Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Psychology

  • Traveling

    Traveling

    I have been traveling more than usual this year. It gives me the opportunity to reflect on what I shoot and why. Perhaps it will trigger a response in you.

    This is not a typical travel photography article. You won’t find the expected rules and checklists and how-to advice.

    How I travel

    Travel for me is a rather solitary activity. Being an introvert, I work best alone. Having people around who want to talk about what I am doing and “help” me find pictures is almost always a negative. My wife is occasionally along on these trips, but she has learned to get out of the way and leave me alone when I am shooting. Not always, but that is the norm. I don’t want to make it sound like I push her away, it is just that she knows me enough to recognize when I am in a zone and don’t want to talk.

    When I am traveling with an option of doing photography I prefer to drive or be on foot in a large city. In either case I preserve the freedom of exploring, setting my own path, managing my time. I strongly prefer to explore out of the way, seldom seen sights, even if it means missing the main tourist attractions. Actually, especially if it means missing them.

    As you can tell, if I have to take a tour, especially in a bus, I feel handcuffed, in prison, doomed to follow someone else’s agenda. I may see some interesting things, but there is seldom the chance to explore something as i would like.

    What am I seeking

    As I learn more about myself, I realize I can never restrict myself to certain subjects. I’m afraid I will never be that guy who is known for mountain landscapes, or still lives, or seascapes. I recognize that this is a disadvantage from the sense of marketing and branding. Too bad.

    Of course there are certain subjects I am naturally drawn to. I like particular kinds of landscapes. The area that might be termed wabi sabe – simply things that age and weather with character – appeals to me. It is almost a given a given that I would check these things out. A joke with my wife and some close friends is that, if we see an old rusty truck, I will want to stop and photograph it. Like most humor, it is based in truth.

    But in a more general sense, I have learned that what draws me is the chance to exercise my creativity. When I see an opportunity to bring a fresh perspective or a creative treatment to a subject, I go for it. It does not matter if it is an obscure something on a back road that nobody cares about. If I can visualize it fresh and make an interesting image, that is what I want.

    This is one reason I seldom hang out at the iconic viewpoints that everybody seeks. I have no interest in shooting the same image that thousands of other photographers have made. Yes, I may shoot it for my memory, but I would seldom publish a photo like that.

    How I approach subjects

    This is pretty nebulous. I do not have a distinct process I have written down. I’m just trying to reconstruct my thought processes.

    Basically I have an imaginary dialog with the subject. “Who are you?” “What is your story?” “How would you like to be seen?” I don’t really express these things verbally or even consciously. But this is a process I think I go through.

    In effect, I am making a portrait of the subject. In a good portrait, the photographer tries to get to know the subject enough to recognize the key characteristics and the underlying personality of the person. This is what I try to do, even if I am shooting an old truck.

    It sounds kind of silly to write it down, but it is how I work.

    Environment

    There are some powerful environmental conditions I have control of that have a strong influence on the outcome and productivity of my shooting. I have learned over time to manage these things.

    A powerful one is to get off the freeway. I have seldom made an interesting image alongside a freeway. Cruising down that wide road at 75 mi/hr or more tunnel vision takes over. My focus is the road ahead and cars around me. The most wonderful scene I have ever imagined could be right there next to the road and, if I noticed it at all, I would probably convince myself it was not worth pulling off and falling behind in the traffic stream.

    Another is sound. I find that listening to the radio gives a focus that distracts me from creative viewing. My car radio is often off all day. If I am driving at night I may turn it on to help keep me alert, but that is the only time.

    Having mild ADHD tendencies, I find I cannot ignore words, either when someone is speaking or in music. When that stimulus is occupying me I tend to ignore a lot of things going on outside. And it is easy to get in a groove and be reluctant to stop to check out possible subjects.

    And having a fixed agenda works against my creativity. If it is the middle of the afternoon and I know I have 250 miles to go before I stop, it becomes too easy to judge that this thing I just saw is not worthy of stopping and putting me behind schedule. Agendas can’t always be avoided, but I try.

    Gear

    Photographers tend to be obsessed with gear and the technical side of the art. Who doesn’t like a great camera and a selection of excellent lenses?

    Sorry to disappoint, but I find I become less interested in that with time. The key thing is what you see and what you can do, not your gear. I seem to take less gear each outing.

    On a 1 week road trip I just returned from, I took one body and I only shot with 1 lens – a 24-120 f/4. I had a couple of excellent lenses with me, but never attached them. The lens I used is surprisingly good and covers the range I normally shoot in. I like to become comfortable and familiar with what I am using so that once I have visualized what I want, I just pick up the camera and it is a quick and automatic process to capture my vision.

    Actually the bulkiest equipment I brought was 2 tripods and a monopod. And I didn’t use 1 of the tripods. Next time I will probably not bring it or the other lenses I had with me.

    Just me

    I readily say these characteristics are peculiar to me. And I am peculiar. I am in no way suggesting you should do things this way.

    Over time I have learned what works for me and what I did that increased the amount of images I like. Being an introvert makes it easier for me to reflect on things like this. I like to figure things out. You need to figure out what works for you and maximize it.

    We each have our own unique characteristics and strengths and weaknesses. Learning who we are and what works for us is a big step toward improving our work. And being happier along the way.

  • How To Be Creative

    How To Be Creative

    Is creativity a talent only certain people have? Is it a process to be learned? Did you ever wonder about how to be creative?

    The Muse

    People often speak of being visited by the Muse. Or more likely, not being visited recently. The muse seems to be this mysterious, invisible force that comes on us at times and endows us with tremendous creative force. For a while. Until she decides to leave. The muses are almost always described as female.

    I can’t deny that sometimes I seem to be filled with creative energy and sometimes I can’t come up with a single good idea. Is that because of muses? I don’t want to jinx myself, but I don’t think so. It is too easy to blame external things. There is an ebb and flow to everything in life. I think creativity is part of that. It is unreasonable to expect to be on a creative high all the time. It would be nice, but we have to recharge sometimes, too. If it was constant, we would appreciate it less.

    A talent

    OK, so is creativity a talent a few have naturally and most of us don’t? It seems like that sometimes. Have you ever met someone, maybe an artist, maybe someone in your work life who seems to exude a flow of creativity? Someone who seems to get more done than anyone else?

    I have. Several times. It can be humbling. It can make you want to change careers because you seem so inferior.

    Talent is a real thing. Back in my life as a software developer I did some investigation into this and found evidence that there can be a 20 to 1 difference in productivity between developers. That seems to imply that some have a natural talent for doing the work. But, don’t let this slip by, they evaluated a 20 to 1 difference in productivity. That is not necessarily creativity. Creativity is much harder to measure.

    Here is a truth of life that is important to remember: just because something is easier for someone than for you does not mean their work is better. So while there are differences in talent, that does not exclude anyone.

    A process

    On the other hand, we can demonstrate that creativity is a process. We have to do it, not sit around waiting to be inspired. A couple of quotes from my article I reference above:

    “Inspiration is for amateurs. Us professionals just go to work in the morning.” – Chuck Close

    “Hard work will outperform talent any day of the week.” – Joel Grimes

    One thing we seldom talk about as an element of creativity is domain skill. That is, to be creative you first need to be good at what you are doing. Whether it is photography or writing or software development, you have to be skilled in your domain to be able to rise above the average.

    So a good part of our process is to always be working to improve our skills. When “the muse is gone” and we do not feel inspired, at least be working on our craft. I have often seen in my own life that sometimes just focusing on a technical skill can lead to new thoughts and ideas for new work.

    Am I creative?

    Ah, the question that haunts most “creatives”. We often doubt ourselves. After all, what we think and do is obvious to us. So it must be obvious to everyone else. Right? Probably not.

    Almost everyone is creative is some areas. But I have never met someone who has all their faculties who does not have the ability to create at some level.

    But we set a very high standard for ourselves, don’t we? We expect massive, glowing creativity. World changing things. Really? Not many things change the world to any measurable extent. Our insecurity about our creativity is right up there with our imposter syndrome fears.

    Try this experiment. Look at a lot of the published work by other artists is your field. There will be some that blow you away. That really impress you and make you feel inferior. But think about 2 things. First, remind yourself that you are only seeing their best of the best. You never see the 99% of the failures. Are you comparing your failures to their best?

    Second think about what you consider the fails among that work. Will there be a significant part of it where you will say “Really? I throw away stuff like that.”? This should convince you that you can be just as creative as most of them.

    Ebb and flow

    Human nature is such that we don’t just go through life at an even level. There are peaks and valleys, ebb and flow. Sometimes we are up and sometimes we are down. Don’t get disappointed when your creativity follows this pattern.

    But one of my points above is, get to work. Do something. Don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for the muse to come back. Work. Maintain a discipline of doing things anyway. You may throw away most of what you do in this phase, but you can learn and improve your skills and it can be effective at getting you out of the valley more quickly.

    One of the self help gurus I for some reason get stuff from recently said “Confidence is a byproduct of action”. I happen to agree with this. And I would add creativity is, too.

    Little C or Big C

    Notice that I have never defined what creativity is. This is intentional. Don’t most of us say “poor me, I’m not creative” without defining what we mean.

    One conventional definition from Psychology research is that creativity is “the production of ideas or outcomes that are both novel and appropriate to some goal” (COMPONENTIAL THEORY OF CREATIVITY, Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School). The clause about goals is there because the motivation of the research was the corporate environment. Talking solely about art, I would remove that and concentrate on the novelty of a work product.

    So, what is novelty and how novel does it have to be to be considered “creative”? Amabile and others say that almost everyone has some degree of creativity. It is expressed in different ways and with different impact.

    She uses an example of what she terms little C creativity vs big C creativity. The dentist who came up with the idea of letting kids wear fun sunglasses during exams to protect their eyes from the bright lights is what she calls little C. It is creative but not hugely novel. At the other extreme Schawlow expressed the principles on which all lasers are based. He won a Nobel Prize for that. Definitely big C.

    So maybe we ought to give ourselves a little more freedom. Creativity does not have to be Nobel Prize winning. A novel composition or idea in our images is genuinely creative if you have never seen it before.

    Novelty for its own sake

    So if creativity revolves around the concept of novelty, how novel and new does something have to be? I think many artists are too caught up in this and try to do novel things regardless of their artfulness. Just browse through most contemporary art galleries or The Hand Magazine.

    The definition of creative above brings together novel and appropriate. Maybe doing something solely because no one else has ever done it is not good enough. Don’t forget that the idea is to make art while we are doing it.

    Creativity

    So maybe we shouldn’t be expecting lightning flashes of brilliance in our daily work. Maybe we should work our craft and perfect our skills to make sure we are about as good as anyone else. Then “connect the dots” as Steve Jobs used to say. If we can be open and receptive to thinking in new ways, we can look for opportunities to apply novelty as an edge to differentiate our self from the pack. Then the novelty is actually a creative enhancement to our work, not just something novel.

    Today’s image

    I seldom try to create “message” images. When I came across this scene, though, it was too powerful to pass up. It connected several dots with me. I think I have made a creative image that can express a strong idea. Maybe more than one. What do you think?

  • Getting There

    Getting There

    We all have ambitions, goals, dreams. We seem to spend our life “getting there”. Have you ever gotten there and not found it was what you hoped?

    Where is “there”?

    When we talk about getting there, we have to ask, where is “there”? Seems obvious, but I find that a lot of people don’t spend much time establishing those targets. That is a shame. The place you are trying to get to determines a lot of your life’s journey. You better be sure you know where you are going or sure you trust your instincts to follow a constantly unfolding path to an unknown destination.

    Seriously, a lot of people assume they know where they should go because it has been told to them by someone, probably parents or advisors or counselors. So they commit their life to reaching a goal they may not have considered carefully.

    It is a tragedy to get to your life’s goal only to discover you did not care about it. This applies to all aspects of life, but I will try to focus us on art.

    Who sets your goals?

    Who actually sets your goals? Do you investigate and analyze and try out things to select your goal? Or do you accept what is expected of you?

    Let me give a personal, non-art example. As a young Engineer, I assumed the goal was to “progress” up the management chain. It was projected (by managers) as the normal growth path. Well, I worked hard and was given the opportunity to step onto that ladder. I fairly quickly discovered I hated it. It did not fit my talents and interests at all. My love was Engineering. Luckily, my company was very good about wanting people to be in the most effective role. I went back to being “just” an Engineer and loved it. When I moved up, it was on the Engineering track.

    It was kind of traumatic, but I clarified my goals. I felt like a failure as a manager, but a success as an Engineer. That was when I began to understand that I am responsible for my own goals.

    What is the cost?

    Working toward a goal always involves some costs. Make sure you understand them and are willing to pay what is required.

    It is fairly easy to quantify the direct costs. As a photographer I need rather expensive cameras and lenses. There is also the high powered computer, lots of fast disk storage and backup, memory cards, etc. Add in travel, workshops, training and other education. If you listed it all it would be pretty intimidating. But this is just the direct cost.

    There are indirect costs and opportunity costs. I am a fine art photographer. Basically this means I do what I do for the love and the creativity and the personal reward, not to make a lot of money. I better have an independent means of supporting myself and my family. Right now I am OK with that. It could change in the future.

    Don’t forget the opportunity costs. Any time you pursue a goal you exclude other things. Did you trade off becoming an artist rather than being a doctor? It is a safe bet to assume you would make a lot more money as a doctor. But if you hated it, would the money be worth it? Maybe our choices are not so clear cut, but we always make tradeoffs.

    Be honest with yourself about the costs you are willing to pay for the destination you want to get to.

    The journey is the destination

    People often tell you “the journey is the destination“. They are usually right, but make sure you understand what they are saying.

    Here is the reality I have discovered. Yours may be different. Starting from where we are now, we usually do not know what the destination will actually be. We may have a vague idea or a wish, but the reality will usually be different than what we imagined.

    So we cannot really plot a path to the destination. It is a moving target and we cannot anticipate the twists and roadblocks along the way. What we can do is take a step that seems to take us in the direction we want to go. Just a step. Then evaluate where we are now and decide what direction to take the next step. And so on. When we get to that destination, it is probably the one we have determined we actually want, not necessarily what we set out to do.

    Along the way we experience life. This is what it is about. That is what the phrase means. Live your life today, not in the future. Appreciate everything you find. Be grateful for the day and its experiences. To really appreciate the journey you have to be mindful and living in the moment. When we live this way, we get to the end having lived a full and joyful life. Regardless of what state we arrived at.

    Will you sacrifice your life for a goal you may not even want or will you live your life every day as a mindful, joy filled experience? I hope you clarify and find your own rewards. And make your own art.

  • The Product or the Experience

    The Product or the Experience

    There is a lot of contradicting statements and articles floating around, especially about photography. I think a lot of it comes down to the statements being more or less true, but the assumptions behind them are different. One of the biggest and often unstated assumptions concerns whether the focus is the product or the experience. Should the focus be the final produced piece or the artist’s state of mind?

    What is the output?

    I am talking about fine art, not commercial photography. What is the purpose of an artist? How do you measure art? Is the artist to be graded on the number of works he creates? Or are there other values or metrics that are important?

    Have you ever been to a great location and not taken any pictures? I have. Sometimes I just want to soak up the experience as it is happening. Enjoy the wonder of the moment. Or maybe I get there and discover I am drawn to something completely different from what I anticipated.

    I will go where my interests take me and not worry about the original plan. Does that make the outing a failure? Not to me. For me there are other considerations besides getting a planned shot or even getting any at all. So the results I value may not be just a particular image.

    That does not seem to be true for some people. There are those who plan an outing to the last detail. Making sure they show up at the “right” spot and time to get the classic light on the subject. If the weather is not what they wanted or conditions have changed, like a forest fire that alters the landscape totally, they are devastated. Not getting the planned shot is a failure to them.

    The product

    Is the goal of an artist to make the most nice works he can? Is an outing a failure if it didn’t result in some minimum number of “keepers”? I think this is a mindset many have. We tend to be very production oriented. Society in general pushes the idea of efficiency. . Sometimes we believe it for our art.

    So, for those times we have gone out to photograph a well known, iconic location , what is your attitude if it doesn’t work out?f Is that a wasted trip? What if all you got was a memory? If your only goal was to recreate someone else’s photograph, I guess it was wasted for you.

    What of the experience you had? Did you experience wonder at the great scene? Did you let yourself be drawn to some smaller scene within the scene? Maybe to something else entirely? Or was the disappointment of having your goal thwarted overwhelming?

    Even if it is not a great icon, what is your goal when you go out? Are you desperate to collect a certain number of good images? Why?

    What is a good image worth compared to a great one? If you create 1 image that you consider shows the peak of your ability as of now, isn’t that more worthy than having a whole memory card full of mediocre pictures?

    My point is that, for art, it is not a game of numbers. Quantity is not better than quality.

    The experience

    Some would say photography is about the experience. That if the artist experiences significant emotion or awe or connection, and if he is able to capture it in a way that helps others participate in the same experience, then maybe he has created art.

    There are a lot of “ifs” and “maybes” there. That is part of the problem. I tend to buy in to the intent of this, but there are a lot of pitfalls.

    One problem with the equivalence postulate is that it can be very difficult to transfer a feeling or experience from one person to another. Or from a piece of art to a person. You have seen it. Have you ever made an image that is dripping with meaning for you, but have someone else look at it and say “meh…”.?

    It is easy to say that I must not be skilled enough as an artist if that happens. Perhaps. But our viewer wasn’t there when we were. The image may not touch the same things in them that it does in us. We all have different experiences and values and feelings.

    I think the point for me is that we should first make images that touch something significant in us. If we are able to do that, them perhaps our viewers can see some of it, too. Then we will have been successful at communicating our experience. If we cannot share our experience through our image, then at least it is notable for us.

    Which are you?

    I have made it pretty clear which way I lean. My images should capture an experience or an idea that is meaningful to me. It is my goal to have you see significance in some of them, too. That said, it can be significant sometimes to just say “wow, that is beautiful”.

    If you are on the other side and feel like you need to collect images of famous scenes or make works that are popular with many other people, then that is your decision. It is your life and your art. I don’t understand why you would let things external to you dictate your interests, but whatever makes you happy.

    Whatever you do, enjoy your artistic life.

    Today’s image

    This article came across as kind of heavy and preachy. So I Iightened up some on the image. But not going off theme.

    This was from a visit to a “famous” landmark in Kansas. It was interesting and I’m glad I went there, but when I turned around, the road leading in to it was more interesting than the landmark. There was no reason to dream there would be a picture here, but I remember this more than I do the landmark. Look around. Be open and flexible.

  • Recording the Obvious

    Recording the Obvious

    The great photographer Edward Weston once said “I see no reason to record the obvious.” But isn’t recording the obvious what most of us do most of the time? What are the alternatives?

    Cameras record everything

    As I have pointed out many times, our marvelous high tech sensors are great recording devices. They do a great job of capturing what they are pointed at.

    Because of that, these days our phones have become an invaluable data capture device. We record a sign we want to look into later, or a wine label we want to remember, or selfies of us and friends. When I rent a car I always do a 360 degree bracket of it before leaving the lot, just in case there are and disputes about when some damage happened. We have our phone with us, so when in doubt, snap a picture.

    Most of this is never intended to be considered art. It is just data. Maybe memories. They are a ubiquitous part of our lives.

    Most pictures are of a clear, well defined subject

    Most of these images, whether on our phone of our “real” camera, follow the rules of composition we have been taught. The subject is centered and as sharp and well lit as we can do. Perhaps we have a clear foreground, middle ground, and background. Maybe we have made the lighting interesting: high key or low key or strong side light.

    What is common is that the photos are “of” something. They are generally straight representation or even utilitarian.

    I do not dismiss this as unimportant. But it is not art. If we want to make art we have to take a different path.

    Can there be more?

    Trillions of pictures are taken every year, no exaggeration or typo. One more image I take is just a drop of water in the ocean. Why should I bother? How can I stand out? What can we do to be a new voice?

    We are often told to be creative. But almost everything has already been tried. True creativity, in the sense of something that has never been seen, is very rare. We may never do something truly creative, but we can do work that is fresh, because it captures our feelings and point of view.

    If we try to get in touch with what we feel and our reaction to a scene, we can capture it in a way that no one else has seen. We are unique, in that our thoughts and experiences and values are different from anyone else. Therefore we should be able to see things somewhat different.

    This difference that is unique to us is what sets our work apart from everyone else. We just have to follow our unique view and not try to make our work look like everyone else’s.

    Look for the story within the story

    You walk up to a beautiful landscape. There are 20 other photographers there snapping away. What do you do? Are you going to make the same image as all the others?

    Go ahead and shoot it. Capture a record of that standard scene. Get that out of the way. Now start responding to it at a deeper level. What do you really see? It may be a famous scene, but what draws you? Everyone else is using wide angle lenses. Maybe you feel like using a telephoto to isolate just part of it. Small sections of a scene can give an impression of the whole. This is making the picture “about” something.

    It doesn’t matter what people expect to see there. What do you see? What tweaks your interest? One fresh, interesting frame is better than a whole memory card full of “me too” shots. You are the audience you have to please.

    Look deeper

    I find it useful to keep asking myself questions and demanding an answer. Especially “why?”. Forcing myself to go through 3 or 4 levels of why questions about a scene can reveal a lot. But only if I make myself answer truthfully and with some detail. It is too easy to accept a vague idea of what I feel. No, be specific.

    Can you find something more there than the surface image? Is it actually interesting? Does it excite you? Paraphrasing the great Jay Maisel, “If the thing you’re shooting doesn’t excite you, what makes you think it will excite anyone else?”.

    So peel back the layers until you discover the truth or essence of what you are drawn to. It doesn’t have to be a deep, profound truth. It could simply be “I really like the way the water is flowing over that rock.” But you have identified what part of the scene you are drawn to and why. Now the resulting image can clearly convey your intent.

    Edward Weston famously told us “This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.” (Guy Tal based a whole book on the idea. It is good. Get it). This statement is pretty Zen-like, but it brings up a lot to think about.

    How can a picture of something as simple as a rock actually be about a deeper idea? Maybe it can or maybe it can’t. I have to say that some of the pictures in Mr. Tal’s book did not bring deep concepts to me. That is the problem of conveying feelings to another person. It doen’t always work. But, the artist attempted it and discovered something meaningful for him. Perhaps I cannot perceive it, but it was there for the artist. It is an honest attempt to bring me more than a rock.

    Get over the obvious

    So I encourage us all to dig below the obvious when we are creating our images. The obvious may be pretty, but is there any substance to it, in the sense of engaging our brain, our thoughts, our feelings?

    I have come to believe that I just bring you the same images you would have shot if you were there, I have probably not added much value for you. I owe it to you to force myself to understand what I was drawn to and capture my feelings, while making a beautiful image.

    Today’s image

    New Orleans French Quarter comes alive at night. The color and interest of this scene really drew me in, but it lacked depth. I had an idea of what I would like to see and I refined it as I watched various people stop and look in. This person finally paused there in the entrance, alone, questioning, swiveling. He seemed torn between conflicting ideas. Go in or keep going? To me this captured inner conflict and moral ambiguity. Choices.