Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Photography

  • Fall in Love

    Fall in Love

    I advocate it, but I’m not talking about a romantic meeting. Making art should be an act of love. We should fall in love with our works, or else, why do them?

    Because it’s there

    I mostly wander and explore without a lot of planning or result in mind. Sometimes I shoot pictures just because something is kind of interesting and I’m there to see it. That can be good, but usually not.

    Being an explorer, I follow my curiosity. I tend to try a lot of experiments to see what happens. So if something tweaks my interest I often see what I can do with it. Occasionally I have a tingle and excitement when I press the shutter, knowing that I have captured something I love. Sometimes it doesn’t happen until I am reviewing the image large on my computer. Then I discover that it is far more interesting than I thought at the time I took it. Both are joyous occurrences.

    More often than not, I find I have well composed, well exposed pictures of – nothing much. I look at them later and say “yeah, it was an interesting scene and it’s an OK picture, but it doesn’t grab me.” Usually I think it is because I did not feel strongly about the subject or scene. I didn’t fall in love with it.

    If I don’t feel passion for the image, how can I expect you to when you view it? It is pretty obvious to me which ones really grab me. I think you can perceive it, too.

    Over-planning

    At the opposite end I see some photographers occasionally get trapped by over planning. Conventional wisdom from many renowned photographers is that any photo trip or outing should be planned out in great detail. They will research a location extensively, looking at pictures from other photographers to try to find the “best” places and positions and angles and times and seasons. In addition, they will use tools like The Photographer’s Ephemeris to select the exact time and day and location to get the exact sunrise/sunset/moonrise/ etc. shot they want. And they may book an outing with a workshop or guide to help with the logistics and transportation.

    Is there anything wrong with doing it this way? Absolutely not, if that is the way you work. Different personality types need to approach things in different ways. Do what works for you, but don’t get into a mental trap.

    One of the traps I see is that we tend to get so invested in the preparation for the shot that we have to take it. We spent a lot of time and money to get to that point. It becomes a quest. It has artificially become so important that we have to take the pictures to validate and justify the trip.

    But what happens when you get there and the weather is “bad”? Bad being not what you planned for. Maybe you don’t like the workshop leader or structure. Worst, what do you do when you get there after all the planning and expense, look at the scene, and feel “meh”?

    Of course you take the pictures. You have to. But if you’re honest, they may not make your portfolio set you are excited to show people. There was just no life there. You can check off that you got the iconic shot, but maybe it ends up not being very important.

    Having our expectations too high can lead to disappointment.

    Anti-planning?

    You can guess from what I’ve written that detailed planning is not for me. I am almost an anti-planner. I tend to come at things the opposite way. Going to iconic locations and fighting for a tripod location and taking the exact same image 10,000 other photographers have taken just in the last month is not a motivation for me.

    Yes, the scene is beautiful. Yes, it is probably salable because it is the type of image people like to have on their wall. Economically it is foolish to not get this image and pander to the crowd.

    But for me, even though I think the scene is beautiful, I probably will not feel great passion for it. How can I distinguish myself from the thousands of other photographers shooting the same things? How can I tell my story or share my feelings?

    In love

    Back to the original statement of this article, I believe I have to fall in love with my images. If I am going to show you something I have made, it has to be much more than good. It has to have a passion you can sense. How can I bring you art you want unless I feel strongly about it?

    Thoreau said “A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.” The famous photographer John Sexton said “Too often we attempt to force a photograph out of a situation rather than allow the situation to speak to us.”

    I am guilty at times of trying to force images to be there when I’m not actually listening and feeling. I recognize it. It is painfully obvious when I am reviewing them in Lightroom that I have a bunch of well executed pictures that mean nothing to me. Trashing them is the best thing to do. And use it as a reminder to follow the passion more than the light. If I don’t have a sense of wonder and passion for the image that is a good sign that it probably didn’t work.

    “Follow your passion” is not always good advice in life – you have to do a lot of things you don’t like. But in art it is great advice. It may not be the clear path to fame and fortune, but you will feel good about what you create. And your viewers can tell. Love your work.

    This example

    I have used this image at the top before. It is a good illustration of my point here, though.

    I love this image. I could stare at it for a long time. It speaks to me at a level I can’t even describe. The rich color, the organic flow, the streaks of movement over time, the standing wave shapes, the minimalist simplicity all move me.

    This as shown here is almost straight out of the camera. It is what I shot. Yes, it has been cropped square and had some minor tone corrections, but this is what I discovered and jumped on. The color and the time effects of the flow are as shot. I liked it as seen through the viewfinder. I loved it after I saw it large on the computer.

    It is one of the few pictures I have hanging on my wall at home.

  • Photoshopped

    Photoshopped

    It may be said as an insult. It may be used to shame the photographer as “not a purist”. But should it be? What is wrong with an image being Photoshopped?

    History

    Photography began as a medium of realism. It is said that Impressionist painting (Monet, vanGogh, etc) was a reaction to the realism of photography. They took their art is a direction photography could not challenge – at the time.

    Have you ever thought of traditional painting changing its direction because of photography?

    The development of Impressionism can be considered partly as a reaction by artists to the challenge presented by photography, which seemed to devalue the artist’s skill in reproducing reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography “produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably”.[31]

    Because of the history, and the fact that everything the lens sees is recorded in detail, people tend to have an expectation that a photograph is “real”. A picture can’t lie.

    Not only is this wrong in so many ways, but it is no longer a realistic expectation of photography.

    Common practice

    All photographs are altered from what the sensor recorded. Even if you just take that picture you snapped on your phone and post it to social media, it was altered a lot before you ever saw it. All sorts of distortion corrections, color enhancements, gamma correction and noise reduction was done by the phone. Their algorithms are very good at making the picture look like what you expected to see. It is not the same as the phone recorded.

    All images you see in prints or any media are altered – Photoshopped. Some massively. Some just minor color correction and tone enhancements. I would never insult you by showing you an unprocessed picture. Unless it was to make a point about the kind of processing I do.

    Even to do black & white these days requires a lot of image processing.

    Did you know that even movies are “Photoshopped”? An obvious example is CGI. That stands for computer generated imagery. It proudly states that a lot of what you are seeing is artificially created. And we love it in big action movies.

    Nearly all movies are digitally recorded now . All are processed and retouched frame by frame in addition to CGI enhancements. The overall color you see is even completely controlled. They call it color grading. The entire look and shading of each scene is digitally processed to set the mood the director wants.

    Bad Photoshopping

    One thing I will join people in denouncing is bad Photoshopping. Photoshop is a very complex program to master. It can take years – and they are constantly changing it. But even so, we are artists. We have no excuse for not mastering our tools.

    Not knowing how to use the tools to accomplish our vision is like a painter not knowing how to use a brush or a metal sculptor not knowing how to weld. Just using some simple sliders to make the color of an image wonky is not much of an artistic statement.

    Yet I have heard well-known professionals almost brag about their limited knowledge of Photoshop. But the reality is that they know enough to do what they want. The exception is Jay Maisel. Jay is one of the greats who I admire. He brags that he does not even have Photoshop on his computer. That is probably true, but he has full time assistants who do have it and can make a picture look like what he tells them he wants. So, a slight exaggeration for dramatic effect.

    For the others, though, who really do not know Photoshop well: spend time learning it. It will reward you by making you more efficient and it will open up new artistic possibilities for you.

    Artistic expression

    My work is called “fine art”. I don’t like the term, but we are stuck with it. Fine art, among other things, means it is not literal or representational. I feel free to bend and even break pixels to any degree I want to bring you the art I see.

    I guarantee that any image of mine you see has been processed in Lightroom Classic and maybe Photoshop. Both great tools are well capable of altering the reality of the original frame. And I do alter them.

    It can range from basic color and tone correction to removing distracting elements to compositing several images together to create something new. Anything is fair game. The more adapt at my tools I get, the more I am able to use them to help me change my vision. It is circular: what we find out we can do helps us to see new things to do.

    Accept it

    I accepted it a long time ago. My Photoshopping goes back to about version 5 or 6. In the beginning, I was mostly just doing minor corrections on my very realistic landscapes. I have fond memories of the controversy in the camera club I was in at the time when I won best of show with the first digitally manipulated image ever submitted to them.

    Since then I keep widening my vision and perspective. Realism was so deeply ingrained in me that I have had to work at giving myself permission to let my imagination go free.

    I’m not where I want to be yet, but I take a much more liberal view of what I can do in an image. Still, I am my own limitation.

    If you are seeking “truth” in images, be careful. But if it is important to you, do some research to find out if the image has been manipulated materially. It has been manipulated. but that doesn’t mean content has been added or deleted.

    Finding truth is rare in our world. When you look at an image, assume it is art, not truth. At least, that will be true for my work. I may bring truth, but that does not mean it is realism. My images are photoshopped.

    The future

    In the 19th century, painting was mostly about realism. Then photography came along and took over realism. So painting moved to Impressionism and modernism and abstraction. Now digital art is perfectly capable of creating any abstract or impressionist images we desire. Where will painting go next to separate themselves?

  • Reality is Overrated

    Reality is Overrated

    Is this controversial for a photographer to say? I hope so. 🙂 Photography used to be the land of total realism. Not so any more. Photography for me is purely artistic expression, with little concern for reality. That’s because reality is overrated.

    Reality – the good

    There is a long and honored tradition of highly realistic landscape and street photography. When you think of landscapes, you might think of John Fielder or Art Wolf or Ansel Adams. For street photography maybe it is Henri Cartier-Bresson or Jay Maisel or Elliott Erwitt.

    All of these artists were true to the reality of the scenes they found. Of course they looked for the best composition or the right light or the dramatic expression – that is why they are recognized artists. But the photographs they took were not modified at all, other than routine spotting or color corrections.

    Is their work good because they only shot reality? No, their work is good because they are great artists. I could walk outside and shoot a picture looking down my suburban street and publish it. It would be absolutely real and unmodified. Would it be good art because of that? Not to me.

    Reality – the bad

    Following up on the point about shooting down the street, a picture isn’t good just because it is reality. Reality can be boring. It can be depressing. It can be dreary and banal. While there may be a time and place for these things, they are not where I want to spend much time.

    I am not a critic or authority. I would never say such subjects do not constitute art. But don’t get caught up in the post-modernism depression where you don’t view art as worthwhile unless it is depressing or banal. That is just one passing movement led by some people with a very dark world view.

    Be yourself. Express your own values. Like, and buy, what you like.

    Assume no reality

    Photography has become much wider and more diverse than it was a few decades ago. It used to indeed be true that “a photograph didn’t lie”. You could believe what you saw. Not anymore. Photojournalism may be an exception, but in today’s climate, I wouldn’t rush to ascribe too much credence to any particular image you see on the news unless you know the circumstances. News has become just a business, not a guardian of truth.

    A lot of artists, including myself, no longer consider it necessary to represent reality. Now, some of my work is extremely detailed, with sharp, crunchy texture and edges. I actually like doing these sometimes. It is almost reveling in the detail that can be captured by my sensor and lenses. Quite the opposite of some of my blurred, low texture images.

    But if you see one of my images with super sharp detail, don’t necessarily assume it is reality. Even when I am going for crisp and detailed, I am not at the same time representing to you that it is reality. It could be manufactured. Even if I know that it is real, it could look so abstract to you that you could not describe exactly what it is.

    It is art, not a documentary

    My point being that I am making art. I think most “artists” are making art. Enjoy it as art. Don’t be disappointed if you find out it is not reality. I’m not sure there is much overlap between art and reality.

    Art may speak to universal truths and bring deep insights into our lives, but it does it through its metaphors and imagery. It does it by touching something within us. In the same way that Shakespear gives us a lot of insights about life, even though his stories are fiction.

    So don’t assume photography has to depict reality while painting does not. Both are art.

    It is art, not reality

    I will go out on a limb and state that art is not reality and it cannot be. Art might show a representation of reality. Even a very realistic representation. But the art is not the reality. Art is a 2 or 3 dimensional object you look at.

    To take an example that may be easier to comprehend, it is like a book. An excellent work of fiction may create a reality in our mind, but that reality is what we interpret from what the book describes. The places may seem real. The characters may seem real and alive to us. But they are feelings the author has communicated to us through the words. Not reality itself.

    I am drawn to joy

    On a personal note, I am drawn to joy and things that are uplifting. Even when my images are dark or showing bleak mid winter scenes, they are not depressing. At least, not to me. I try to find a hopeful angle on my art.

    For instance, I love finding certain types of old rusty trucks and cars. After surviving for 50 to 90 years, it seems these relics have something to tell me. They have resisted the elements far longer than most things. They may be beat up and rusty and out of service, but they are still there defiantly. That is the joy to me in old things like this. They are still standing and making a statement; they are not junk. There seems to be something significant about that generation. Some quality that makes people want to keep them. A 1952 truck is often still around in 60 years. I don’t expect that many 2022 trucks will still be in as good a shape after 60 years.

    The picture with this article is composited from shots of some old vehicles. It is detailed and sharp, but it is not “real”. No object I know of in the world actually looks exactly like this. That doesn’t keep me from creating it. I could even represent it as something that could be, even if it does not currently exist. But realism or potential realism is not an important consideration for me. I only care about if I like it. I do.

    What do you think?

  • Raw Material

    Raw Material

    I have come to consider many of the images I shoot to be raw material. They don’t become a finished picture until I have worked the raw material in post processing.

    Bits

    Today’s cameras are great generators of data. Every time I press the shutter I am sending around 50-60 MBytes of data to my memory card. And that is using a compressed RAW format.

    A funny thing happens, though. The more data there is, the less the importance of each bit. For instance, even though my camera has great metering and a live histogram, I may shoot several frames of the same subject. This will allow for minimizing motion or camera shake. Or, if I am intentionally moving the camera (intentional camera motion) I will shoot many frames to up my chance of getting a keeper.

    I never would have been so “wasteful” with film. It was too expensive. But digital images seem free. The perceived value of any frame is smaller.

    But a side effect of this commodity view leads to a different relationship with the image data. It is no longer necessarily a “picture” as an indivisible unit. It is data. I feel more free to repurpose any of the picture data for other uses.

    Repurposing

    So now I have new ways to look at an image. Maybe I like its texture and want to apply it to another image. Maybe there are one or more elements in the picture that I think would be good included in another image. There could be a form structure that could be used to build another image.

    I have moved from a “take it or leave it” judgement of an image as a whole to a sense of “parting out” a picture to harvest the good parts. That is so much easier now than it ever was in the past. The tools are there, it is a matter of adjusting the mindset.

    Post processing

    In today’s world, post processing is where a lot of the magic happens. Photoshop and Lightroom and some of the other editing programs have developed marvelous feature sets. They can handle large files and 16 bit depth and work comfortably in good image spaces like ProPhotoRGB, Photoshop is the choice (IMHO) for heavy duty pixel pushing.

    It is almost (not quite) true that is you can think it, you can do it. The tools are not perfect, but they are so good that, for the most part, they stay out of the way and let us create fluently with them.

    A lot of us have come to believe that a picture does not become a picture until we have spent some serious time in post processing. There is no reason anymore to be limited to what we originally captured, unless it turned out to be exactly what we want.

    Vision

    We artists are no longer “stuck” with what we captured at the moment we pressed the shutter. We have huge latitude for changing the look, the content, the color, and the whole feeling of the image.

    Some people are threatened by this, but I see it as an opportunity to realize my vision. There are few excuses any more. Photography is very different from painting, but we have one new similarity: if we can think it we can create it.

    Emotion

    To bring you a good image, I have to show not only what I saw but how I felt about it. Revealing the emotion behind it is easier now. Because we do not have to take the original bits of the image as fixed and unchangeable, we can add or subtract as necessary to achieve the effect we desire.

    This can be a very freeing and empowering realization. Those of us who have done photography for a long time have to re-learn how to approach image making. We have to give ourselves permission to do any amount of modification, even to the point of completely creating a new work out of raw material from others. But it gives us a medium for expressing ourselves more fully.

    This image

    The image with this article is an example. That is not what the original scene looked like. No in-camera technique could have given the resulting image. A lot of Photoshop time was spent in blurring the image except for the evergreens. It is not what I saw when I was there. I did not even envision this at the time. I spent time thinking about surreal variations and eventually visualized this.

    Dishonest?

    This is not dishonest. It is the same thing as a painter painting in what he likes and leaving out what he doesn’t like. The end result is art, not documentation.

    Art is neither honest or dishonest. It is art. It means what the viewer takes it to mean. We are long past the time when we assume a photograph is “truth”. We should assume that every image is altered, composited, tweaked, and blended. That’s not just OK, it is healthy.

  • Unrecognized

    Unrecognized

    Sometimes things are right there staring us in the face. But we don’t or can’t see it. We fail to see what should be obvious. This in an internal problem. We don’t get to blame anyone else. Don’t go through life with unrecognized interest all around.

    Unrecognized artist

    “Unrecognized” is a fairly ambiguous word. Well, not really ambiguous, it is just that it can be applied so many ways. One of the first things that comes to mind when I hear the phrase is my sadness at being an “unrecognized” artist.

    Even though I have sales and good gallery representation and I get exhibited, it feels like nothing. Failure. I seek to be more widely known. A goal is to share my vision with many more people.

    But this aspect of “unrecognized” is not what I am discussing in this article.

    Unrecognized beauty

    Most people I know sort of drift through life in a daze. We follow our normal paths, doing basically the same thing all the time without really seeing things around us.

    If we recognize the rut we are in, we can climb out. At least enough to make a difference. Just deciding that we are going to pay more attention to things around us will go a long way.

    There is beauty all around us, even if you live in a city. Disappointed that you don’t live in Yosemite? Get over it. Learn to appreciate where you are. Even if you are not thrilled with your environment, by learning to look more closely we can usually find things, even little things, to brighten our day. Is there a flower, or a tree, or a pattern of light and shadow on a building that catches your eye? Look at it. Stop and take a moment to appreciate it.

    This will grow a habit of mindfulness. It will help us become more aware of what is there and more grateful of the little scenes that brighten out day, make us feel more alive.

    Unrecognized self

    Many of us, I’m pointing to myself, too, have trouble recognizing where our creative instincts are leading us. We change all the time. It can be hard if we feel like we are starting to be recognized for a certain style or subject. We fear that changing would lose our market. But at least that person is aware of what is going on. Most of us, I feel, one day realize that what we are drawn to is different from what we have been practicing for a long time. This can shake us to our bones. But it can also be refreshing and invigorating to re-align with where our subconscious is directing us.

    I think this quote from a very good photographer from the past, David Vestal. is enlightening.

    As we work, we come to know more and become more patient and less inclined to rush past our own work that we don’t yet recognize. Now I am quicker to see in my own new work the “accidental” good photos that I used to ignore.

    Mr. Vestal points out 3 key things that are common and key to our artistic growth.

    Know more

    As we practice our art we learn. Our technical abilities grow and our creative capabilities are stretched. The more we learn the deeper vocabulary we have to express what we see and feel. We also have more ability to examine our art and critique it.

    If we’re lucky, we even get to a point where we know what we don’t know. But the path of knowing more sometimes means we grow away from the positions we held in the past.

    More patient

    Mr. Vestal describes part of the growth process as becoming more patient. With ourselves. I know for myself, I feel less need now to shoot quantities of images. I used to be in a frenzied rush to capture everything that was the least bit interesting. These days I will usually come back with fewer images. I can see something nice and not feel the need to take a picture. Sometimes it is sufficient to just acknowledge it and appreciate it. I would rather have a few images that excite me rather than a whole pile of “OK” pictures.

    I think this also applies to our results and growth as an artist. Have you ever found yourself trying to “force” a great image. I do. Maybe less than I used to. As I grow I am more interested in trying to see more clearly what is there and understand how I perceive it, what I want to do with it. Sometimes it doesn’t come. Rather than be a big frustration, it is an opportunity to try to figure out why.

    Have you ever come upon what would be one of your “standard” images, one you would always shoot, and said, “no, that doesn’t interest me today”? Something is speaking to you to tell you you have grown to a new position.

    Recognize

    To me, the phrase in his quote “less inclined to rush past our own work that we don’t yet recognize” is brilliant. I sometimes run across something while I am looking for a particular image. Something I didn’t think was very good, but for some reason I kept it. Looking at it some time later I liked it much better. Sometimes I realize that if far more representative of my current vision that things I used to shoot.

    He describes them as accidentally good shots. I believe these accidental shots are sometimes our subconscious trying to show us something we don’t recognize yet. As we grow in our artistic concept, we have to leave the past behind. We become bored with what we used to proudly do. Recognize that feeling. Learn from it. It is time to move on.

    I have described before that I tend to be fairly brutal about culling out bad or uninteresting shots. Sometimes, though, I am compelled to keep an image that I don’t think I like. Sometimes I find, later, that this image is significant to me. It may even be a pivot to a new direction in my journey. I did not recognize it at the time, but I did perceive that there was something there that made me keep the image and come back to it later.

    Be receptive

    I believe we should learn to be more receptive to these signals our subconscious is sending us. The subconscious mind is more powerful than the conscious mind. It understands us better. It is not deluded by ego or financial considerations or social media followers.

    I have heard it said that this message from our subconscious is usually not a light bulb going on, it is more like a tickle on the back of our neck. That little feeling that there is something here we are missing or need to figure out. Maturity is learning to be aware of this hint and follow it to see where it leads us.

    How about you? Have you ever puzzled over an image you couldn’t figure out, only to recognize later that it was a harbinger of a new direction for your creative work? The way to a new creative plateau? Did you trust your instincts and embrace the new direction? What was the result?

    I would like to know! Leave a comment or email me.