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Human Effort

Kentucky Coal Miner

I have been considering what makes “art”. I have only gotten as far as believing a necessary ingredient – maybe the only one – is human effort.

Random beauty

The world is a riot of random beauty. Flowers, trees, waterfalls, mountain ranges, oceans, sunsets abound. When you think about them, most of them are exceptionally beautiful in their way.

I am blessed to live in Colorado. We have all of those things above (except oceans) and more. It is fall here as I write this. The last two weekends I have been out for long drives within a few hours of my home. The fall aspen colors are great. I’ve seen waterfalls and mountains and interesting trees and even burn areas – yes, they can have a kind of beauty of their own. It is a new moon time and I have been blown away by the beauty of the night sky in dark areas of the mountains. I’m not bragging. Most of you probably live in a beautiful area if you learn to appreciate it.

Beauty like this and grand landscapes are some of the first things that come to mind for most of us when we think about going out to take pictures. How can we not take great pictures when we are surrounded by natural beauty? Well, that’s where the difference happens that changes it from a pretty picture to art.

Blank canvas

Let’s look the other direction and imagine our self a painter. We have a blank canvas in front of us. What will we put on it?

This makes it a little easier to think about creativity and art. One of the unique things about photography is that the sensor records whatever we have framed in our viewfinder. One of our challenges is to very selectively limit what we want to see. Painters must design their composition and add every element, color, and brush stroke manually. A very different skill set, but still, as I will argue, the same kind of art.

So everything that ends up on the canvas had to be consciously placed there by the artist. What the painter creates is undeniably a work of human effort.

Interpretation

Have you experienced a time when two photographers have been together at a location, but you each got very different results? How can that be? You saw the same scene in front of you but made something different out of it.

Actually, that is not only common, it is typical. It is a difference between art and reporting.

When a newspaper journalist (there are still a few of them) sees a scene or event, if they are an honest reporter, their goal is to accurately report it to their readers. They want to capture the essential information without bias, while keeping it interesting. Whether in words or still images or videos, they want their audience to have an detailed first hand account of it.

But let’s say another crew of filmmakers was there at the same time. They have no implied imperative to be factual. Their focus may be on the drama of the scene, or it’s visual impact, or how it affects people, or even how it supports their particular political bias. Is this group doing a bad job?

No. Not if they are clearly interpreting events from a subjective viewpoint. What they bring back will probably be vastly different from the newspaper reporter. It may even be difficult to believe it was the same event. By taking a loose interpretation of facts, they had more freedom to create art.

When you are out photographing, are you reporting or making art?

Two photographers

Let’s get back to those 2 photographers at the same scene. It could be that one takes a very conventional, factual approach. Implicitly he believes this landscape shot should encompass his field of vision and it should show “just what he saw”. No more. No less. The result could well be a beautiful photo that many people would love to hang on their wall.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

But let’s say the other photographer takes a very different approach. Let’s say for him, a wide shot of the whole scene is not how he relates to the spirit of the place. Instead, he zooms in on a small part of the scene. Say a small cascade with fallen leaves on it. By getting low and close and using a slow shutter speed and a polarizer, he gets the motion of blurred water among the rocks with reflections of the seasonal colors. Not something you could look at and definitely know the location. But the viewer gets a feel for the place and time as expressed by the photographer.

Which is better? I can’t say. Maybe neither. Depends on their skill and vision. But one is more likely to be art.

Created

Now we come around full circle to my statement about human effort. One photograph is exactly what you would have seen if you drove to the same overlook. Some skill was required to successfully capture the image, but you know almost nothing of what the photographer was feeling about the scene.

The second image demonstrates effort by the artist to create a scene for us to see. By scanning, evaluating, focusing in, moving, they bring us to a new point of view. This photographer is trying to create something beyond a straight image anyone would have seen and taken. It has (potentially) elevated the dialog and given us a new insight. I say potentially, because it may be a failure. Still, he tried.

I am showing my biases. For me, at this point in my journey, the more interesting images are the result of effort to understand and interpret my feelings. It is not totally black & white, just a statistical prediction.

Human effort

These feelings about human effort are not just my own conclusions. Are there any original thoughts left to think?

W. Eugene Smith, for instance, said

“I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.”

Guy Tal pointed out in his great book The Interior Landscape that

“Poetry” derives from a Greek word meaning “to create” or to bring something into being. “Art” derives from a Latin word referring also to items brought into being by human skill (as opposed to things occurring naturally or randomly).

So “art” and “poetry” basically mean the same thing, just from 2 different languages. Art is an act of creation that comes as a deliberate use of human skill. We bring something into being. Our art may be, as Smith said, at odds with the literal facts. I like that phrase.

Is it art?

Ah, the existential question behind all this. What is “art”? At this point, I have to come down on the side of a definite “I don’t know.” I have heard it said that “anything created as art is art.” I’m at a loss to do much better than that. I say that because I look at a fair bit of “art” and for a lot of it, I have to just scratch my head and think “Really? What were they thinking?”. So I obviously do not understand. Maybe I can’t understand.

But for this little subset of the universe I am writing about today, maybe we can make some judgments.

So, is photography art? Yes. It absolutely can be. If it is created as art, it is art. It requires artistic sensibilities to do a good job. I’m not talking about selfies.

Is a representational photo less “good” than an interpretive one? I can’t say. It varies with time and context. You do what you have to do. Make your own art and follow your own values.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

I used to be a straight representational photographer. I did everything I could to capture a scene exactly and in detail. Just like it was. Over time I have morphed into someone who values interpretation more. Even trending into abstraction and occasionally surreal. For the most part, if I show you something, I want it to be interesting and fresh. Perhaps that is a natural progression with maturity, like tending to prefer drier wine as your taste gets more sophisticated. I don’t know.

Sorry to disappoint you. At this point I can only suggest you do your art and I will do mine and let’s not judge each other. If we are both happy with what we are doing, what else matters? And that is part of the beauty of it all. I used to be an engineer. One thing I appreciate as an artist is the much higher level of ambiguity. That is also a sign of maturity.

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Out of Focus

Interpretation of starry sky at night.

A few months ago I wrote about being in focus, both technically and mentally. I want to go a little deeper into how technical focus happens in modern cameras and an an experience I had recently where what I did was out of focus.

What is focus

Technically, focus is simple when the lens is adjusted so that the part of the subject you are most interested in is sharply defined. Your lens has a focus ring to use to manually focus. Most of us probably use the camera’s built in auto focus capability. This is much more precise than my old eyes. And a lot faster than most of us can do manually.

Focusing physically moves one or more of the lens elements inside the lens barrel. This is required to adjust the focus point.

I will let you argue whether focus is an absolute, precise point or just an acceptable range. I will just say that I am swinging away from being adamant about absolute technical perfection and leaning more toward artistic judgement and intent. Set your own values you will live by.

Whether we manual focus or use auto focus, we observe in the viewfinder the image moving from a fuzzy blob a crisp, detailed representation of the scene before us. Unless we have a very old piece of technology in our camera with something called a split image viewfinder. I had this in my first SLR. It was magic and awesome for most of the subjects I shot.

The split image viewfinder showed the image sharp regardless of focus. The image was divided into 2 pieces in the central circle. The pieces were offset from each other when out of focus. Use the focus ring to bring the 2 halves into alignment and the image was sharply focused. Magic. Enough trivia, though.

Little did I know this was a type of and precursor to what we now call phase detection auto focus. Let’s get a little deeper into the technology.

How does it work?

Auto focus in a DSLR or mirrorless camera is complex and requires many precise components. But it works so well now that we tend to take it for granted.

There are 2 basic technologies in modern cameras. The older one is called contrast detection and the newer and better one is called phase detection.

I have written on histograms, a subject I consider vitally important to photography. Histograms and their interpretation are the basis of contrast detection auto focus. It is brilliantly simple in concept and in process as what we do when we are manually focusing.

If an image in the viewfinder is out of focus, the pixels are blurred together. Kind of like looking through a fog. A result is that in the histogram, the values are clustered in the center. This is an indication of low contrast. But when an image is sharp, there is a wider range of brighter and darker pixels. This illustrates it:

From https://digital-photography.com/camera/autofocus-how-it-works.php

Focus process

So conceptually, the system moves the focus a little and measures again to see if the histogram got more narrow (more out of focus) or wider (sharper) . If it got more in focus, continue moving that direction and measuring until the peak contrast if found, But if it got more out of focus, move the focus the other direction and continue the process. It is a hunting process to find the optimum focus point. Just like we do to manually focus.

Unfortunately, this process is slow. It can take seconds to arrive at the focus. This is why phase detection auto focus came to prominence.

In phase detection auto focus, some of the light coming through the lens is split off to a separate sensor. Like the split image viewfinder I mentioned above, it is further split into two paths. Through some brilliant engineering, they can determine in one measurement how far off focus is and in what direction. The focus moves there quickly. Note that in mirrorless cameras all the light goes directly to the sensor, so these auto focus sensors are built directly into the sensor.

I said that phase detection is “better” than contrast detection. That is true as far as being very fast. Actually, contrast detection can achieve more precise focus. There is a kind of system called hybrid the combines the strengths of both. I will not discuss that or go into the bewildering variety of focus areas or focus modes.

Out of focus

This is all great as far as technology goes. It works quite well in the cases it is designed for. We are lucky to have it.

But all of these systems rely on the sensor having enough light to see some contrast. It doesn’t work in the dark. Yes, there is another variation on auto focus that is called active auto focus. It shoots a red beam from the camera to illuminate the focus area. This has a very short range and does not help the scenario I’m about to describe.

Recently I was in Rocky Mountain National Park, over on the west slope where there is little light. It was full dark on a moonless night. The mountains all around provided lovely silhouettes. The stars were astonishing. Beautiful. I had to stop and get some star images.

A trailhead parking lot provided a great and convenient place to set up – wondering if those occasional sounds I heard in the dark were bears. I guess not. It was perfect. Except. There was not enough contrast to focus, even at 6400 ISO. And the viewfinder image was too noisy to be useful for manual focus. I did not have a powerful enough flashlight to cast enough light on the nearest object, over 100 yards away, to allow the focus system to work.

Adding to the problem, the lens I brought on this outing did not have a focus scale (a curse of modern zoom lens design). Normally, in low light, I switch to manual focus and set the lens to infinity for a scene like this. I guessed, but missed badly for a big section of the images. They were uselessly out of focus. I am ashamed to show an example, but like this:

A blurry night shot©Ed Schlotzhauer

Experience is a great teacher

I write frequently advocating that we study our technology to become expert with it. And to practice, practice, practice to know how to use our gear, even in the dark. I failed. I encountered too much dark and a lens I had never tried to use in low light. The combination tripped me up. I am ashamed to admit I did not follow my own advice well enough.

But every failure is a learning opportunity, right? It can be a great motivator and reinforcer. I did some research and discovered a “hidden feature” I never knew my camera had. It should save me the next time I do this.

My Nikon camera has a setting I had never paid any attention to called “Save focus position”. When On (the default) it remembers the focus position of the current lens when the camera is turned off and restores it on wake up. But when Off – this is the brilliant part – it sets the lens to infinity on wake up. Now I will have a known infinity focus setting, even in total darkness! This setting is now in my menu shortcuts so I can access it quickly.

I would never have learned about this feature if I had not failed so spectacularly. Experience really is a great teacher.

So dig into those obscure settings you never bother with. There sometimes is gold there.

Keep learning and failing!

The featured image

That night’s shooting was not all bad. I nailed the focus on this star shot. It was purely of the stars and had no foreground. This foreground has been substituted from another blurry image that night (actually, redrawn by hand).

This is artistic expression rather than literal reality. I do that a lot. As photography progresses and matures, I believe that is more and more the norm.

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Get in a Flow

Mountain lake at sunrise

You have probably heard of flow states. Maybe you have experienced it. It is a wonderful place to be. Let’s talk about what it means to get in a flow. It does relate to art. Trust me.

What is it?

The concept of a flow state was described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Good luck with the pronunciation. It is actually fairly easy after you hear it.

Csikszentmihalyi was a child in Eastern Europe during WWII. It was a deeply traumatizing experience. And he noticed that, even after the war, many people were not able to recover mentally. He was very curious as to why.

Eventually he moved to America and studied psychology. His main research focus was happiness, what it is and how to achieve it. The identification of what we now call flow was a minor part of this research. He found that people were their most creative, productive, and happy when they were in this flow state.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s words, flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (1990).

He discovered that flow was a state people could get into temporarily where amazing and beneficial things happened. They had almost complete concentration on their task. Time would seem to speed up or slow down. The activity they were doing was intensely rewarding and pleasurable to them. And there seemed to be effortless ease in what they were doing.

Who experiences it?

Different people have differing predisposition to get into flow states.

Autotelic personalities tend to experience more flow. An autotelic is someone whose personality is driven by internal rewards more than external motivations like money or power. They are creative and curious and independent. This leads them to pursue goals that motivate them and give them internal satisfaction.

At the other extreme, people with a neurotic personality find it difficult to get into flow. Some think this is because their anxiety and self doubts inhibit the conditions leading to flow.

What happens to the brain?

Many researchers approach the study by trying to identify the mechanisms in the brain that support flow. I don’t have much interest in looking at it this way, but I will note some of the thoughts.

Some believe there can be an interaction between the default mode network (DMN) and the executive control network (ECN) in the brain. The DMN is the background processing we do, as when we daydream. The ECN is most active during problem solving and it helps tune out distractions. They feel that when these 2 centers work together in the right way we can achieve flow.

Another theory attempts to show that flow is achieved through expertise and practice. The idea is that as we become expert at certain tasks and reinforce that through repeated practice, we train the brain to perform it more effortlessly. The brain can sort of turn in to an automatic mode and let go and let the creativity flow.

This second research seems to be “winning”, and it is what I subscribe to.

Gothic cathedral repeating forms© Ed Schlotzhauer

How to achieve it

Flow is generally something that happens when we are completely immersed in a task that engages and energizes us. It seldom works to say “I’m going to go get into a flow state.”

As an example, some of the researchers studying the theory studied jazz guitarists. They instrumented them and recorded their brain activity during improvisation sessions. At a high level summary, less experienced musicians had to concentrate hard on what they were doing and did not enter flow states. Experienced musicians tended to go into “automatic”. They concentrated on the sensory aspects of playing the guitar and little time thinking about what to do or how to improvise. They had a low level of DMN and ECN activity. This seems to support the expertise theory.

That’s a lot of theory, but it doesn’t say much about how to achieve flow. You have to be expert in the task you are doing, and you have to have a extensive base of practice. Putting yourself in an environment where you are not distracted or interrupted helps, at least until the flow really kicks in. And being the type of person who is curious and self-driven and intuitive with a good ability to concentrate certainly seems to help a lot.

Does it relate to art?

I believe it is as common and valuable for artists as for jazz musicians or software engineers.

Let’s re-examine the qualities I mentioned above for who gets into flow. Aren’t artists generally curious and self-driven and intuitive and with a good ability to concentrate? Don’t we have an intense desire, even need, to create? Aren’t we independent and self-reliant?

We are prime to be able to find flows! The other missing piece is expertise and practice.

This is one reason I recommend that we need to study to become expert in our craft. Using our tools should be fluid and natural. Exposure and depth of field and shutter speed and mechanics of using our camera should be automatic. This frees up our conscious attention for exploring composition and framing and expressing out feelings.

And practice, practice, practice. Shoot frequently, daily if possible. Shoot something, anything. It’s OK to throw them away. The practice is worth is. All that practice is building the equivalent of muscle memory. Your fingers just know how to make the adjustments. Can you take out your camera in complete darkness and turn it on and set it up? Practice.

When you go out to shoot, immerse yourself in the experience. Concentrate fully on what you are doing. Let the rest of the world fade away. If you are lucky, you will find afterwards that you were in flow. Whether or not you were, do your work. Plunge yourself into your art.

Candles in a church© Ed Schlotzhauer
Chartres Cathedral

It is a positive experience

I have experienced it, many times. As a software developer, I experienced this strange and exciting feeling regularly, long before I ever heard the term. Sometimes I would realize that hours have vanished and I forgot to eat lunch. And the productivity of what I did in those sessions was astounding. It was great to finally hear it described and find out I wasn’t crazy.

As an artist it seems to happen different. I seldom work a scene for hours, although I may spend hours in a post processing session. But I may spend significant time wandering and looking and being immersed in the thought process. I believe this is a kind of flow. It seems to have the same result, where creativity flows easily and effortlessly. And it can produce a set of images that are above the norm of what I would expect.

Even writing articles like this can achieve a flow state. I sometimes open a blog intending to make a few notes and jot down some thoughts I had, and realize a few hours later that I have nearly crafted a complete article. And I sometimes read through it and think “wow, did I write that?” 🙂

A result

Being in a flow is joyful. It is a happy state. But it is a result, not the goal. A flow state indicates that we have become completely immersed in a task that engages and energizes us. One that we are expert in and practiced enough in that we can sort of let go and let it happen. Kind of like those jazz guitarists they studied doing improvisations. It is not easy, it requires major commitment. But it is worth it.

So study your craft. Gain deep knowledge and experience. Be familiar with ideas from other artists. Practice constantly (10,000 hour rule?). These will make you a better and more creative artist.

Maybe, someday, you will look back on a block of creative energy you have just spent and think, that was probably a flow state. It feels great. Enjoy! Remember, Csikszentmihalyi discovered the idea of flow because he was researching happiness.

Note

I found 2 different rationale for calling it “flow”. One was that in Csikszentmihalyi’s interviews it was common for people to describe what was happening as “their work simply flowed out of them without much effort.” Another description says people sometimes described it as like being in a river flow. They were swept along with little effort.

Decide what to call it when you experience it yourself.

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It Looks Like a Painting

Flowing green shapes and lines

This comment used to make me angry. But I have now rationalized that most people mean it as a compliment. If it looks like a painting then it must be art.

Is painting the standard?

For most people, painting means art. It is what they were taught. Photographs are those low value things they do on their phone. They’re mostly for memories and bragging rights on social media.

I believe most people view painting as “high art”. Like they might view classical music. After all, both are remote and fairly difficult to understand. Removed from their daily lives. High art is something they have been taught that they should value, but they seldom partake of it.

And paintings are viewed as difficult, labor intensive works requiring lots of training and “suffering”. That instills them with high value in many people’s estimation. It is not unusual for painters to encourage an aura of this being something so great and high that we cannot understand it. We viewers are lucky the artist will share a glimpse of such truth with us.

And on a practical note, a painting is one of a kind. The artist paints one original. This increases the value of the work in some markets.

Some people, looking at one of my images, describe it as “painterly”. To them, this is a compliment. Even photo reviewers occasionally use the term. Internally, I usually cringe, unless it was actually my goal to look like a painting.

So for my peace of mind I have decided to accept “it looks like a painting” as a sincere compliment. It may be alien to my goals and values as a photographer, but is probably the best way a lot of people know of to say “it is art”.

What does a painting look like?

I will consider that a “painting” is some type of color medium applied to a substrate like paper or canvas by hand. I will stretch the definition to include pouring or throwing paint. Typical color mediums are oil, acrylic, watercolor, or pastel.

The “by hand” seems to be important. Until print reproductions are made, all paintings are originals. Many people consider a “mechanically created” print inferior to a painting because it was too easy to make.

Brushes are most often used to apply the color. Although they come in a wide range of sizes, and it is possible to create very detailed paintings, generally paintings are a somewhat coarse expression of a scene. That expression is considered part of the artistry.

This is what people think of as a painting. It is an Albert Bierstadt painting titled “Rocky Mountain Landscape”. As someone who lives in the Rockies, I can attest this is purely fictional:

Albert Bierstadt painting, 1870From the White House Collection. Image from Google Art Project

An artist typically paints a scene they can observe (or make up). This means the scene is fairly static. Unless, of course, they take a picture of it and paint from a photographic print. Is that allowed? Does that make the painting something else? 🙂

So paintings are generally relatively large, static scenes, less detailed than a photograph, and created by hand.

Do I want my image to look like a painting?

Do I want my image to look like a painting? Great question. Sometimes yes. Usually no.

This is a fairly typical image I do that screams PHOTORGRAPH. It could be painted, but then that would be a painter trying to make his work look like a photograph. 🙂

Classic B&W photograph.© Ed Schlotzhauer

Why would I want an image to look like a painting? I do occasionally enjoy creating abstract images. Sometimes they work best done as a dreamy, blurry, hand drawn look. I love that photography can achieve a wide variety of effects. I enjoy pushing the boundary and creating an unexpected look.

But in these cases, I have chosen to create the image with this look. My goal was not to “make it look like a painting”. Sometimes an image tells me what it wants to look like. Sometimes what it wants to look like is what most people consider “painterly”. If that is what is right for the image, then OK.

Don’t feel inferior

I think photography is an amazing art form. Its versatility is unsurpassed. Being technology based allows it to operate somewhat outside the limits of the artist’s mind. We can explore time and scale and space and even non-visual realms in ways that other artistic mediums can only copy.

With photography, we can make one print and stop or we can make 1000 prints. We can re-scale a file to make a print very small to fit into a locket or up to wall-sized for a gallery or to decorate a large room. Or even billboards or the sides of buildings.

Never let the intelligentsia convince you you are somehow inferior to painters or other “real” arts. They are just trying to protect their self interests. Photography is as real as any art. Be proud of your art.

So when someone tells you your image looks like a painting, be gracious. Don’t launch into a lecture about why they are wrong and how they do not understand. This would be rude and even insulting. Accept it as a compliment. They are using terms they know to tell you they like your work and consider it good art. Be happy. But also be confident that it does not have to look like a painting to be great art.

Today’s featured image

The image at the top would be considered “painterly” by many people. Did I want it to look like a painting? No. I was exploring possibilities of long shutter speeds with flowing water and reflections in a river. I knew from experience that I could often get abstract results I like. This is an example.

I like it. It is abstract, and it flows and has a lot of subtle details of interest. Does it look like a painting? That is for you to decide. If you think that, great. But it is not a label I try for when I am creating. I would not market my work as “looks like a painting”.

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Authentic

Woman cooking pizza in an outdoor oven

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.

Great Sand Dunes NP

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?

Simple Photoshop example. File size is 22x larger.©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.