Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Seeing

What You See Is What You Get
This is a well worn cliché with many meanings. I would like to attach a new one to it. What you see is what you get is also a description of our photography process.
History
You can predict that I like to get into the background of things. The phrase seems to have originated in the mid 20th century. It was popularized by Flip Wilson in the 1960’s show “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In”. Anyone remember that? I have to confess that I do.
I will talk about meanings of the phrase, but one historical meaning was also special to me. “What you see is what you get” (abbreviated WYSIWYG) became a theme for personal computers back in the 1980’s. Before that, computers were terrible at dealing with fonts and layouts. Along came the Apple Macintosh and things changed radically. Thank you Steve jobs! But that is a topic for another time.
Conventional meanings
The normal usage of the phrase implies things are exactly as they appear, simple, no hidden meaning or content, clear.
For example:
“On a side note, with Jake, what you see is what you get; he’s always upfront.”
“In this political climate, it’s refreshing to see a candidate for whom what you see is what you get.”
“The website builder offers a what you see is what you get editor, making it easier for non-technical users to create professional-looking sites.”
We all know what we mean when we say the phrase, at least if you speak colloquial English.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
In our photography
I am proposing a new facet for this old phrase. As photographers, we have to see something to photograph it. So, what we see, is what we get.
That sounds blindingly obvious, but think about it a moment. In today’s world, the ability to notice things is getting to be a rare and precious talent. We live in culture of distraction. Every tech device in our lives is fighting for our attention.
But you are a photographer. I assume it is different for you. You have developed the skill of noticing things. To do that, you have to look and be aware. In order to even do that, you have to have the discipline to disconnect from most of the distraction that is keeping other people in addiction.
It seems like it is the goal of people today to have the least contact with the outside world they can. Almost like they want to live in a Matrix-like simulation.
Distraction
Next time you walk around in your city pay attention to what the people around you are doing. How many are looking around, seeming to take in what they are seeing? Compared to how many are glued to their phones or isolated with headphones. If they are looking around, is it with their phone camera in front of them to record everything they see so they can post it on social media? Do they have to get a selfie in front of that pretty sight, rather than actually looking at it?
The goal of most people seems to be to isolate themselves from the world around them. A 24/7 always on stream of TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, music, or movies provides an exciting alternative to the seemingly boring, mundane life and surroundings people have in their daily lives.
If people are on mass transit, they are plugged in and doing their best to block out the world around them. If they have to walk a few feet from their car, they are already checking email or Facebook. My state even felt the need to make it illegal to as much as pick up a cell phone when we are driving. It was that big of a problem.
And then there is the self imposed distraction of always being in a hurry. We rush and try to multi-task. Many people now do not even take all of their vacation, because we are too busy and afraid of falling behind. But that puts blinders on us. In our frantic hurry, we do not see much of what is around us.
I am in no place to give any kind of judgment about people’s desire to block out or deal with the world. Everyone gets to choose their path. That doesn’t make all choices equally beneficial. If we are artists, that puts us in a different context.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Mindfulness
A theme I can’t help coming back to frequently is mindfulness. Not in any kind of Zen practice, with painful poses and mantra chants. I don’t bend that way anymore.
Like most great ideas, mindfulness is very simple and extremely complicated.
From the viewpoint of photography, It is simple, because at its core , it is just about being aware of where you are, what is around you, possibilities of interesting colors and patterns and compositions and movement and subjects.
Just being aware. Training yourself to be in the habit of looking. Turning down the volume of distractions and looking around with an open mind. Being willing to think about things around you. Being willing to slow down some.
It is complicated, because it is exactly the opposite of what most of the world is trying to get you to do. Instead of closing into your little cocoon you have to open up to experiencing outside stimulus. This means consciously fighting against distraction that are trying to capture you.
Crazies
I love a quote from Lee Ann White I found recently. “If you make photographs when no one else does, you get photographs no one else does.” Simple and obvious. I think it was part of what inspired me to describe this idea of what you see is what you get.
I’m not suggesting taking the idea of being where no one else is to extremes. My friend Dean is an example of doing that. He is full on crazy (IMHO). For example, he goes solo trekking in wilderness areas of the Colorado mountains for days at a time in the worst winter conditions. And seems to enjoy it. And gets unique shots to prove it. That’s extreme even by my standards.
As a matter of fact, I know a lot of fairly crazy photographers. But that is not a requirement for doing good work.
This mindfulness I am recommending does not require existential danger or major travel ventures. It just requires us to be aware. To look around and see more than most of the people around you are seeing.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Give it a try
Look at everything you see as a picture. What is the interest here? How would I frame and compose it? What should I do with the lighting? What depth of field should I use? Is there a better viewpoint?
We can be going through that thought process without even getting out our camera. I hope, though, that it compels you to make the picture. I want you to get so excited about what you are seeing that you have to give it a try.
Have you ever stopped on the way to work because something caught your eye in a new way? Even after driving the route every day for years, today you saw something different. I have.
Just 3 days ago I was driving my normal route that I have done for thousands of times and I had to pull off in a cemetery. In the many years I have been by it nearly every day I have stopped less than a dozen times to actually go in and see it. That day was one. It was a bitterly cold day with a beautiful layer of hoar frost covering the trees. It compelled me to turn in. I’m glad I did.
What you see is what you get
If we do not see it, we will not photograph it. If we are not mindful and paying attention we will not see it in the first place. Just making the effort to look is a necessary first step. Mindfulness is a habit, a thought process. It is something we can learn through practice.
Even then we will not get the picture unless we give ourselves permission to stop and take the picture. Without taking the action we will never have it or the joy of the memory. Be one of the few who is paying attention.
I’ll wave at you when I see you pulled off on the side of the road shooting pictures of something i can’t even see. Looking a little crazy. And happy.
See it. Do it.
You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see.
If with a camera you can make others see it – that is photography.
Ernst Haas
The featured image
I thought it would be good to describe the image at the top of this article. It is exactly a “what you see is what you get” as I describe here. My wife and I were staying in a hotel downtown Denver for some reason. Probably a weekend away.
This was a scene looking right out our balcony. It is not composited or edited other than normal color and sharpness. The reflections were exactly this. I was fascinated and still do not understand how such diverse scenes could be captured on the windows. And I loved the distortions. I’ll take it. I’m glad I looked out and noticed it.
March 19, 2025
En Plein Air
This is a big buzz with my colleagues who manually put pigment on a substrate (e.g. they paint). There is an aura that makes it something exotic about creating “en plein air”. Actually, plein air is what I do, too.
Plein air
In itself, plein air art is not a new concept, or even an artistic concept. It has been done commonly by painters since the 1800’s.
It is sometimes spoken like an advanced technical term. Something your have to be an insider to truly appreciate. But it is just an everyday French phrase. I have been studying French recently (another story) and was surprised to find this in normal use. It literally means “plain air”, or outdoors. Nothing fancy or hidden there. If you go to a “plein air” concert it just means you are going to an outdoor concert.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
In painting
So if you are a painter and you gather up all your stuff and take it outside to paint scenes from nature or whatever is in front of you, you are painting “en plein air”. Does that make it different or special? Maybe. Monet thought so. I”ll talk about that in a minute.
But to give the painters credit, it required some technical and workflow innovations for this to happen. We forget history sometimes.
It used to be (pre-1800) that artists had to find or buy their own pigments. Then they had to purify them and laboriously grind them into an extremely fine powder and mix them in a binder, usually a type of oil. By the way, you know those beautiful warm, rust toned palettes favored by Renaissance artists in Italy? Ochre pigment was a common, naturally occurring mineral there. Coincidence?
But then, sometime in the early 1800’s, the technology for producing and selling pigments already ground and mixed and in tubes was developed. This allowed the artists two things: first, they could get any colors they wanted. But second, and more important for this discussion, it became much easier to take your oils with you. As the desire to move about grew, enterprising vendors also developed smaller, portable easels and pre-stretched prepared canvases. Artists were not tethered to a studio nearly so much.
Now artists could pack their gear into a relatively small bundle and go where they wanted. One of the places they moved was outside.
Monet
I find I use Monet as an example a lot. I like his work, but another thing is that he was an innovator and revolutionary. He fought the entrenched art establishment and helped establish a whole new style. Something photography is still struggling to some extent to do.
Monet was one of the early practitioners of the plein air movement. One of the motivations of the whole Impressionist movement was his and others desire to paint outdoor scenes in the light of the moment. As Guy Tal put it in his marvelous book The Interior Landscape, (I get no incentives for promoting it) “Monet famously credited the success of his work to the emotions he felt when working out in nature … As Monet himself put it, ‘My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects.’ “
Working outside and observing fleeting effects. That’s what I like to do, too!
©Ed Schlotzhauer
I work outdoors
The same impulse motivates me, even though the technology I use is very different. I find and capture my images almost exclusively outdoors. Shooting in a studio does not motivate me.
Seeing things most other people do not see excites me. Finding those things, even if they are little, seemingly insignificant things, that I can show you in a new way gives me joy. Especially if I can show you something and you share my joy and excitement.
I admit I do not have the patience for painting. It’s too slow for me. Spending a few hours or days capturing a scene would be so frustrating to me that I would quickly give up. Seeing something, visualizing what this could be and what to do with it is hard and takes lots of experience. That is one of the fun and creative parts of photography to me. And it is fast enough to not bog me down or interrupt my creative flow. The process of capturing and producing the artifact doesn’t need to be so difficult.
Other than post processing work on my computer, my images come from outdoors, en plain air.
A new genre?
Have I created a new genre of art? Should I trademark the term “plein air photography”? Sign up for my workshop!
Well, I probably can’t do that. Photography has always been strongly associated with the outdoors. I think the first surviving photograph was an outdoor scene. Admittedly early photographs were outdoors because that’s where a good light source was available. Flash had not yet been invented. Even when it first was, it was difficult and dangerous to use (and smoky).
But those are technical considerations. The fact remains that photography has always had a strong connection to the outdoors. Especially for crazy people like me who photograph outside year around in a place like Colorado.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
It’s the outdoors that motivates me. I’m a hunter. That’s where I find most of my prey. And my inspiration. It is not an uncommon obsession. Look at publications like Luminous Landscape, Nature Photographer’s Network, Outdoor Photographer magazine and many others.
To the painters, if working outside motivates you, excellent. We share a common bond. I hope the outdoors inspires us both to do our best work. But working outdoors is not a new concept or unique to painting. Plein air just means “outside”.
I’ll be looking for you outside. But we will just pass each other. I’ll be moving about a lot discovering and shooting a lot of things while you are painting. Not to say one is better or worse, just very different art forms. Both en plein air. Let’s wave to each other.
December 11, 2024
Authentic
The important people are constantly telling us we need to be authentic. As if authenticity is some kind of badge of artistry or truth. Is this really true?
Authenticity
Authenticity means to be genuine or of undisputed origin. It can also mean accurate or reliable. These are correct definitions of authentic, but what does it mean to us?
I am completely ignoring any discussion of forgery or fraud. That is a huge subject, but not very applicable to me.
What we are usually told, and what I have said before, is that we need to be ourselves. Everything has been shot, painted, sculpted, and written about. True originality is rare. The main way to differentiate ourselves is to be authentic. To show our unique and individual interpretation of the subject.
This is very true. I believe that. But it is hard for some people. Especially if the only metric you have to go by is social media likes. And I think some take too simplistic an interpretation of what that means in practice.
Opposite of authenticity
The opposite of authentic is to copy someone else. The world strongly encourages us to copy others, even as it says we need to be unique. Social media is a powerful crucible of conformity. Mediocrity is enforced. Everyone is pushed to the average. True originality tends to be knocked down. If you want likes and positive comments, you have to show things that are basically just like everyone else.
In a similar way, many self appointed gate keepers set themselves up as the authorities to vet the worth of other people’s art. These may take the form of teachers, “influencers”, critics, curators, contest judges, gallery owners, etc.
When they reject our work, the only true statement these people can really make is “I don’t care for your work.” If they are actually running a business, they could say “this work is not a good fit for my market.” That is a useful and accurate statement of fact rather than opinion.
But what usually comes across is “I deem you unworthy as an artist.” That is arrogant and offensive and discourages many artists. History teaches us that the intelligentsia are not good predictors. They more often opposes things that seem a threat to their established position.
I hope even just the description of that makes you want to rebel against it. But I’m afraid too many accept these forces as the arbiters of taste and art.
We are complex
Please pardon the rant. It is a hot button.
It seems to me that artists settle into one of 3 broad groups. They conform their work to be similar to what is popular, they intentionally oppose the mainstream, or the take little notice of what trends or authorities have to say.
Personally, I value this last group.
But let me get back to the idea of authenticity. We are told we are all unique (just like everybody else). And as such, we should express whatever it is we see or feel.
Well, yes and no. Humans are extremely complex beings. We have lots going on in many dimensions. Not all of which is useful or beneficial.
The mantra of being authentic should not be an excuse for removing our filters and doing or saying or making anything that pops into our mind. We should be thoughtfully and intentionally creating, not just pouring out our random impulses. Our work should never be the equivalent of “oh, did I say that out loud?”
The real me
Let me give an example in the opposite direction. I am boring. I’m the most boring person I know, and I know a lot of really boring geeks. Watching me work would be like watching paint dry.
That doesn’t mean my art or writing should be boring. Our creative engine is completely separate from our daily life. Like most of us, what we create can rise above what we appear to be on the surface.
I have heard it said, for instance, that many good writers are introverts and pretty boring in real life. There is an apocryphal story about a famous writer who went to a hotel for a conference. One day while he was there some students went to meet him for breakfast to visit with him. They came to the front desk and asked if he was up yet. The answer was “how would I tell?”.
As a person he certainly didn’t light up the room.
That’s me. If I was around, you probably wouldn’t know it. You probably wouldn’t even be able to find me. I would just be out by myself exploring and taking pictures.
That’s the me in real life. But I try hard to make my art different and compelling. I try to make my writing interesting and engaging. Does this mean I am being inauthentic? Not by my definition. The reality is I am truly being authentic by expressing my vision and values. My creative side is different from my public persona. My audience deserves the best I can create. And why would I be satisfied with anything less?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
My take on authenticity
Authenticity is a holy grail for some people. I have to conclude that is because they know, deep down inside, they are fake. If you are following trends or popular influencers, you are living their life, not yours. Your art is going unmade.
Authenticity is not something I worry about. I am authentic in my life and work. I never consciously copy anyone. My images are an authentic expression of my perceptions and feelings and viewpoint. They are not done to get likes or popularity. But they also are not unfiltered outbursts from my subconscious. I aim to bring you positive, well crafted works that make you better somehow. Or at least make you see or think something new.
If I am shooting something I know is substantially the same as what others have done, I will ask myself why I am taking this picture. Unless I can say something appreciably different or bring you a new point of view, why do it? Sure, I take familiar pictures, but for myself. My memories. Why would I show you a copy of something someone else has already done?
I can’t talk at any length about my style. I’m not sure I understand it. Talking about vision sounds a bit self important for me. But I can promise you that what you see or read from me is authentically me. It also means it is not AI generated. But that is another topic.
Today’s image
This is at first glance a throwaway travel photo. It was taken during a cooking class in Italy. This section was doing pizza. The instructor could communicate well, but her mother, shown here, did not speak English. She just yelled at us in Italian. You know, speak loudly and make lots of gestures to try to be understood. What us Americans usually do when we travel. 🙂
But notice the repetition of angles and forms, including the pizza edge and the shadows, the repetition of triangles in the oven, and the “decisive moment” of lifting the pizza. Everything seems poised in anticipation.
Nothing is setup or posed. And even though it was a quick grab during a class, I had the presence to think artistically. It is not a world class image, but it completely represents the event and has enough staying power to hold my attention. It is authentic.
October 9, 2024
Seeing the Unseen
Photography is unique in the arts. It can record things we cannot see or imagine. Photography can be an adventure in seeing the unseen.
Unique
Photographers are sometimes made to feel inferior. Usually by proponents of the “real” arts, like painters or sculptors. Get over it. Photography has qualities that go beyond any other arts. Qualities that make them envious.
Photography is a technology-based art. That technology can be used along with our artistic vision to capture and create things regular art cannot. We can peer into things the human eye cannot see. We can freeze time to examine events the human eye cannot show us. Likewise, we can extend time to show the effects of movement in new ways.
Exposure
The human eye is amazing. But it has limits. Even though it can see a huge range of light, photographic sensors can push beyond our eye’s limits.
When you look at the stars, for instance, we can see what seem to be an immense number. But I have astronomer friends who have a process of taking hundreds of frames of 1 point in the sky. Then they use special stacking software to combine them and sharpen them to create levels of detail far beyond what the eye can see. Even my amateur astronomer friends routinely show me pictures they have taken of distant galaxies that cannot be detected at all with the eye.
Those same astronomer friends have solar filters – essentially completely black glass – that let them view the surface of the sun! They can see and photograph sun spots and the corona. Things that would destroy our eye if we tried to look directly at them.
The technology and practice of photography allows these things.
Light range
And “normal” (non-photographic) art is all done in the visible light range. Makes sense, That is all we can see.
But most of us have seen infrared imaging. This is done using a special dark red filter that excludes most light we can see. What is left is what we would consider heat – the world of longer wavelengths beneath the red response of our eye. It gives us a subtly different perception of the world around us. A paint artist could not do that without taking an infrared image of the scene then painting from the photograph.
Similar filtering can be done to see the ultraviolet world beyond the highest violets we can perceive. And have you had an X-Ray? That is just imaging done in another range of “light” we cannot see well beyond the ultraviolet.
These are somewhat niche capabilities, but they can bring us information that is exclusive to the photographic world.
Time
Time is one of my favorite variables that is unique to photography. One of the three legs of the exposure triad is shutter speed. By varying the shutter speed we can effectively slow down or speed up time!
People have developed flash systems that can freeze movement in slices of 1 millionth of a second. Even the fastest bullets are frozen in midair. Explosions can be captured as they start. You’ve probably seen pictures of a drop of liquid falling into a dish. The splash patterns are beautiful and interesting. Not many things we come in contact with in our lives are not frozen at this kind of speed.
At less extremes, a waterfall at a fast shutter speed can look like a cascade of diamonds . A bird in flight is completely frozen at about 1/1000th of a second. Every feather is crisp and sharp. We cannot see it this way with our eye.
At the other end, long exposures capture movement over time. This is the area I like to work. Not super long. Just long enough to change our perception of what is happening.
We have all seen long exposure pictures of waterfalls or cascades, where the water is smooth and silky. It is so common that it is in danger of being cliche. But the reason you see it a lot is because it is a pleasing effect. Some photographers make exposures of minutes. This makes clouds streak and water blur to a milky texture. Not really my thing, but I appreciate the reality distortion caused by the time shift.
Movement
A subset of this idea of time is where the camera is moving relative to the subject or the subject is moving relative to the camera. The camera motion side has become popular as Intentional Camera Motion (ICM).
Like many techniques in photography, it is easy to do but hard to do excellently. Anyone can take a blurry picture because the shutter speed was too long to stop the action. Most of us have to work to overcome this. ICM deliberately pushes this “fault” to a point of art. I do ICM for some projects and I have seen a lot of ICM that I consider excellent art. And I have seen a lot more where I have to think, “yep; that’s your standard ICM”. That’s OK. Most experiments in doing something new and creative fail.
One interesting aspect of techniques that involve movement and time is that it is almost impossible to take the same picture twice. There is always variation. The variation often leads to pleasant surprises.
Stretch the notion of reality
So photography is unique in giving us alternate views of “reality”. With conventional arts, like painting, nothing can be created that the artist does not first see or imagine. Photography can show us worlds or effects we did not imagine. This sometimes opens up new creative paths to explore. And the exciting thing is it is actually reality. If the camera captures it out in the “real world” (whatever that is), it is reality. What we get may be a complete surprise, but that is part of the exhilaration.
Photographers, never feel inferior in the arts. Know that what we do is as valid as any other kind of art. And try not not to be smug knowing we have the option of being more creative than most other forms of art.
Go explore the unseen and enjoy your discoveries.
Live always at the ‘edge of mystery’ – the boundaries of the unknown. – J. Robert Oppenheimer
Today’s image
This is part of a series I did fairly recently. It combines ICM and time and subject motion and some secret sauce optical techniques to create this look. I consider it a creative view on a reality that happens around us all the time, but only photographers can see.
Is it “real”? Yes, absolutely. It is a minimally modified shot of a real, physical subject. It is a subject most of us can find right around our town.
To find out more about what it is, go to my web site and find a similar looking image in Projects.
September 11, 2024
Created From Joy
There are many motivations and reasons for creating art. I can’t say any are wrong if the result is art that truly pleases the artist. For me, I am sure my art is created from joy.
Many motivations
What is it that motivates artists to create? Trauma? Money? Desperation? Joy? I am not qualified to say, because I can only speak for myself. Without being in the mind of another artist and experiencing their motivations, I cannot know.
Much has been written on this, but, again, i am not sure we can fully know what motivates someone else.
We can look at some works and believe they were created as the artist tried to work out some grief or tragedy or great wrong. Or maybe just try to understand life.
Guernica
Picasso’s Guernica seems to be a deep reaction to the horrors of war. Actually, he had been given a commission by the Spanish Republicans to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. He was not making much headway on it and did not seem highly motivated. Then on 26 April 1937 the Nazis bombed the village or Guernica. Picasso was urged to make this his theme and, after reading eye witness accounts of the attack, he did.
Yes, he was Spanish, although he did not live there at the time and never would again. But rather than being a deeply personal experience for him, he seemed to be able to empathize well enough to bring the emotion through. Anyway, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece.
This does not prove or disprove anything. It just shows that artists motivations are deeply internal and personal. As much as critics try to analyze and dissect a work, they are groping in the dark unless the artist enlightens them.
Joy motivates me
I have discovered myself well enough to understand that joy is my primary motivation when I am making images. Even though I am old and increasingly cynical, joy is what enlightens my work.
Joy can be a small thing like finding a dew covered spider web in the niche of a wall or it can be the sweep of a grand landscape at the right time, like the image with this article. It is not a particular thing or place or time. It is my reaction to it. How does it move me? What does it bring to me at the moment?
Finding these moments of joy draws me on from one to the next. The act of selecting a scene to photograph, framing it, composing it, deciding on exposure settings, etc. is a skill. Doing it is a calming and pleasant activity to immerse myself in for a few moments. Everybody takes pictures. To take one that people stop to look at or talk about is art.
My joy is in capturing and expressing a scene in a way that will be memorable. But even if no one other than me sees it or enjoys it, it is joy and it is my art. No critic or reviewer can take that joy away from me. It matters little what other people think about an image. It can still give me joy.
Not happiness
We need to distinguish between happiness and joy. Many people take them as about the same, but they are quite different. Happiness is a pleasant feeling because circumstances made us content at the moment. A warm cup of cocoa on a cold day. An unexpected letter from a friend.
The next moment, something can take away our happiness.
Joy is a long term view of life. It comes from within and is not completely dependent on what is happening around us. We tend to be joyful when the way we are living our life is aligned with our values and beliefs.
Making images that bring me joy definitely aligns with my values and closes the loop. It reinforces my joy. That is, my images come from joy and making them increases my joy. For me, they are created from joy.
Values
Do you ever consider your values? The principles you build your life on are too important to go un-analyzed. We are more fulfilled when what we do is aligned with our values and we tend to be frustrated and unhappy when we are opposing them. Think about what you believe.
I’m not saying everything we do needs to be for some grand social cause. Not at all. I think that tends to make our work stiff and preachy. I am just suggesting we will be happier and do better work if we are doing it for the joy of our feelings and the pleasure of the creativity.
Try it. You might find more joy in your art and it might come across that way to your viewers.
June 5, 2024