Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Photography

And Be There
If you have done photography for a while, you probably have heard the expression “f/8 and be there.” Have you ever thought about it?
Origin
The quote is most often associated with the photographer Arthur Fellig (more commonly known as Weegee). It is not known for certain if he originated it or even said it. But it has stuck and become a cliché.
Keep in mind that this originated in the first half of the 20th Century. As a photojournalist Weegee used a bulky SpeedGraphic 5×7 film camera with film holders. These are slow and heavy and difficult to use at the best of times. These were manual focus, manual exposure with no metering, and single shot film holders.
Weegee shot mostly at night in New York City in fast moving situations. He was usually competing with the police to be first on scene so he could get a good picture. Often, he developed his film in a makeshift studio in the trunk of his car.
He became one of the masters of this craft of gritty photojournalism. When asked the secret of his photographic technique he is supposed to have replied “f/8 and be there”.
Was that just a clever throw-away phrase or did it have meaning?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
f/8
We know that f/8 refers to the aperture of the lens. It is a truth of lens design that the “sweet spot” or maximum sharpness of a lens is generally around f/8 or f/11. That was very true in Weegee’s day and is still true today. So, presetting your aperture to f/8 is a pretty good initial guess for a balance between exposure, depth of field, and sharpness.
Weegee is reported to usually leave his camera focused at 10 ft and aperture f/11 or f/16 (contrary to the reported quote). Then it was already set to a good guess for a fast-breaking situation. His big flash bulb would light up the exposure at night. Remember those?
Weegee was a master of his craft. His Speed Graphic was slow and heavy compared to modern cameras, so he believed in presetting his camera to a good starting guess for the situations he expected. He was comfortable using his tools and tried hard to keep time consuming technical decisions out of the way.
This sounds like good advice for us, too. Being so familiar with our cameras that we can adjust them quickly, even instinctively, for the creative situation we encounter will usually help us come away with good pictures. Anticipating settings for what we will encounter is even faster.
So, my takeaway here is that f/8 is not a magic setting, but we should practice using our tools until we can adjust them to the settings we want quickly and even in the dark. The technical process should fade into the background. It is sad to miss great pictures because we are fiddling with camera settings.
And f/8 is a pretty good default choice.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Being there
Maybe the more important part of the phrase is “being there.” We can plan, we can spend all day on Google Earth or PhotoPils or studying people’s online posts, planning what we would do if we were there, but if we are not there, we can’t shoot it.
My virtual mentor Jay Maisel said:
If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.
Jay Maisel
Weegee was out there, every day, in the worst conditions, racing the police to crime scenes. His persistence is one reason we still talk about him today. He got results.
Going out and making photographs where you are may be more useful than spending all year planning for that “big” photo trip. What good is it to get to that bucket list location but not know how to use your equipment well enough to capture what you planned? What do you do if you get there and conditions are completely different from what you planned for? Do you have the mental toughness and technical savvy to look around for something else interesting?
If you shoot fast and instinctively, constant practice develops the muscle memory that makes camera settings automatic. That frees more of our mind for considering composition, feeling, and interpretation. Part of it is education, but a lot of it is practice.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
For us
I think, for most of us, the situation is very different from Weegee’s day. We have fast acting and accurate automatic cameras with speedy auto focus lenses. So then, is the f8 and be there saying still relevant?
I think so. I read it as encouragement to learn our equipment well enough that it is not a barrier to getting the shot we want, and to put ourselves out in the action, because that is where things are happening.
The “action” does not have to be fast breaking photojournalism on the gritty streets of New York City. Go out exploring frequently in your local environment. Take a few day trips to surrounding places. Try to get a window seat on the airplane and be that guy who shoots out of the window during the flight.
Basically, be tuned in (mindful) wherever you go and wherever you are. Weegee may have meant the phrase as a quickly tossed off platitude. But I believe it contained some truth we can learn from. It may have been a platitude, but that does not make it incorrect.
F/8 and be there. Practice it.
April 8, 2026
Your Favorite Photograph
Has someone ever asked to see your favorite photograph? I have. I was frozen. There was no way to answer that.
Your favorite
I tend to take things too literally. This is a legacy of my Engineering background. So, when I hear talk of a “favorite” image, I think of a singular, one and only favorite. One image above all the others.
That is what freezes me into inaction. I have far too many images that I like to narrow it down to a single one.
When I go through my best images collection, my “favorite” will change from day to day, even moment to moment. It depends on my mood and what I am thinking about. Am I in the mood for landscapes or street scenes; waterfalls or architecture; vibrant color or B&W, realism or abstract? I don’t believe any are inherently better than others.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
What does favorite mean?
What does “favorite” mean? This is where I get hung up. A literal definition is preferred above all others of the same kind, or closest to one’s heart. I can’t do that. Maybe this is a fault of mine, but I can’t choose a single above all photograph.
My suspicion is that when talking about favorite pictures, people take a broader view of the meaning. If we extend it to say we mean it is a choice or a pick then I can follow along. I can have a lot of choice images without having to designate one as the ultimate, number one winner.
Too many favorites
I have mentioned my lengthy selection and promotion process for images. It’s kind of like a playoff series where images must compete head-to-head to get promoted. The difference is that it is not a zero-sum game. A winner does not mean there had to be a loser.
That process has led to a situation I have identified: too many favorites. An embarrassment of riches.
Right now, I am, for the first time, working through just my top-rated images specifically to cull them. I am (trying to be) brutal. These are the images I have at one time marked as my best. None of them are being deleted, just potentially demoted to a lower level.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Competition
This quickly leads to 2 problems: I like them, and I probably need to tweak them.
I like each one of them. Obviously, they have each individually earned a spot in the top group. To eliminate one of them means either my tastes have changed, or my skill has improved, or my expectations of what I want to create have changed. Or maybe I have another very similar image that can replace it.
We are not static beings. I know my taste changes as I grow and have new experiences. This leads to some images “falling out of favor” in the overall scope of my work. I accept that. It is a good reason to remove some from the favorite category.
Another thing I observe is that I look at some images that were favorites and realize that my skill set and/or my equipment has improved, and these are no longer up to my standards.
My personal criterion is that I can randomly select any of my favorite images and show it to anyone and not be ashamed. I would be ashamed of some of the old ones. They’re out. It may hurt, but less is more.
Just a little tweak
The other part of the process that is making this take so long is that I can seldom look critically at one of my images without needing to tweak something. My tools have improved and my knowledge of how to use the tools has increased since I took a lot of these.
Therefore, I see most images needing some correction. Some are very slight but some need more extensive edits.
Let’s say each image needs from 2 minutes to 30 minutes of study and manipulation. I won’t give an exact number, but figure there are thousands of images in my top set. That is making for a very long process.
But it is rewarding. I have revisited images that I haven’t thought about for years. Sometimes I must conclude they are unworthy of being in the top group. Sometimes I remember and appreciate them anew. Each one brings back memories of the time and place and circumstances. A pleasant trip down memory lane.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Expectations
Another factor is that my expectations of what I want to create is a moving target. My interests change. My values and notions of quality changes.
These images I am culling are in my Lightroom catalog. In addition to those, I have stacks of slides and film images that go back much further. Maybe someday I will start revisiting them.
But even over the years I have been shooting digital I can see a steady progression of what and how I shoot. Way back I was fixated on technical quality. Esthetics was not the main component of my values.
Then I progressed to concentrating more on composition and design principles. My work got somewhat better, but in general, it was still lacking depth. It was good pictures of things, not about things.
Now I find that I don’t worry about making “prize winning” pictures. You know, the ones designed to win competitions or get the most “likes”. I don’t care about that anymore. I try to make images that I like and that are more unique, quirky even, with a fresh point of view. Ones that express my feelings about what I am seeing. And I am turning more abstract in my vision.
These are the ones I find myself promoting in my top collection. Images that are simply a good technical photo tend to drop out. The ones that are intensely human and obviously not AI survive.
As I write this, I am about ⅓ of the way through my top collection. I haven’t kept detailed records, but it looks like I am eliminating about 20% of the ones I have re-evaluated. It hurts sometimes, but I must remind myself they are not being thrown away, just demoted because they do not belong here. It is said that every time you intelligently remove an image from a portfolio, the portfolio get stronger.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Defined by 1 photo
So, even culled down, out of all these is there a single favorite image? No. My conclusion is that I cannot define myself by 1 image. It will be impossible for me to choose the one image I hold above all the others. The one that definitively and completely says, “this is who I am”.
The only way I could come close to doing that is if I play the game of saying to myself this is my best image – right now, in the mood I’m in, if I don’t go back and look again, but it will change tomorrow. I seldom play games and that one doesn’t interest me. I will just be content knowing that I cannot choose just one.
Favorite photograph
Even within the set that I consider my best images, there are subsets that I like more than others. Yes, I can have favorites within favorites. Some are just more impactful to me personally or grab my current sense of aesthetics more.
But those favorites of the favorites may easily be dozens or hundreds of images. I do not have a single favorite photograph.
So, if the situation comes up again where someone asks to see my favorite photograph, I hope to be more ready. Depending on the context, I might point to one of my images and say, “this is one of my favorites.”
March 11, 2026
Love the Unlovable
Do you ever take any bad pictures? Of course. We all do. Some of us more than others. But instead of immediately deleting the bad ones, I suggest living with them a while. Love the unlovable ones. Study them. We can learn from them.
What is “bad”?
What constitutes a bad picture? That is subjective and/or technical.
There are clearly, technically bad pictures. Badly out of focus. Poorly timed so that the subject has left the frame. Badly exposed. Handheld at too slow a shutter speed so it is unintentionally blurry (as opposed to intentionally blurry). Most of us would agree that these are bad and we probably immediately dismiss them as useless.
Other than that, a bad picture is one not up to our expectations. This is subjective. A bad picture to a highly experienced photographer may seem excellent to a novice. If you judge it bad, it is bad.
A related question for another time is, how do you know it is bad? Learning to critique your own work is challenging. If you can’t, how can you know what is good?
But in most cases, bad is obvious to us and we can learn from bad pictures. Humans generally learn more from failure than success.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
It is your picture
First, though, let’s acknowledge that this is your picture. You took it. Sure, there are exceptions. I have sometimes accidentally pressed the shutter while I was carrying my camera and gotten random sidewalks or blurred bushes. That is a clear, unintentional mistake. All the other bad pictures were deliberately taken photos.
But in all cases, it is our picture. No one else is responsible for it. These bad pictures didn’t just happen for some reason we don’t understand. They did not magically appear on your memory card. We raised the camera and pressed the shutter.
There’s a reason you took it
We intentionally took these bad pictures I am talking about. And we did not intend them to be bad. Something happened between the intent and the execution to cause it to not work.
You thought there was at least a reasonable chance that this would be a usable photo. The picture is probably not totally bad. Not meeting our expectations does not necessarily mean it was bad in all respects. There are many possible reasons it was a failure.
I have talked about the chain of steps between our brain and a final print. Failures can happen anywhere along that path. Specifically, any of the technical decisions required in camera to capture the image could be faulty. It is easy for the exposure or the focus to be off, especially in the excitement of capturing a good scene.
When you discover that the failure was a technical problem, that is easy. Figure out what you did wrong, so you won’t make the same mistake again. This is just improving your technical skills.
Or maybe the failure was in your head. As you were visualizing the shot you want, maybe you weren’t clear in your own mind about the best framing and composition. Maybe it is inexperience. You look at the resulting shot and think “no, that’s just not quite right.” If you’re lucky, the scene is still there, and you can work it more. If not, you try to determine how you would approach the same thing next time.
In all these cases, the bad picture provides an opportunity to learn how to do better next time. We will benefit from taking the time to learn what we can from the experience.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Was it an experiment?
Another big area of failure for me is experiments that did not work out. I experiment a lot. It comes from curiosity and an ongoing process of wondering “what if…” I often push the edge of my comfort zone.
Maybe it is intentional camera movement (ICM) at different shutter speeds and with different types of movement, just to see the effect. Perhaps it is shooting a mountain stream at different shutter speeds to determine the amount of water blur I like best today. Maybe it is trying shots straight up or straight down, just to see what I can do.
There is no end of these. I might use a slow shutter on a passing train to see what happens. Sometimes I will take shots of a sprinkler in a park, just to see what I can do with it. Bad weather is a great motivator for me to get out and try things. Travel is a great source. Can I get interesting pictures that are not the typical travel shots? If there is great light on something, I will shoot it. Just to see what I can get.
The possibilities are endless. That is part of the fun and challenge. But when shooting experiments, I know that most of the shots will be failures. They may all be failures. I expect it and am more curious than upset to examine them.
That time when you do get something good in an unusual situation is pure joy. It makes all the failures worthwhile.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Out of your control
A lot of what we attempt to do relies on things out of our control. The light may change before we get the shot. The subject may move. Clouds come up and dampen that reflection you were trying to capture. Clouds go away and leave you with an uninteresting clear blue sky. It got windy, so everything is moving. You had a day set aside for photography, but it was a blizzard.
Unless we are setting up a still-life scene or controlling a set, we are at the mercy of conditions and events. We must learn to roll with the conditions. When our planned shot goes away, find a better one. Use your artistic talent to make something great of what is there. That is being resilient.
The bad shots may open our eyes to new learning. We may discover we really like B&W scenes with dramatic clouds. Or we enjoy intimate details of scenes rather than only grand landscapes. A new world may present itself in a decaying, rusty truck.
Keep them permanently?
There will always be discussion about keeping the mistakes or less good images. Some photographers say they keep everything except technically really bad pictures, e.g., out of focus.
I will give my opinion, but you probably do not want to listen to me on this. Every photographer adopts a workflow that fits his style. Part of mine is that I shoot a lot, and I don’t hang on to pictures unless I can convince myself there is a reason to.
I have given some insights on my process (slow edits, etc.). Part of it is a multi-step editing process to promote images. Good ones rise to the top with time. A side effect is that bad ones get dropped out and discarded. Eliminated. Deleted from my disk.
If I shoot several frames of the same scene, I seldom feel compelled to keep more than the best and maybe 1 or 2 other promising views. The rest are gone.
Since I usually shoot handheld, I often shoot 2 or 3 duplicates to ensure I can select the sharpest. After I select the keeper, the others are deleted.
It’s brutal. Many people will disagree. That’s OK. It is my style and workflow. I have never found myself in the position of wishing I had one of those deleted frames instead of what I kept. But, when in doubt, keep them until you can figure out your feelings.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Learn from mistakes
But the point of the article is that our mistakes are a valuable learning for us. Sometimes, they can be as valuable as the keepers. We should examine them, determine why they were a mistake, use it to build our skill or our artistic vision. Every failure is an opportunity.
Failure often means we stepped out of the safe rut we were in and tried new things. The failure rate is high when we are innovating. But so is our growth rate as artists.
So be courageous. Choose to eagerly adapt to conditions, to try new things, to explore new ways of seeing, to look carefully at your bad pictures. Our bad pictures help us along the way. Learn to love the unlovable ones. Learn from them.
February 18, 2026
Does the Image Find You?
Does the Image Find You? It is often repeated. I don’t think I agree with this. Maybe it is just a matter of semantics.
It finds you
I have often heard it said that the image finds you more than you find it. I can’t find a print reference, but I know Kai Hornung said it in a very good recent Nook presentation on Inspiration.
This sounds reasonable in a Zen sort of way. And sometimes I agree with it. I know it is sometimes frustrating to go out determined to “make an image.” They don’t seem to be there when that is our attitude. But then we give up and put our camera away and suddenly images seem to come out of hiding. They are everywhere. We frantically get our camera out again and snap away.
Was this a case of the image finding us? Or was it us taking the mental barriers away and finally being able to see the images that were there?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
It doesn’t care
This leads to my quibble with the quote. The responsibility is with us, not the potential image.
My cynical nature does not believe images come looking for us. I think they don’t care. They just are there. Images don’t look for us, they just go about their life on their own terms. They are doing their own thing with no particular interest in or need of us.
Think of a scene like a child playing out in the yard. They are in their own magic world. They may be acting out roles or playing an imaginary game or just moving and enjoying themselves. It could be them following their curiosity on a voyage of discovery.
Beautiful, meaningful images are being generated constantly while they play. Not for us. Not because of us. But they are there for the taking if we let ourselves see them and react to them.
In moments like that, the best we can do is be aware but be careful to not interfere. Don’t get in the way or interrupt the flow. It is not about us.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Wisdom of Jay Maisel
So, if images do not come looking for us, all the responsibility is on us to find them. We must stay receptive to what is happening around us.
Jay Maisel is one of my favorite photographers to quote. He is a rich source of wisdom.
Here are a few of his gems that I believe apply to this subject:
It’s always around, you just don’t see it.
It is important to realize that the pictures are everywhere, not just where you want or expect them to be.
Don’t overthink things in front of you. If it moves you, shoot it. If it is fun, shoot it. If you’ve never seen it before, shoot it.
If you’re out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.
What you’re shooting at doesn’t matter. The real question is, does it give you joy?
You can’t just turn on when something happens. You have to be turned on all the time. Then things happen.
Had I not been told to look, I would have quit, ignorant of what was really there, because I had “made plans” and was wearing visual and emotional blinders that limited my perception and vision.
Try to go out empty and let your images fill you up.
Being receptive
From these quotes and from my own experience and beliefs I think I can safely say good photography is not a passive experience. In most cases, we can’t just sit around and wait for images to come find us.
Pictures are everywhere, but when we try to make them happen on our schedule and to our expectations, it often doesn’t work. What Jay called “visual and emotional blinders that limited my perception.”
When we limit our perception, we are usually going to miss the exciting things that are happening instead. And as he says, the pictures are there, just probably not where and when we expect them. Sometimes you have to turn around. The interest may be happening somewhere else.
One of Jay’s most famous themes is that we must “go out empty.” We must put our expectations aside and be open to see the images that are there, not trying to “make” them happen. And the images are going to happen where and when they happen. We must always be ready when we’re out shooting. After they happen is usually too late to react.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Whichever, take it
So, whether you believe images come looking for us or you believe we must go looking for them, do it. Don’t let semantics get in the way.
Not much advice is universal. I realize that commercial photographers always do planned and staged shots. That is not what I do so I don’t talk about it. I am just talking about what works for me.
The rest of us who rely on everyday magic must be ready, mentally and with our equipment at hand. Be prepared to respond when we recognize that great image. Get out of your own way. See it – shoot it.
Let your images fill you up. Collect them with gratitude.
February 11, 2026
Too Much Help
Is it possible to have too much help in our photography? Are there long-term downsides to some of the technology we employ? What does it do to us as creatives?
Photographic technology
One of the characteristic things about photography is that it is closely tied to technology. Since the invention of photography, it has been technology based. The specialized emulsions and chemicals and techniques required training and a certain level of technical savvy.
Today the technologies have changed drastically, but the tie between photography and technology has not changed. If anything, it is stronger than ever. Being a “serious” photographer just about requires a complex camera system, a capable computer system, and specialized training in the tools.
The companies that make our technology try to ease some of the cognitive load by getting more helpful all the time. Usually, we welcome that. Who would not want our tasks to be easier? But we need to ask ourselves if there are hidden costs in taking the easy path.
©Ed Schlotzhuaer
AI
The antagonist I want to single out is what we generally call “AI”, or Artificial Intelligence. It is creeping into many aspects of our art with the promise of making our life easier or getting things done faster.
I will be very open that I am against most uses of the things called AI, as embodied by large language models like ChatGPT. Not only in photography but most areas of life. I am not just a Luddite. I spent a long career in the tech industry, and I studied and practiced AI at some points of my career. So I have some familiarity with what it is and how it works, including a moderate knowledge of the technology within it and its limitations.
Study of coding
I am curious about lots of things. I enjoy looking at seemingly unrelated areas and trying to see parallels or applications.
Many studies are starting to be done on the human impact of AI. One that intrigued me was a study of software developers in Italy and what happened when their access to AI was cut off.
In 2023, the Italian Data Protection Authority suddenly banned ChatGPT based on privacy and security and non-compliance with European data protection laws. The effect on software developers was immediate and dramatic. Code check-in on GitHub – a proxy measure of output – dropped 50% in 2 days.
But on further analysis, 2 very interesting things emerged: the output of inexperienced coders went up slightly while the output of experienced coders went way down, accounting for most of the drop in output.
One of the suggested explanations is that novices were concentrating more on developing basic skills for themselves, therefore not relying on AI as much. Experienced developers, on the other hand, embraced AI to do a lot of the routine work. But the productivity booster had become a crutch. They lost a lot of the ability to do the work they used to do.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Productivity tools
I believe there are parallels for photography. At this point, I will ignore the novices just learning the craft, since I am not there and can’t think like them anymore. Let’s concentrate on experienced artists.
Our tools constantly offer to take over more of the photographic process. Some of this is good, but not all of it all the time. I have bought into a lot of it. I don’t think my handheld light meter even works any more. And I have long forgotten how to use the manual calculators to determine exposure or desired depth of field. Now, my camera’s metering is so good that I usually trust it. And DOF, well, I can immediately see my image after shooting, so I can check it easily.
I often use “AI” tools in limited ways. In Lightroom (Classic, the only “real” one ☺) I often use the Auto button to see it’s opinion of a good starting point. It does a pretty good job for the outdoor shots I usually take. I seldom leave its settings untouched, but it can be a time saver. Likewise, I use the manual Remove tool a lot for dust spots and distraction removal. I very occasionally use the generative remove, although it is about a 50/50 chance of it being better than doing it manually. Lightroom is getting much more capable of creating useful masks. I often use them as a starting point.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Creative rot
But who says art should be effortless. Our tools want to take over increasing portions of our work, to “help” us and make it easy They offer to automatically remove dust spots, they provide great aid in removing distractions, they offer to distort our images to align verticals and horizontals, they offer to cull our photographs and assign keywords, etc. All these things can be helpful time savers, but at what cost?
Like the experienced coders in the Italian study, at what point do we start losing the ability to do our own work?
Editing, for example, is something I consider a necessary skill for photographers. I have noticed in my own work that I am now sometimes uneasy in manually removing complex distractions. My initial instinct is “that’s hard and will take a lot of time; maybe it would be better to just let the software do it”. That is a warning flag to me. I feel that I need to be skilled at doing this and confident that I can. If I cede these decisions to my tools, I believe I have abrogated part of my role as an artist. I am responsible for every pixel of my image. Software should not take over important creative decision making.
Or take culling images as an example. I strongly believe culling is a critical part of the artistic process. Confronting our mistakes and selecting the best of a series is a necessary part of improving our work. I would rather not spend the time required to do it, but I feel I must. Without it, I am deluding myself about my actual work. I can’t afford to let the computer do it for me.
There are too many examples to list. AI technology is trying to embed itself in most phases of our process.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The other AI
Let me pause for a moment and note that I am not discussing fully AI generated images. There are times and places to use them. They are not inherently bad. It is kind of like hiring an illustrator to create some graphics for a presentation or a graphic designer to make pictures for a marketing brochure. Those are business products, not art.
I firmly believe that AI is incapable of coming up with creative new ideas or art. It cannot do more than it is trained on. Good art is a product of human creation. I admit that there is a lot of bad art that is no better than AI.
Caution
I am not going to abandon technology advances. Many of them make my life easier and more convenient. But I do intend to maintain a certain skepticism that will keep me from becoming dependent on convenience features.
If the great automatic metering and auto focus in my camera went away, I still know how shoot fully manual. If most of the automatic aids in Lightroom and Photoshop disappeared, I still remember how to do things the hard way.
I fear that younger photographers who have grown up with the tools do not have that fallback position. We could soon be in a position where photographers require AI tools to do their work, because they cannot do it themselves. If they have to rely on it to do their basic work, then why not allow it to do more and more. At some point, who (or what) is the artist?
I do not believe my smarter tools have negatively effected my images or my creativity so far. I keep a watch for that.
Or maybe I am wrong and completely out of touch. Maybe photographers are no longer required to be masters of our technology. It could be that the requirements for making an original and creative work are different from what I believe. In that case, I am just an old dinosaur holding on to a forgotten past. But I choose to believe my knowledge and experience is something AI cannot copy.
Maybe this disquiet about too much help is one of the reasons there is a resurgence of interest in “old school” technology, like film and manual cameras. Many long for simpler days when we were more in control and closer to our end result. I am somewhere in the middle. I don’t want to give up most technology, but I refuse to be controlled by it.
February 4, 2026