Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Seeing

Awe and Wonder
In our cynical lives these days we seldom experience awe and wonder. That is a very sad. We can change that. Photography is one of the things that brings me closest to these feelings.
Wonder
Wonder is probably easiest to talk about. It is an emotion associated with surprise. We find something unexpected, but in a good way. A happy occurrence. It is often associated with curiosity and exploring our interests.
Plato and Aristotle believed that wonder is the basis of philosophy.
Wonder can happen when we encounter something entirely new, or when we find something unexpected about what we were familiar with. Either event astonishes us.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Awe
Awe, though, is significantly different. One definition of awe is “an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by overwhelming greatness (as in beauty, power, or size).” The underlying idea is being in the presence of something so great and significant that it is frightening in a way.
People often describe awe at things like the birth of a baby, or viewing the vastness of space, or contemplating God. Other examples that I can think of are being in a large thunderstorm, or viewing the Grand Canyon, or standing in an ancient cathedral in Europe, or being out in nature.
When we discover we are in the presence of greatness or power that is beyond us, it tends to produce awe.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Not our everyday experience
I fear, though, that modern society tries to squeeze the awe and wonder out of our lives. The News is all bad. Our jobs are often an unending sequence of soul sucking monotony. TV and movies are just time fillers. The next day we can hardly remember what we saw. Social media makes us feel bad because everyone else seems to have perfect lives and really exciting vacations. All or our time is filled, but we don’t seem to accomplish anything.
Sorry to be depressing, but that is what I observe in a lot of people I encounter. One psychologist describes our society as “awe-deprived.” There is hope, though.
We are expected to “grow up” and view everything coldly and analytically. Of course we must grow up, but that does not have to be at the cost of losing our sense of wonder.
Without changing your job or the News or much of your calendar, we can introduce awe and wonder back into our life.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Open to awe and wonder
Awe and wonder are feelings. Something that comes from inside us. They come from putting ourselves in their way and being open to seeing and feeling them. You don’t necessarily need to go to the Grand Canyon or a great cathedral. They are all around.
When is the last time you went out on your porch during a big thunderstorm? Just to stand there, flinching from the lightning bolts, being shaken by the thunder, feeling the spray from the blowing rain. On one hand, you are a little afraid, hoping it does not get too bad. On the other hand, though, you are in awe of the untamed power unleashed here. We know we are in the presence of something much greater than us. It is something that changes us and leads us to think new thoughts.
Or when have you spent a little time doing some research into something you are curious about? Sometimes it turns out to be interesting, even surprising. There might be more there than you ever imagined. This is a type of wonder.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Through our camera
I know it is partly just a psychological tool, but picking up my camera is a signal to myself that I am now going to be open and receptive. I am consciously switching to a mode of looking and seeing rather than just drifting through life from one moment to the next.
This simple move is a declaration that I am open to awe and wonder. And by just expecting it, it is amazing how many times they happen.
I consider it giving myself permission to look and feel. This is not something we seem to think we have in our day-to-day lives. But holding a camera, I am in a different state.
I don’t notice when I’m making myself look foolish going after a shot. I don’t care. Something is triggering wonder, maybe even bordering on awe. It is that feeling like being out in a storm. I have to experience it, participate in it.
Holding my camera, I am much more likely to notice the way the light is playing across this scene, or that fascinating rusty old truck that I have passed by dozens of times without noticing.
Awe and wonder help pull us out of the ruts we tend to fall in. In this “zone” it is easier to be curious and find out what happens if I do it like this instead of the way I normally do it. I place a high value on creativity. But creativity cannot grow without following our curiosity and being led by the wonder we find around us.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Play
As kids we played a lot. BTW, I hope you let your kids have lots of unstructured time for play. Not with socially relevant or educational toys, but with a box or some paper or a mud puddle or … Anyway, adults can play, too. It is good for us. Very good.
One good way we can celebrate these feelings we have when we experience awe and wonder is to play. Yes, like a kid. With our camera, we can do the equivalent of splashing in puddles and chasing butterflies. Instead of taking the same, safe pictures we always take, do it different. Use a different framing, maybe not even level, use a lens we don’t normally use, make some shots where we’re thinking “this may not work, but if it does, it will be cool.” It might work.
Play keeps us loose. We stay in an exploration mode. We’re in a higher emotional state. And it is fun. Don’t discount fun. If we are having fun, we are probably doing good work.
Learn to tune into those opportunities that come to you for awe and wonder in your life. It makes us better. I cannot think of any occasion where I experienced wonder or awe and then thought “that was a boring waste of time; I wish I was mowing the yard.”
August 5, 2026
How Did You Think of That?
Most of us are not limited by our knowledge or our equipment or our environment. We are limited by the boundaries we place on our imagination. The question is not “how did you do that?”. It is “how did you think of that?”
Self-limiting
Maybe it is harsh to say we limit ourselves. But I have come to believe it.
I have gotten a lot from a quote from my friend Cole Thompson:
Many photographers will see an image they admire and ask: how did you do that? They want to know the techniques used, thinking that once they know those, they could create that image.
The question they should be asking is: how did you think of that?
Do we tend to follow what other people do, or do we create our own path? I believe we are afraid because we are not confident in our own creativity. It is safer to imitate.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Equipment
There are many excuses for our perceived limitations. One easy one is that my equipment is not good enough.
Photographers seem to lust for new equipment. If I had a medium format camera I could … That new super zoom lens would let me …
I understand. I have equipment lust like anyone. But on the other hand, I have come to believe that if you hand a Brownie box camera to a good artist, they will make good images. They will embrace the limitations and use them as part of the art.
This tells me that, in general, equipment is not the fundamental limitation. There may be specific situations that require certain technology, but artistry is independent of technology.
So, I don’t think I can use the excuse of not having good enough equipment. What I have is perfectly adequate to make art. I just must learn how.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Knowledge
Learning how brings up the excuse of not enough knowledge. I understand. I am a constant learner. Almost everyday beings a new video or article or book I consume to learn to be better. I have hundreds of hours of videos and a library of books. Photography is more closely aligned to technology than most other arts, and it is supported by huge amounts of training material.
But I also know this can become a crutch and an excuse. When will you get to the magic threshold of knowledge required to be an artist? Sometimes needing more study becomes an excuse for being afraid to go out and do it.
Again, I know. I’m talking to myself, too. I get caught up in this. Today I watched a presentation on photographic abstraction, including techniques for in-camera multiple exposure and intentional camera movement. It was educational and motivating. But I didn’t immediately go out and apply it. And if I was not an artist before seeing it, I still could not call myself one after it. Maybe the amount of raw knowledge is not the key. We do not become an artist by a certain amount of training or a degree or certificate.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a strong believer in learning. Our tools are complex. And I believe that the more examples and points of views we have seen gives us greater fluency with our art. But as an artist, the knowledge must be internalized, then re-expressed in our vision. If we are studying but not doing it, we are not making art.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Environment
I get stimulated and energized by travel. I am lucky in getting the opportunity to take a few trips a year. The places and things I see while traveling seem newer and more interesting than the stuff where I live.
But travel is a bonus, an extra stimulation. The reality is that I spend most of my time around home. I must discipline myself to see the ordinary things around me with fresh eyes.
Don’t fall into the trap of feeling like you can’t make any interesting images because you do not have the chance to travel to exotic locations. Great photo opportunities are everywhere if we learn to see them. This is the type of mindfulness I recommend. The ability to see the ordinary with fresh eyes.
I live in a relatively small town along the Colorado front range. But I seldom take a day to go into the mountains. Almost every day, though, I go out and walk a few miles, starting from my studio. I try to vary my routes, but there are only so many directions I can go.
This means I see the same areas frequently. Finding something interesting that I haven’t seen before or that looks fresh and different is a challenge. But it is a challenge I have accepted as a test of my creativity. I have been doing this for years and I can still find engaging things.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Imagination
This may seem to have wandered far from the question of “how did you think of that?” My point is that our art is not limited by our equipment or our training or our environment. Our limitation is our imagination. Can we look at something that everybody sees all the time and see it different? Can we think something new?
That is a problem, but it is a good problem. If the limitation is in our head, we have some control of it and can fix it. Or at least make it better.
I believe an important step is reclaiming the curiosity we had as kids. Remember that curiosity you had, or your kids had? Why is the sky blue? What is the moon made of? In the olden days, was everything black and white?
Curiosity like this leads to asking “what if?” questions and to looking at the world different. We can begin to think of new ways to photograph, new ways to see things. The same thing we have always seen may be perceived in a new way. Answering the questions is less important than that we were able to ask them. The questions challenge us to look again and deeper.
So, maybe, to be a better photographer, I don’t need the latest equipment (bummer), or more training, or a trip to New Zealand. Maybe I just need to re-learn how to ask interesting questions. To be curious about everything. And to not be afraid to ask ourselves “what would happen if…?”
Try it. Be a kid. Follow your curiosity. Make mistakes and enjoy them. Don’t imitate other people. Create something no one else has ever seen.
As the great Jay Maisel said: If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.
November 12, 2025
Pull Out a Moment
Isn’t that what we do so well with photography, to pull out a moment of time to examine? Most art does this, but photography excels at it.
Time
Time flows continually. It so envelops and controls us that we often do not even consider it. But we cannot escape it. It carries us along with it whether we want it to or not.
Some of us live for the future, planning for a “someday” when things will slow down or be better. Some live only for now, trying to experience life or just have fun with little regard for what may come in the future. Others are stuck in the past. Living in memories or regrets for past events.
Regardless of our attitude about it, time keeps flowing relentlessly along. No one is rich enough to buy more time. No one is powerful enough to command it to slow down or speed up. We each have the same number of seconds in a day.
But photographers seemingly have a power over time, to freeze it or stretch it and to pull moments out to keep forever. This is an amazing ability for mere mortals.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Artists view
To an artist, time can seem like a continuous series of pictures. We look at things happening and think that may have never been seen like that before and it may never happen like that again. We better capture it now before it is gone.
Much of art is based on capturing moments. Paintings are usually of a moment in time. Sculptures often depict a moment of action or a grand pose.
But photographs do it better. After all, a painting or a sculpture of a moment is probably based on photographs the artist took to record it. So the photograph is the prime material, the basis of the art.
That is because photographs have a unique ability to record moments in time. We should be proud of that and use it to our advantage and to make our art more unique.
Manipulate time
Time flows constantly and at the same speed for everyone. But through photography we can look at time differently, depending on how we choose to see it.
We can slice it very fine at 1/1000 of a second or even faster. This will freeze an instant so we can examine things happening too fast for. us to perceive in real time. Birds in flight, a waterfall, a galloping horse, even a bullet in flight are frozen into a clear moment. We can see the details of the action, the turbulence, the skill.
At the other extreme, we can compress time. Any reasonable length of time can be imaged into a single frame. This allows us to visualize or see the effects of action happening over an extended amount of time. Car lights at night streaking into a long trail. A waterfall smoothing into a velvety flow. We might be able to capture multiple lightning flashes in one frame during a thunderstorm.
All of these and more help us see action over time. It visualizes what we can only imagine without the aid of photography.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Keep a time
Whether short exposures or long exposures or a “normal” speed, this slice we capture is preserved for us to examine and contemplate at our leisure. We have plucked it out of the stream of time and kept it for ourselves.
It is said that in a fire or flood, one of the first thing people try to save is the family pictures. These are our history, our memory. Moments that are important to us. (Many online sites tell us at length how to prepare a “go bag“; it’s a good idea; but the emotional reaction is to grab important memories in an emergency.)
And they keep us together as humans. A friend told me recently about getting together for a rare visit with his brother and sister. One of them had digitized old pictures their parents took of them as children. They spent hours looking at them and sharing stories and memories. Most of these were originally shot 60-70 years ago. They still have power of moments.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
View differently
Obviously, family pictures have special memories for us. But how about art?
As I mentioned before, most art involves the capture of moments that we can look at or think about whenever we want. Photography is uniquely suited for this.
Street photography gives us insightful glimpses of people in their daily life. Landscape photography captures moments of beauty or awe in the natural world. Portraits give us a formal view of people. Whether abstract or realistic or black & white or an alternative process or any other rendering, they capture a moment.
When we capture moments, we have the opportunity to study the moments at our leisure. Time ceases to flow for these images. Taking the moment out of the stream of time gives us a unique chance to spend all the time we want with the moment. We see and understand it differently.
Years from now, that moment will still be there for us to bring out and examine again. Or our descendants may look at them and see a glimpse of what we saw, maybe even what we felt.
Time is a key component in our photography. Photography is perhaps the best of the arts for capturing and manipulating time. Other forms of art rely on the artist seeing or imagining something, then representing it. Photography allows us to see things that could not otherwise be seen.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Reflect
We see a potential image and take it. What is it for? Who is it for? Does it matter how many people see it?
It is quite possible it does not have more of a purpose than that we were compelled to make art. If we are making art, it may be sufficient that it fulfilled something in us.
Most of us would love for great numbers of people to view our work and give us lots of compliments. Especially the compliment of buying it. But is that why we do it?
Perhaps these moments in time are painting our history, marking our journey, filling our memory bank. Maybe their significance could not be apparent to anyone else.
Or maybe something is compelling us to capture these moments so that someday we can begin to understand them ourselves.
Regardless, we are compelled. We pluck these moments out of time and set them aside for reasons we may not understand. Or perhaps it is enough that they are beautiful, at least, to us.
Every time we press the shutter release, we are capturing a moment. Be very aware of that. They are our moments. They have meaning to us. Sharing them with other people is an intimate act.
“Life is a collection of moments; cherish them, embrace them, and create more of them.”
June 4, 2025
Go to a Forest, Again
Go to a forest. It is good for you in many ways, and it can benefit your photography. I say “again” because I wrote about this before, but it has been over 4 years and I decided to update my thoughts.
Forest Bathing
I am a believer in what is called forest bathing. This was my practice before I ever heard the term.
Some research shows that just being in a forest, experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of nature will improve our physical and mental health.
Forests are a magnet for me. Every place I travel to, I try to get out into the local forests. The different trees are special to me and are refreshing, each in their own way.
My previous article talked a lot about forest bathing, but it is not just an idea. We can’t just put it on our to do list and try to fit it in somewhere, maybe as we listen to a podcast.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Silent Walk
Just being in a forest is not magically going to make all our problems go away. Actually, nothing is going to magically make them go away. Things like forest bathing can help. Some people are proposing a parallel stress reducing plan called silent walking.
We seem so totally controlled by our technology these days that it can even impact our forest experience. To get the most from the forest exposure, or any calming moment, we have to unplug.
To get the benefits of being in the forest, we have to actually be there in the forest, physically and mentally. Leave the distractions behind. It is great that you love your music, but when you are in the forest, leave your headphones behind. Listen to the birds and the wind in the trees. Hear the sound of the river flowing by. And it is not a time for your run. That is great to do for exercise some other time, but try just taking it easy. Relax. Set a slow pace. This is a time to unwind.
Promise yourself you will not pick up your phone while you are in the forest. Except maybe to take a picture. But them put it back away and don’t post the picture until later.
Benefits
Here are some benefits of being in nature as noted in an article quoting Allison Chase, PhD, CEDS-S, Regional Clinical Director at Pathlight Mood & Anxiety Center in Austin, Texas. She is more articulate than I am.
“Spending time in nature, with more serene and slower paced stimuli, can be very calming to the nervous system, where stress and cortisol levels are impacted.”
But to get this result, it requires being completely present. “The key is to slow down and take in the environment and its natural beauty,” which also helps the body calm down. “Without the input of screens and other modern or electronic stimuli, one’s brain [aka neurons] can calm down. This slows down the entire body to be more calm and relaxed.”
Additionally, nature itself can be a great boost for your overall wellbeing. “Nature offers stimuli that can impact a number of senses, [such as] touch, sound and smell,” adds Chase. “Whenever our senses can be heightened in a healthy, positive, serene way, it is always good for the body and brain.” In fact, a study in Environmental health and preventive medicine found that forest bathing significantly lowered blood pressure and reduced negative moods.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Mindfulness
This sounds a lot like mindfulness to me. Imagine that.
I’m not a formal practitioner of mindfulness, but I believe my secular practice of it has great value. It seems I recommend it a lot in my writings.
And I will continue to recommend it. In our fast paced, high stress, over scheduled world it can help bring us back to a healthy state.
Find your place
I’m lucky. My house is about 10 miles from the edge of the Rocky Mountains. In abut 20 minutes I can be in the mountains and forests. That is one of my happy places.
But not living next to a National Forest does not exclude you. As a matter of fact, I do not go up into the National Forest nearly as much as the time I spend in the parks and natural areas in my town. You probably live near parks and open spaces, too. Use them. Don’t ignore the good even if we can’t have the best.
I have come to believe it is our intent and our approach that makes the difference in what we get from our time. If we go out with the intent to slow down, calm our mind, and take in the environment with most of our senses, it will happen. If we just go for exercise, well, we will just get exercise.
©Ed Schlotzhuaer
Get out there
As I write this, spring is emerging in much of the country. Many of us are waking up, stretching, and resolving to get out and start taking pictures again.
Do it.
I hope there is nothing hindering you from picking up your camera, heading out to your local park, and getting back into nature. Or, optionally, leave the camera. Just experience the outdoors again. It is good for you
A couple of days ago while wandering through a local natural area I saw 2 sights that made me feel good. A middle-aged woman wearing a backpack was approaching me going the opposite direction. I wondered if she was another photographer, since I carry my camera in a backpack. As I got closer, I saw that she was on oxygen. She had a tube under her nose going back to a tank, presumably, in the pack.
In the other case, I came on a woman making her way along the trail using a walker. This was a gravel trail, not paved, so I assume it was work for her.
Both of these ladies were quite a way away from the closest parking lot. I thought they were awesome and encouraging. They were making a determined effort to get out in nature despite some hindrances.
What is keeping you from doing it? Really.
Get back out there.
Forest bathing hack
Everybody seems to want a quick way to hack the system. OK. Here is your hack for forest bathing, again from Allison Chase.
1. Find your sanctuary
Look for a local park, nature preserve or even your own backyard if it boasts a decent tree coverage. Find a place that feels calming and allows you to disconnect from everyday life. This also means silencing your phone and tucking it away.
2. Slow down and savor
Forest bathing isn’t a race. Meander along a path at a leisurely pace, allowing yourself to truly appreciate the sights and sounds around you. Take slow, deliberate breaths of the fresh air. You can even stop and sit under a shade tree for a while. Your session doesn’t have to be long — aim for 30 minutes to start.
3. Engage your senses
Don’t just look — touch, smell, listen and really see everything around you. Take note of the soft aroma of fresh blooms, how freshly cut grass feels against your bare feet or the vibrant colors of a passing butterfly. If worries or negative thoughts start to creep into your mind, gently guide your thoughts back to the present and the beauty surrounding you.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
On photography
Mostly I have talked about the general mental and physical benefits of being in nature. I believe there are benefits for photography also.
Being in a forest refreshes us and awakens our senses. It is invigorating and good exercise. If we are better physically, we have more stamina and are more capable of getting out for photo shoots.
And if we are calmer and less stressed, we can better apply our creativity to our art. The more hindrances we can remove, the more we can focus on our art.
Forest bathing leads to mindfulness. Mindfulness leads to more creativity.
Note on the pictures selected
I deliberately selected black & white images for my forest pictures today. There are 2 basic reasons. One, I really love b&w. Two, I want to make a subtle point that the benefits of being in a forest are not reserved just for what we think of as “peak” comfortable, colorful summer and fall times. The forests have benefits for me all year, in all of its moods and weather.
May 21, 2025
Photography is About Light
Stating the obvious? I think we sometimes forget the fundamentals of what we are doing and working with. No light, no photography. Photography is about light.
Writing with light
Remember that our word “photography” comes from 2 Greek words that together mean “writing with light”. So, from the beginning of our art form, it was understood that we were recording light on some type of photo sensitive material. Glass plates or tintype or film back then. Mostly digital sensors now.
Technology changes but still we are recording light.
Embrace that. It is what we are all about as photographers. Photography is about light.
Low light is not no light
Our technology improves all the time. It is possible to get sensors that do a fair job of imaging at 250,000 ISO. Maybe more. I don’t track the latest. The highest ISO I found with a quick scan was the Nikon D6 at 3,280,000!
A 250,000 ISO is about 11 stops of additional exposure above a nominal ISO 100 setting. Eleven stops is a huge amount as exposures go. I haven’t tried it, but at ISO 250,000 I bet you could make a properly exposed landscape shot lit only by starlight.
But the point is that very low light is not the same as no light. Have you ever been in a cavern deep underground where they turned off all lights at some point? Then we encounter the eerie experience of actual, total blackness. In those conditions it is impossible to see anything. Put your hand right in front of your face and you can’t tell it’s there. There are absolutely no photons to impinge on our retina.
We could do no photography in total blackness. Of course, other artists would be almost equally disadvantaged. I suppose, theoretically, painters could make marks on their canvas in total blackness, but they would have no way to know what they were creating. Sculptors could mold clay by feel, but they would have very limited feedback on what they were doing. But photographers cannot do anything without light.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Computational photography
One clever way to get better results in low light is used in your cell phone and by astronomers. It is generally called “computational photography”.
Computational photography does not rely on the result of one frame. Instead, tens to thousands of shots are taken and processed by computer to bring out detail.
This is how your phone takes decent pictures in low light despite having a tiny sensor. It is actually shooting bursts of dozens of frames. Then it quickly processes them in the phone. It uses averaging and other more sophisticated techniques to reduce noise and bring out the desired detail. I am surprised at how well it works.
Astronomers have special needs in photographing distant galaxies. The light levers are so low that there is nothing to see with our eye. So, they instead take hundreds, maybe thousands of images with the regular sensor on their telescope and run them through dedicated processing software. Using combinations of specialized image processing algorithms and AI, their computers “reconstruct” what is probably there.
My astronomer friends have shown me some of their new “telescopes” they got recently. These surprising instruments are generally about the size of a moderately thick hard cover book. They rely on small, cheap optics and lots of computation, but produce amazing results.
Techniques like these let images be created in what seems like black conditions. But the reality is, it is not black. Just very low levels of lighting. If it was actually black, no photography.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
See the light
As I said, the purpose of this is to remind us that our art is based on light. We need to develop a heightened awareness of the light around us, because it is critical to our art. It changes all the time and is different in different conditions.
it has been observed that a fish probably does not think about water. But we need to think about light, which is almost as important to us as water is to a fish.
Light has many characteristics and most all of them affect our photography.
We need to be intensely aware of the quantity of light at any time, its color, is it direct or diffuse, its angle, whether it is steady or changing, is our subject lit directly or indirectly, and many other properties. It sounds complicated. But learning the light is part of the craft. Learning to apply it creatively is part of the art.
For instance, it is almost an axiom of photography that you do not photograph in the middle of the day. Like the “rule of thirds”, this is one of those rules I take pleasure in violating. The reality is that it completely depends on what subjects you are shooting, the nature of your light source, and what your goals are. Shooting at midday often enhances the texture of materials. In a dense forest it can create interesting dappled light patterns. In a slot canyon or a cathedral, it can create beautiful light beams. And diffuse overcast light may be perfect for many subjects, with high brightness and soft, even illumination.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
And as a practical matter, I am not a National Geographic photographer on assignment. I can’t spend a week in the field waiting for the “perfect” shot I went out to find. I have to be creative enough to make the best use of what I find at the time I’m there.
There are no rules, only what you can do with what you have.
Tonality
Tonality is one of those important things we need to think about and know how to use. It simply refers to the difference of luminance of the parts of our image. The tonality is what lets us distinguish all the parts. It creates separation of various areas.
Think of a blank white piece of paper. This effectively has zero tonality. There is no image, because without tonal separation we cannot resolve anything. Any actual image we create has a range of tones.
If the tones are squished together, our image is low contrast. Not much tonal separation. Maybe this is what you want, like a foggy scene.
On a sunny day there is a wide range of tones. We refer to it as high contrast. Sometimes it can be too much. Do we need to use exposure or editing techniques to tame the contrast? But that is our creative choice
A low-key image involves pushing most of the tones down towards dark. But the remaining light tones stand out. Likewise, if we create a high-key image, with most of the tones pushed toward light, the remaining dark tones stand out.
Our eyes are very sensitive to tonality. We perceive tiny differences in illumination levels. Use of tones is a creative process. It should be part of our thought process and toolbox.
One of the ultimate expressions of pure tonality is black & white photography. All color is stripped away, leaving only tonality to create the image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Color
Our eyes are an incredible design. The rods and cones have different purposes but work together to give us sight. But overall, our eye is less sensitive to color than to illumination levels.
Think of being in a dim room at night. We can make out the objects around us, but the colors are hard to distinguish. Turn the light on fully and the colors pop.
Similarly, in our images, good color requires good light. We can’t see vibrant, saturated color in dim light. I mentioned low key art. Have you noticed that most of it is black & white? This is a practical result of not being able to see much color in low light.
I believe some people’s artistic vision is drawn to color and some to black & white. If you are a color person you have to be doubly aware of light. Not enough and our brilliant colors fade.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Creativity
All art processes are defined by their technology. Photography is based on light. We cannot do photography without light. To be a photographic artist, we need to be intensely aware of light and how to use it to our advantage.
Recognize it not as a limitation, but as a creative tool. Light is a marvelously varied thing. We are artists. We paint with light. Learning it and being constantly aware of it and deciding how we want to use it for any image is part of the art.
We are seldom in a place where there is no light, like the underground cavern I mentioned earlier. There is always light around. It may just be moonlight or city lights or a flash. We may decide there is not enough light to make the image we want sometimes, but there is always light to work with. Recognize it. Use it creatively.
Light is fundamental to photography. Learn to see it for what it is and learn to use it creatively. It is what you are photographing.
May 7, 2025