “Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.” Many others have said similar things in slightly different ways. The consistent point made is that we take what we can learn from others and add it to our own art. Just imitating them, though, is a dead end.

    Conclusion

    Creativity is something we all have in varying amounts. It is an enabler and motivation of being an artist. But we are surrounded by many powerful forces that want to stifle our creativity.

    All the creativity sucking problems I list here are real and probably attack most of us most days. They are easy to identify but very hard to overcome.

    We cannot just pretend they are not there. Instead, we have to be very aware of them and actively work to fight them. If we don’t, we will be sucked into their trap and our art will never be seen. The path of least resistance is to give in and let our creativity be choked out.

    Fight!

  • Created From Joy

    Created From Joy

    There are many motivations and reasons for creating art. I can’t say any are wrong if the result is art that truly pleases the artist. For me, I am sure my art is created from joy.

    Many motivations

    What is it that motivates artists to create? Trauma? Money? Desperation? Joy? I am not qualified to say, because I can only speak for myself. Without being in the mind of another artist and experiencing their motivations, I cannot know.

    Much has been written on this, but, again, i am not sure we can fully know what motivates someone else.

    We can look at some works and believe they were created as the artist tried to work out some grief or tragedy or great wrong. Or maybe just try to understand life.

    Guernica

    Picasso’s Guernica seems to be a deep reaction to the horrors of war. Actually, he had been given a commission by the Spanish Republicans to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. He was not making much headway on it and did not seem highly motivated. Then on 26 April 1937 the Nazis bombed the village or Guernica. Picasso was urged to make this his theme and, after reading eye witness accounts of the attack, he did.

    Yes, he was Spanish, although he did not live there at the time and never would again. But rather than being a deeply personal experience for him, he seemed to be able to empathize well enough to bring the emotion through. Anyway, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece.

    This does not prove or disprove anything. It just shows that artists motivations are deeply internal and personal. As much as critics try to analyze and dissect a work, they are groping in the dark unless the artist enlightens them.

    Joy motivates me

    I have discovered myself well enough to understand that joy is my primary motivation when I am making images. Even though I am old and increasingly cynical, joy is what enlightens my work.

    Joy can be a small thing like finding a dew covered spider web in the niche of a wall or it can be the sweep of a grand landscape at the right time, like the image with this article. It is not a particular thing or place or time. It is my reaction to it. How does it move me? What does it bring to me at the moment?

    Finding these moments of joy draws me on from one to the next. The act of selecting a scene to photograph, framing it, composing it, deciding on exposure settings, etc. is a skill. Doing it is a calming and pleasant activity to immerse myself in for a few moments. Everybody takes pictures. To take one that people stop to look at or talk about is art.

    My joy is in capturing and expressing a scene in a way that will be memorable. But even if no one other than me sees it or enjoys it, it is joy and it is my art. No critic or reviewer can take that joy away from me. It matters little what other people think about an image. It can still give me joy.

    Not happiness

    We need to distinguish between happiness and joy. Many people take them as about the same, but they are quite different. Happiness is a pleasant feeling because circumstances made us content at the moment. A warm cup of cocoa on a cold day. An unexpected letter from a friend.

    The next moment, something can take away our happiness.

    Joy is a long term view of life. It comes from within and is not completely dependent on what is happening around us. We tend to be joyful when the way we are living our life is aligned with our values and beliefs.

    Making images that bring me joy definitely aligns with my values and closes the loop. It reinforces my joy. That is, my images come from joy and making them increases my joy. For me, they are created from joy.

    Values

    Do you ever consider your values? The principles you build your life on are too important to go un-analyzed. We are more fulfilled when what we do is aligned with our values and we tend to be frustrated and unhappy when we are opposing them. Think about what you believe.

    I’m not saying everything we do needs to be for some grand social cause. Not at all. I think that tends to make our work stiff and preachy. I am just suggesting we will be happier and do better work if we are doing it for the joy of our feelings and the pleasure of the creativity.

    Try it. You might find more joy in your art and it might come across that way to your viewers.

  • To Be, or Not to Be.

    To Be, or Not to Be.

    I’m not discussing Hamlet’s famous existential crisis. I want to continue an ongoing theme of mindfulness. To be or not to be refers to our state of mindfulness when we go out shooting.

    Backwards

    John Barclay is an excellent photographer and workshop leader. I read an interesting article where he talked about a student in a workshop who changed John’s approach to photography. The student was a new photographer, but a Zen priest. His work was noticeably better than the rest of the student, even maybe John’s. John said “I had been approaching photography backwards and I believe this to be true for most people. Flint arrived at photography because he had learnt how to become mindful and present in the world, so when he picked up a camera, he’d already done all the hard work.”

    What an interesting idea. And I see it playing out constantly. Photography instructors spend massive amounts of time teaching the technical process of taking pictures. Apertures and shutter speeds and depth of field and rules of third and all the other trivia we think is important to taking a good picture.

    But this student, Flint, had already figured out how to see what was interesting. Now he just needed to learn the technical process for recording it. Amazing. He starts out at the level most of us strive over years to attain then just has to learn to use a camera.

    Mindfulness

    John’s takeaway was a change of philosophy. A desire to become more mindful. He states it as “we don’t take pictures, we are taken by them.“

    Cutting through the mystical fog that often surrounds its discussion, mindfulness is learning “to be”. We need to be present, to be still, to pay attention, to quiet our minds and let go of the plans and schedules and demands and interruptions that are constantly calling us.

    This is increasingly hard for most of us in the Western world. It’s a 24/7 world. We are over scheduled; we multitask; we carry devices with us that are always connected and bringing us “critical” information that is more important than our art. If we don’t respond immediately to every ding of our devices, we might miss out on something.

    Out culture is the opposite of mindful.

    Why do it

    I believe, and have seen research supporting it, that we cannot really multitask. We work much better concentrating on one thing for quality time, even getting into a flow state. Every time we are interrupted, it takes us at least 20 minutes to fully engage with the previous task we were doing.

    Even more seriously, as artists, we cannot think, reflect, introspect, envision creative new work when we are constantly stimulated and distracted by other things. The arena we perform in is our mind. We must take enough control of our mind that we can focus our creative energy on our art.

    Our work comes from our own mind. We need to carefully protect that and be serious about managing our own thoughts and environment. Outside forces want to impose on us and control our attention. We must fight that.

    How to do it

    Ah, how. That is the challenge. And the challenge is different for everyone and the solutions are different for each. We are each in a different situation.

    My personal experience and what works for me is all I can speak of with any confidence. I do not have a problem with social media, because I have never let myself become addicted to it. I realize this is a problem for many people to day. While I can sympathize, I do not understand it. In the same way that I can sympathize with an alcoholic even though I do not truly understand because I do not have a problem with the addiction myself.

    Social Media

    Social media is one of the worst attention sinks in most people’s lives.

    I know people who are on Facebook, or their drug of choice, dozens of times a day. They feel compelled to immediately respond to everything they see and spend hours hypnotized by short video clips. And if they do not post something every day they fear they will become irrelevant – in a couple of hours. This Fear of Missing Out is a primary tool of the media companies. They have huge staffs of unbelievably smart people working daily on ways to keep us addicted to their service. Results show that it works.

    What would happen if you put yourself in control of your attention instead of defaulting to what the media companies want you to do? For instance, if your main creative time is 8 to noon, then turn off your devices and do not allow yourself to access social media during those hours. Set a meeting on your calendar to block out time for you. Honor it and reserve it for your creative work. Put a wall around yourself and fiercely protect your creative time.

    After that, get in touch with the world and light up your huge network of followers if you need to. But an interesting thing to ask yourself is, in cold marketing and financial terms, what are those likes and followers worth to your business? How much revenue does it bring? Might your time be better spent on your art?

    Benefits

    I am talking generally about mindfulness. I strongly believe that we must be mindful in order to create the art we want.

    Do you ever just take your camera and go for a walk? I highly recommend it. But it is not effective if you are still fully tapped into the online world. Silence the phone, Take out the AirPods so you can actually listen to what is happening around you. Coach yourself to look at the world you are passing through. Really look. Take some time. Walking is good exercise, but forget the personal best goals. Just walk. Maybe even slow down if it will help you to pay more attention.

    It will take practice to slow down and start seeing. Keep doing it. It is a form of meditation to unplug from the connected world and get in touch with what is actually there. Life is a series of moments, and we have to re-learn to recognize them.

    Having a camera along is important to me. It gives me license to look for pictures. This ties back to what John Barclay said “we don’t take pictures, we are taken by them.” I go out, not to force myself to take a picture, but to allow myself to find something that interests me that should be photographed. I am often amazed.

    To be

    To be, or not to be. Being, in the moment, undistracted, is a powerful tool and a strong meditative force for artists. We engage different parts of our mind, waking up the right-brain creative side.

    Plus it has other benefits. We come back refreshed, more alive. Ready to do more creative work. Maybe we even want to keep the devices silenced for longer periods. Unwilling to put out precious attention under someone else’s control.

    Like the student John Barclay mentions, being in the moment is the hard part. Then we pick up the camera and capture it.

    We don’t take pictures. We are taken by them.

    Today’s image

    This was a mindful day in the woods. It was fall. The leaves and undergrowth were changing color. I love that time of the year, but I was feeling a reluctance to just snap pretty pictures of fall trees. On this occasion I got in tune with the rhythm and flow of the day, The wind blowing the leaves and grass. The light moving through all of it. Rather than a normal picture of fall leaves I worked on capturing the movement, the transitory feel of the season. I like it. It seems more in spirit with the day as I remember it.

    I want to hear your comments! Let’s talk!