Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Photography

  • Boredom

    Boredom

    Boredom. We’ve all been there. We get in a funk. What we usually see and shoot is distasteful to us. We are discontented. Everything has been done, there is no creativity left. Do you ever feel like this?

    The time of year

    This article will be published in the depths of winter. Many of us don’t think there is anything interesting to see or shoot. After all, there are no flowers or green trees or lush fields.

    I would say, look again. Get out in it. Yes, out in the cold and snow if you have that. Or the rain and clouds. Whatever winter is in your area.

    Forget what you want to be shooting. Look with fresh eyes at what is there. You may discover a whole new world. In the words of an old song, “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” While I do not recommend this as a way of managing your relationships, it can be very useful artistically.

    I actually love shooting in winter. Today I was out shooting in 70+mph winds and temperatures not much above freezing. Do I love being out in that kind of wind? Not at all. When you have to bundle up in layers of wind-tight clothes and hold your tripod to keep it from blowing over, it looses some of its charm. However, there were great opportunities out there. I have, by chance, been working on a project about wind. Today was a great opportunity to fill in some gaps in the image set.

    It happens to all creatives

    We all feel blocked, bored, empty at times. The “muse” is not around. We fear our best work is behind us and there is nothing to look forward to. Might as well give up.

    You are not alone. We all feel this sometimes. Like temperature and climate and relationships, our mental energy is cyclic. Sometimes the spark seems to be gone. It is a low time for us.

    Recognize that this is a natural part of life. Don’t be (too) discouraged. It will change. The creative energy will flood us again. Just give it time.

    Use it!

    But we don’t have to sit passively waiting for the creativity to return! Use this boredom to propel us to a new level.

    If we are bored perhaps we have plateaued on our current path. Maybe we aren’t reaching far enough. It is a great time to reexamine where we are and how we feel about our art. And actually do something about it.

    Boredom is frustrating to most of us. Use that! That is an energy and motivation. What are we lacking? Should we strike out in a new direction? What would we love to do if we had the opportunity?

    Like with our body, if something hurts, that is a sign that we need to take care of it. Taking care of it doesn’t necessarily mean we should rest it and take a “oh, you poor thing” attitude. Maybe we need to work it, eat right, exercise, build it up.

    The point is, the frustration of boredom can be a motivation to change our self or redirect ours thoughts or energy.

    Opportunity

    I have made some of the best discoveries of my life because I was bored. Really.

    Let me give an example. Way back, we owned a timeshare. For those who don’t know them, it is a vacation ownership scheme that was popular at one time. Don’t buy one. It’s not a good investment. The way it worked was, you “bought” a fraction of a property, say one week during the year. Typically your ownership time would be traded for a week at another property. Because of this, we got to visit beautiful places around the world. But a side effect was that we were “planted” at a single location for the week.

    This led to interesting trips. On one occasion I can think of, we were in a nice place way out in the country in Devon, England. Ten miles or more from the nearest town. It quickly got boring. As a result, we started exploring. Even though this wasn’t an area you would find featured on many tourist itineraries, the things we found were intensely interesting. We still cherish the memories.

    Because of the boredom, we were led to explore with our eyes and minds open. We had to forget the expectations that were not being met and become receptive to the wonderful things that were there. Repeating this experience many times completely changed my travel style. Therefore, now I want to settle in somewhere, get to know it, and have to find out what is there.

    Use boredom to your advantage

    So I encourage you to let boredom be motivating. With the right attitude it can free and empower us. It can lead us to opening our eyes to our surroundings, to learning new subjects or techniques, to re-evaluating our work and making improvements, to getting out and doing something about it. Or, you can sit on the couch and feel sorry for yourself. Your choice.

    The image with this article is one of many surprises we discovered on that “boring” trip to Devon I talked about above. It is a beautiful place with hidden gems all around.

  • Purity in Photography

    Purity in Photography

    I couldn’t help follow up on my last article with this. I read a photographer’s blog who was wringing his hands about “fake” images. In his plea for purity in photography he went so far as to coin a new term: “PhoTImagery” (the strange capitalism is his). He proposes the term to refer to any image that was not an absolute literal representation of a real scene.

    What is purity in photography?

    The argument presented was that “pure” photography – what he terms the purist photographer – consists of images made on film and processed in a wet darkroom. The end product is a photograph.

    A couple of questions occur to me. For one, why stop at film? Why not define pure photography as coating wet plates in the field before exposing them? That predates film and is even more basic. The practitioner of this has to be very determined and willing to suffer for his art. That brings even more asceticism and rigor to the practice.

    The second question is brought up by his assertion that the pure photographer can use “all possible techniques” in the chemical darkroom and still be acceptable. Editing negatives to remove distractions and compositing images has been done almost since the beginning of photography. Is that OK as long is it is done with film and chemicals? What would a photographer have to do to make it no longer “pure”? It is interesting that he does not count multiple exposures against the purity of an image.

    Can digital imaging be pure?

    The next step in the continuum he describes is the “photographer”. This is a person who does digital imaging, BUT does nothing to alter the image materially. This person is only called a “photographer”. He seems to have lost the sanction of purity, since he is not using a pristine chemical process. The end product here is still a photography, but I guess it is potentially tainted.

    If you edit out distractions or (gasp) change the sky it is no longer a real photograph. Apparently only the actual scene as shot, with no material changes, is worthy to be presented as art. Of course, like in any legalistic argument, there will be long and heated debate about what constitutes a “material” change. And who is certifying this? Do we have to submit our images to the Board of Photographic Purity before publishing them?

    Not real art?

    Finally Mr. Gordon creates the term PhoTImigery to describe any image that was not created and processed entirely by old school chemical methods, or was composited or heavily manipulated. He labels these manipulated images as deceptive and not true photography.

    Happily, he allows that art might want to do these things, but that the use of them must be disclosed. If not disclosed he claims it to be deceptive and wrong.

    I thought this argument was over a couple of years after digital imaging became really practical. Unless you are a photojournalist it should be assumed that ALL images are manipulated. This is not dishonest unless you are presenting it to your viewers as depicting reality.

    The disconnect

    Herein lies the disconnect, I think. Mr. Gordon wants to assume that all photographs are a faithful and literal depiction of reality unless disclosed as otherwise. It seems much safer to assume that all photographs are manipulated freely unless it is stated otherwise.

    We have long moved past the point where the only purpose of photography is to record the world as it literally is. There are billions of images made every day. Reality is overused. A photographer wanting to be heard among all the noise must present his personal vision of a scene. Or create a scene that may not have existed.

    Is this dishonest? No, it is art. Should it be “disclosed” as not real? No, no more than a Picasso painting should be labeled as “not real”. None of my images, no matter how they are created or manipulated, are fake. They are my artistic work.

    By the way, the image with this article is not literal reality. 🙂 Are all my images this heavily processed? No, not even most of them. But I feel free to do what I want with my pixels.

    The argument of purity makes an assumption of the intent and very purpose of photography. I refuse to be bound by someone else’s assumptions. I will follow my own path. Let me state right now to never assume any of my images are literal truth unless I tell you that they are.