Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Photography

  • The Hardest Part

    The Hardest Part

    I have figured out what I consider the hardest part of photography. Excluding Marketing. It is selecting a portfolio.

    Pick a few

    It’s a common situation. Perhaps I am entering a selection for a gallery competition. Maybe a client has requested a few choices for a job. It could be just needing to pick some images for this blog post. Whatever the reason, I am faced with the problem of selecting a small set of images for a certain use.

    Oh sure, I have the images that would work. It’s not like I”m not happy with my choices. The problem is selecting only a few.

    I’m calling what I am doing here making a portfolio. That is not precisely correct. Formally, a portfolio is a collection of images designed for presentation to an audience. Often one-on-one. However, the process is substantially the same for that and the situations I described. So I will not distinguish them.

    Embarrassment of riches

    Please don’t take it as bragging, but I have lots of images that I like. I have been at it a long time. Lots as in many thousands. That’s just the ones I promote to my top level selection category. A lot of others in my catalog would be useful for certain applications.

    Yes, I have a disciplined filing system. Everything is culled through multiple levels of selection. I find it is hard to pick the ones I like best from a shoot, so my process is oriented around rejecting the ones that are not as good. I don’t know why, but it is easier for me to say “I don’t like that one as well” than to say “I like that one best.” That is repeated through multiple levels. I apply more stringent criteria at each level.

    Giant bear peeking into an urban building©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Most of my images are filed geographically and I have an extensive keyword system for tagging all sorts of information. And I use it.

    All this should make it easy to find just what I want. You would think, but no. It is easier in that I am only wading through thousands, not hundreds of thousands of images to pick. But that’s not even the most difficult part.

    No guidance

    We are awash in training material to help us become better photographers. Some if it is actually good. There are thousands of hours of videos on camera operation and composition and visual design. Many more on techniques in the field and techniques for post processing. And gear guides are limitless. As are books to supplement the videos. All of this can help boost our knowledge and improve our technique.

    But when it comes to pulling together a portfolio, the advice is: it’s hard, keep editing, get it down to a few great images.

    Thanks, but that is not really helpful. Well, it is helpful to find out that I should expect it to be hard and I have to do it myself. But where is the video that shows me to pick this image instead of that one?

    Should a choose a tight theme with carefully coordinated image selections, as for a project? Or would it be best to present a range of subjects and styles to show the breadth of my work? Would it help to research the curator of the exhibit to try to guess what they would like? Why would this image work better than that one?

    I feel kind of left hanging out there.

    I’m on my own

    That’s the point and the conclusion. We are on our own. We have to be grown ups and make responsible decisions. That is no fun. It is downright hard. That’s why, to me, this is the hardest part.

    Very abstract created image. Representa the evolution of an image.©Ed Schlotzhauer

    So a typical scenario is that I have to select, say, 4 images for a gallery. Open theme. I’m on my own. No guidance. It is very easy to go through my catalog and pull 50 images that I would like to submit. Another pass or two might get it down to 30 images. Then it gets harder and harder as I push on. I love every one of these images. Eliminating one seems like I am abandoning it. I know that’s not the case, but the feeling is there.

    It is sometimes easier if I set it aside for a few days to let the emotions settle down. Then I do my best imitation of being coldly realistic to screen out some more. But what seems to happen is that I get down to, say, 8 images. I can only have 4. That final cut is extremely painful.

    i envy people who have a colleague or mentor they can work with to advise the process. I don’t. The decisions have to be made by me with no help. I have an awesome wife, but she isn’t an artist and cannot help with this.

    Well, I get there. It is painful. I come away with sadness because I had to eliminate some of my favorites in the final mix. That disappears with time, though. After a few days I can look at the final set and be proud of them.

    Overthinking it

    A reality is that I tend to overthink it. What I know is that the images I pull are all very good. And I know, and have demonstrated to myself often, that, with a set of excellent images, every time you eliminate one, you make the overall set stronger. That is, if you make intelligent choices. I try to remind myself of great advice I got one time that you will be judged by the worst image you show.

    So why do I agonize over it so much? It’s not like I throw a great image away if I remove it from the set.

    I think there are two problems. First is that I love these images and feel bad about taking one out, because I’m emotionally attached to it. I can live with that. But the second and bigger problem is, how do I know I have made the best choice?

    Self doubt

    That is the core of the problem. There is no guidance. I am on my own. There are much bigger and more important choices in life that are like this. Who to marry, what career to pursue, where to live, what investments to make, etc. We must use our judgment to make the decision. It hurts. We want someone to look over our shoulder and tell us we did the right thing. Unfortunately, being an adult doesn’t work like that.

    Picking some images for a use is way down in importance from those big life events. Why is it so painful then? I think it is the same fear of failure and the consequences. But I try to be realistic.

    So I try to convince myself that the final set I choose will be excellent. Even though I feel like I am in the spotlight and I am being examined to see if I am worthy, I know that if I do the best I can, that will be good enough. And if not, well, nobody dies.

    I tell myself that, but it doesn’t feel like it when I am in the pain of the process.

    All parts of the photographic process are interesting and challenging. All are subjective, But there seems to be a lot of help to be had in all phases of it up until the final image selection.

    Resources

    There actually are a couple of resources I have found to help give some education in this. Unfortunately they are not freely available. Peter Eastway, editor of Better Photography magazine, has written an excellent ebook on creating a portfolio. As it says, it is specifically oriented to putting together a portfolio or exhibit. But it still gives a lot of good insights.

    Creating a Portfolio might be available at www.betterphotographyeducation.com without a subscription. If not, it is an excellent publication and you will enjoy it. 🙂

    Another option that I have found out is not paywalled is a three part series of newsletters in the Paper Arts Collective newsletter. This is a hidden gem of a publication. The series I’m referring to was titled Evolution of a Small Project, and it traced the decisions and selection process he went through to put together an exhibit. If you do prints then you should check out Paper Arts Collective.

    But I come back to my original problem. It is hard, no one can really help you, you have to make hard choices yourself based on your judgment and artistic vision. And you have to have confidence in your decisions. To me, it is the hardest part.

  • Human Effort

    Human Effort

    I have been considering what makes “art”. I have only gotten as far as believing a necessary ingredient – maybe the only one – is human effort.

    Random beauty

    The world is a riot of random beauty. Flowers, trees, waterfalls, mountain ranges, oceans, sunsets abound. When you think about them, most of them are exceptionally beautiful in their way.

    I am blessed to live in Colorado. We have all of those things above (except oceans) and more. It is fall here as I write this. The last two weekends I have been out for long drives within a few hours of my home. The fall aspen colors are great. I’ve seen waterfalls and mountains and interesting trees and even burn areas – yes, they can have a kind of beauty of their own. It is a new moon time and I have been blown away by the beauty of the night sky in dark areas of the mountains. I’m not bragging. Most of you probably live in a beautiful area if you learn to appreciate it.

    Beauty like this and grand landscapes are some of the first things that come to mind for most of us when we think about going out to take pictures. How can we not take great pictures when we are surrounded by natural beauty? Well, that’s where the difference happens that changes it from a pretty picture to art.

    Blank canvas

    Let’s look the other direction and imagine our self a painter. We have a blank canvas in front of us. What will we put on it?

    This makes it a little easier to think about creativity and art. One of the unique things about photography is that the sensor records whatever we have framed in our viewfinder. One of our challenges is to very selectively limit what we want to see. Painters must design their composition and add every element, color, and brush stroke manually. A very different skill set, but still, as I will argue, the same kind of art.

    So everything that ends up on the canvas had to be consciously placed there by the artist. What the painter creates is undeniably a work of human effort.

    Interpretation

    Have you experienced a time when two photographers have been together at a location, but you each got very different results? How can that be? You saw the same scene in front of you but made something different out of it.

    Actually, that is not only common, it is typical. It is a difference between art and reporting.

    When a newspaper journalist (there are still a few of them) sees a scene or event, if they are an honest reporter, their goal is to accurately report it to their readers. They want to capture the essential information without bias, while keeping it interesting. Whether in words or still images or videos, they want their audience to have an detailed first hand account of it.

    But let’s say another crew of filmmakers was there at the same time. They have no implied imperative to be factual. Their focus may be on the drama of the scene, or it’s visual impact, or how it affects people, or even how it supports their particular political bias. Is this group doing a bad job?

    No. Not if they are clearly interpreting events from a subjective viewpoint. What they bring back will probably be vastly different from the newspaper reporter. It may even be difficult to believe it was the same event. By taking a loose interpretation of facts, they had more freedom to create art.

    When you are out photographing, are you reporting or making art?

    Two photographers

    Let’s get back to those 2 photographers at the same scene. It could be that one takes a very conventional, factual approach. Implicitly he believes this landscape shot should encompass his field of vision and it should show “just what he saw”. No more. No less. The result could well be a beautiful photo that many people would love to hang on their wall.

    ©Ed Schlotzhauer

    But let’s say the other photographer takes a very different approach. Let’s say for him, a wide shot of the whole scene is not how he relates to the spirit of the place. Instead, he zooms in on a small part of the scene. Say a small cascade with fallen leaves on it. By getting low and close and using a slow shutter speed and a polarizer, he gets the motion of blurred water among the rocks with reflections of the seasonal colors. Not something you could look at and definitely know the location. But the viewer gets a feel for the place and time as expressed by the photographer.

    Which is better? I can’t say. Maybe neither. Depends on their skill and vision. But one is more likely to be art.

    Created

    Now we come around full circle to my statement about human effort. One photograph is exactly what you would have seen if you drove to the same overlook. Some skill was required to successfully capture the image, but you know almost nothing of what the photographer was feeling about the scene.

    The second image demonstrates effort by the artist to create a scene for us to see. By scanning, evaluating, focusing in, moving, they bring us to a new point of view. This photographer is trying to create something beyond a straight image anyone would have seen and taken. It has (potentially) elevated the dialog and given us a new insight. I say potentially, because it may be a failure. Still, he tried.

    I am showing my biases. For me, at this point in my journey, the more interesting images are the result of effort to understand and interpret my feelings. It is not totally black & white, just a statistical prediction.

    Human effort

    These feelings about human effort are not just my own conclusions. Are there any original thoughts left to think?

    W. Eugene Smith, for instance, said

    “I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.”

    Guy Tal pointed out in his great book The Interior Landscape that

    “Poetry” derives from a Greek word meaning “to create” or to bring something into being. “Art” derives from a Latin word referring also to items brought into being by human skill (as opposed to things occurring naturally or randomly).

    So “art” and “poetry” basically mean the same thing, just from 2 different languages. Art is an act of creation that comes as a deliberate use of human skill. We bring something into being. Our art may be, as Smith said, at odds with the literal facts. I like that phrase.

    Is it art?

    Ah, the existential question behind all this. What is “art”? At this point, I have to come down on the side of a definite “I don’t know.” I have heard it said that “anything created as art is art.” I’m at a loss to do much better than that. I say that because I look at a fair bit of “art” and for a lot of it, I have to just scratch my head and think “Really? What were they thinking?”. So I obviously do not understand. Maybe I can’t understand.

    But for this little subset of the universe I am writing about today, maybe we can make some judgments.

    So, is photography art? Yes. It absolutely can be. If it is created as art, it is art. It requires artistic sensibilities to do a good job. I’m not talking about selfies.

    Is a representational photo less “good” than an interpretive one? I can’t say. It varies with time and context. You do what you have to do. Make your own art and follow your own values.

    ©Ed Schlotzhauer

    I used to be a straight representational photographer. I did everything I could to capture a scene exactly and in detail. Just like it was. Over time I have morphed into someone who values interpretation more. Even trending into abstraction and occasionally surreal. For the most part, if I show you something, I want it to be interesting and fresh. Perhaps that is a natural progression with maturity, like tending to prefer drier wine as your taste gets more sophisticated. I don’t know.

    Sorry to disappoint you. At this point I can only suggest you do your art and I will do mine and let’s not judge each other. If we are both happy with what we are doing, what else matters? And that is part of the beauty of it all. I used to be an engineer. One thing I appreciate as an artist is the much higher level of ambiguity. That is also a sign of maturity.

  • Out of Focus

    Out of Focus

    A few months ago I wrote about being in focus, both technically and mentally. I want to go a little deeper into how technical focus happens in modern cameras and an an experience I had recently where what I did was out of focus.

    What is focus

    Technically, focus is simple when the lens is adjusted so that the part of the subject you are most interested in is sharply defined. Your lens has a focus ring to use to manually focus. Most of us probably use the camera’s built in auto focus capability. This is much more precise than my old eyes. And a lot faster than most of us can do manually.

    Focusing physically moves one or more of the lens elements inside the lens barrel. This is required to adjust the focus point.

    I will let you argue whether focus is an absolute, precise point or just an acceptable range. I will just say that I am swinging away from being adamant about absolute technical perfection and leaning more toward artistic judgement and intent. Set your own values you will live by.

    Whether we manual focus or use auto focus, we observe in the viewfinder the image moving from a fuzzy blob a crisp, detailed representation of the scene before us. Unless we have a very old piece of technology in our camera with something called a split image viewfinder. I had this in my first SLR. It was magic and awesome for most of the subjects I shot.

    The split image viewfinder showed the image sharp regardless of focus. The image was divided into 2 pieces in the central circle. The pieces were offset from each other when out of focus. Use the focus ring to bring the 2 halves into alignment and the image was sharply focused. Magic. Enough trivia, though.

    Little did I know this was a type of and precursor to what we now call phase detection auto focus. Let’s get a little deeper into the technology.

    How does it work?

    Auto focus in a DSLR or mirrorless camera is complex and requires many precise components. But it works so well now that we tend to take it for granted.

    There are 2 basic technologies in modern cameras. The older one is called contrast detection and the newer and better one is called phase detection.

    I have written on histograms, a subject I consider vitally important to photography. Histograms and their interpretation are the basis of contrast detection auto focus. It is brilliantly simple in concept and in process as what we do when we are manually focusing.

    If an image in the viewfinder is out of focus, the pixels are blurred together. Kind of like looking through a fog. A result is that in the histogram, the values are clustered in the center. This is an indication of low contrast. But when an image is sharp, there is a wider range of brighter and darker pixels. This illustrates it:

    From https://digital-photography.com/camera/autofocus-how-it-works.php

    Focus process

    So conceptually, the system moves the focus a little and measures again to see if the histogram got more narrow (more out of focus) or wider (sharper) . If it got more in focus, continue moving that direction and measuring until the peak contrast if found, But if it got more out of focus, move the focus the other direction and continue the process. It is a hunting process to find the optimum focus point. Just like we do to manually focus.

    Unfortunately, this process is slow. It can take seconds to arrive at the focus. This is why phase detection auto focus came to prominence.

    In phase detection auto focus, some of the light coming through the lens is split off to a separate sensor. Like the split image viewfinder I mentioned above, it is further split into two paths. Through some brilliant engineering, they can determine in one measurement how far off focus is and in what direction. The focus moves there quickly. Note that in mirrorless cameras all the light goes directly to the sensor, so these auto focus sensors are built directly into the sensor.

    I said that phase detection is “better” than contrast detection. That is true as far as being very fast. Actually, contrast detection can achieve more precise focus. There is a kind of system called hybrid the combines the strengths of both. I will not discuss that or go into the bewildering variety of focus areas or focus modes.

    Out of focus

    This is all great as far as technology goes. It works quite well in the cases it is designed for. We are lucky to have it.

    But all of these systems rely on the sensor having enough light to see some contrast. It doesn’t work in the dark. Yes, there is another variation on auto focus that is called active auto focus. It shoots a red beam from the camera to illuminate the focus area. This has a very short range and does not help the scenario I’m about to describe.

    Recently I was in Rocky Mountain National Park, over on the west slope where there is little light. It was full dark on a moonless night. The mountains all around provided lovely silhouettes. The stars were astonishing. Beautiful. I had to stop and get some star images.

    A trailhead parking lot provided a great and convenient place to set up – wondering if those occasional sounds I heard in the dark were bears. I guess not. It was perfect. Except. There was not enough contrast to focus, even at 6400 ISO. And the viewfinder image was too noisy to be useful for manual focus. I did not have a powerful enough flashlight to cast enough light on the nearest object, over 100 yards away, to allow the focus system to work.

    Adding to the problem, the lens I brought on this outing did not have a focus scale (a curse of modern zoom lens design). Normally, in low light, I switch to manual focus and set the lens to infinity for a scene like this. I guessed, but missed badly for a big section of the images. They were uselessly out of focus. I am ashamed to show an example, but like this:

    A blurry night shot©Ed Schlotzhauer

    Experience is a great teacher

    I write frequently advocating that we study our technology to become expert with it. And to practice, practice, practice to know how to use our gear, even in the dark. I failed. I encountered too much dark and a lens I had never tried to use in low light. The combination tripped me up. I am ashamed to admit I did not follow my own advice well enough.

    But every failure is a learning opportunity, right? It can be a great motivator and reinforcer. I did some research and discovered a “hidden feature” I never knew my camera had. It should save me the next time I do this.

    My Nikon camera has a setting I had never paid any attention to called “Save focus position”. When On (the default) it remembers the focus position of the current lens when the camera is turned off and restores it on wake up. But when Off – this is the brilliant part – it sets the lens to infinity on wake up. Now I will have a known infinity focus setting, even in total darkness! This setting is now in my menu shortcuts so I can access it quickly.

    I would never have learned about this feature if I had not failed so spectacularly. Experience really is a great teacher.

    So dig into those obscure settings you never bother with. There sometimes is gold there.

    Keep learning and failing!

    The featured image

    That night’s shooting was not all bad. I nailed the focus on this star shot. It was purely of the stars and had no foreground. This foreground has been substituted from another blurry image that night (actually, redrawn by hand).

    This is artistic expression rather than literal reality. I do that a lot. As photography progresses and matures, I believe that is more and more the norm.

  • It Looks Like a Painting

    It Looks Like a Painting

    This comment used to make me angry. But I have now rationalized that most people mean it as a compliment. If it looks like a painting then it must be art.

    Is painting the standard?

    For most people, painting means art. It is what they were taught. Photographs are those low value things they do on their phone. They’re mostly for memories and bragging rights on social media.

    I believe most people view painting as “high art”. Like they might view classical music. After all, both are remote and fairly difficult to understand. Removed from their daily lives. High art is something they have been taught that they should value, but they seldom partake of it.

    And paintings are viewed as difficult, labor intensive works requiring lots of training and “suffering”. That instills them with high value in many people’s estimation. It is not unusual for painters to encourage an aura of this being something so great and high that we cannot understand it. We viewers are lucky the artist will share a glimpse of such truth with us.

    And on a practical note, a painting is one of a kind. The artist paints one original. This increases the value of the work in some markets.

    Some people, looking at one of my images, describe it as “painterly”. To them, this is a compliment. Even photo reviewers occasionally use the term. Internally, I usually cringe, unless it was actually my goal to look like a painting.

    So for my peace of mind I have decided to accept “it looks like a painting” as a sincere compliment. It may be alien to my goals and values as a photographer, but is probably the best way a lot of people know of to say “it is art”.

    What does a painting look like?

    I will consider that a “painting” is some type of color medium applied to a substrate like paper or canvas by hand. I will stretch the definition to include pouring or throwing paint. Typical color mediums are oil, acrylic, watercolor, or pastel.

    The “by hand” seems to be important. Until print reproductions are made, all paintings are originals. Many people consider a “mechanically created” print inferior to a painting because it was too easy to make.

    Brushes are most often used to apply the color. Although they come in a wide range of sizes, and it is possible to create very detailed paintings, generally paintings are a somewhat coarse expression of a scene. That expression is considered part of the artistry.

    This is what people think of as a painting. It is an Albert Bierstadt painting titled “Rocky Mountain Landscape”. As someone who lives in the Rockies, I can attest this is purely fictional:

    Albert Bierstadt painting, 1870From the White House Collection. Image from Google Art Project

    An artist typically paints a scene they can observe (or make up). This means the scene is fairly static. Unless, of course, they take a picture of it and paint from a photographic print. Is that allowed? Does that make the painting something else? 🙂

    So paintings are generally relatively large, static scenes, less detailed than a photograph, and created by hand.

    Do I want my image to look like a painting?

    Do I want my image to look like a painting? Great question. Sometimes yes. Usually no.

    This is a fairly typical image I do that screams PHOTORGRAPH. It could be painted, but then that would be a painter trying to make his work look like a photograph. 🙂

    Classic B&W photograph.© Ed Schlotzhauer

    Why would I want an image to look like a painting? I do occasionally enjoy creating abstract images. Sometimes they work best done as a dreamy, blurry, hand drawn look. I love that photography can achieve a wide variety of effects. I enjoy pushing the boundary and creating an unexpected look.

    But in these cases, I have chosen to create the image with this look. My goal was not to “make it look like a painting”. Sometimes an image tells me what it wants to look like. Sometimes what it wants to look like is what most people consider “painterly”. If that is what is right for the image, then OK.

    Don’t feel inferior

    I think photography is an amazing art form. Its versatility is unsurpassed. Being technology based allows it to operate somewhat outside the limits of the artist’s mind. We can explore time and scale and space and even non-visual realms in ways that other artistic mediums can only copy.

    With photography, we can make one print and stop or we can make 1000 prints. We can re-scale a file to make a print very small to fit into a locket or up to wall-sized for a gallery or to decorate a large room. Or even billboards or the sides of buildings.

    Never let the intelligentsia convince you you are somehow inferior to painters or other “real” arts. They are just trying to protect their self interests. Photography is as real as any art. Be proud of your art.

    So when someone tells you your image looks like a painting, be gracious. Don’t launch into a lecture about why they are wrong and how they do not understand. This would be rude and even insulting. Accept it as a compliment. They are using terms they know to tell you they like your work and consider it good art. Be happy. But also be confident that it does not have to look like a painting to be great art.

    Today’s featured image

    The image at the top would be considered “painterly” by many people. Did I want it to look like a painting? No. I was exploring possibilities of long shutter speeds with flowing water and reflections in a river. I knew from experience that I could often get abstract results I like. This is an example.

    I like it. It is abstract, and it flows and has a lot of subtle details of interest. Does it look like a painting? That is for you to decide. If you think that, great. But it is not a label I try for when I am creating. I would not market my work as “looks like a painting”.

  • 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.