Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Blog

  • Finding Beauty

    Finding Beauty

    Face it, 2020 has been a bleak and trying year for most of us. Perhaps it would seem like talking about beauty is irrelevant at this point. I disagree. I believe beauty is more important than ever. Finding beauty around us will help to elevate our viewpoint to get through this.

    Beautiful fire

    Let me give one personal example. I live in the Colorado front range area. This was a year of wildfires. From mid summer on over 500,000 acres of forest burned in our area, some coming as close as 5 miles to my house.

    This is a great tragedy for me, since I am in the forests every month of the year. This is one of the main places where I do my art and it was a great place for peace and rejuvenation. Much of the area I knew and loved is forever changed (forever being in my lifetime). And not changed for the better.

    I’m trying to take an attitude of seeing what is there instead of moaning about what is not there. The image at the top of this post is an example. It was taken at the height of the fires and the massive smoke that blanketed our area. Just behind this ridge a 200,000 acre wildfire is roaring down toward my town. A terrible situation, but an interesting image.

    Attitude

    This illustrates my point that beauty is based on attitude. Appreciation of beauty can also lead to a change of attitude. If I can look at something I think is terrible and worthless and still find beauty, I believe it is healthy for me.

    That is not the same as saying that everything is beautiful. The fires I mentioned are terrible, but there is beauty in places. Cancer is terrible and ugly, but sometimes a person’s character and coping skill is beautiful. Covid is terrible but… Well, I haven’t found it yet, but I’m still looking.

    I have to believe that beauty is there if I learn to see it. That is not ignoring things or burying my head in the sand. Instead, I believe it is an important coping skill and a sign of good mental health. All around us is ugliness. Sifting through that and finding beauty is a worthy skill.

    I will be transparent with you and say I am a Christian. I believe there is a creator who is in charge of everything and has promised us a great eternal future if we believe in him. That faith makes it much easier to look past the problems I am dealing with today and look forward with hope.

    I would never tell you you cannot seek beauty unless you are a Christian, just that I would have a hard time of it. You are completely free to follow your own guide.

    Beauty isn’t kitsch

    People through history have sought beauty. Even if we cannot define it, we can recognize our own values of it when we see it. Whether it is sculptures or paintings of the human form or landscapes or wildlife or still life, or if it is expressed in music, or writing, or dance, the medium does not matter. Humans have expressed ideas of beauty as long as we have had conscious thought.

    Today, though, we are in a time where the idea of beauty is dismissed by the art elite. It is termed kitsch or banal or cliche. Much contemporary art is dark or formless or focused on pain or loss or emptiness.

    I’m sorry to sound critical, but that sounds like artists who are empty. Who are disillusioned or who have no core beliefs in something uplifting. I am sorry for them. Maybe I just don’t understand as fully as they do, but I have to look to things that are encouraging. Or at least things you will look at and say “wow, I didn’t see that”.

    It is human nature, unless art school has trained it out of you, to pause to appreciate a great sunset. Or to linger over a vast landscape or a waterfall or a flower or a face. Different things will appeal to us individually, but almost all of us will call something beautiful.

    Beauty is uplifting. It energizes our spirit and makes us happy for a few moments. How can this be bad?

    If not beauty then…

    If you do not acknowledge beauty in your life, what do you have? What replaces it? Ugliness, darkness, hurt, cruelty? Why would you seek those things?

    You can say “that is reality“, but so what? Why should the negative things be glorified? It has never really been the purpose of art to just depict reality. I want my art to make people feel better, not worse. If you want to feel bad, listen to the news.

    It’s there to be found

    Beauty is still there. It is all around waiting for us to open our perception and appreciate it. I want to be an artist who recognizes that and helps other people to see the beauty, or at least the unique, that I do. I don’t want to make ugly, depressing images because too much of the world is like that already.

    We all need to step back, take a deep breath, and start trying to see the positive aspects of life and our world. Not to ignore problems but to give ourselves the strength to look for solutions. We all need to be uplifted in our spirits. Seek beauty and do not be ashamed to call it beautiful.

  • Filling the Frame

    Filling the Frame

    A unique characteristic of flat (2D) art is that it lives within a frame. That is mostly what I do right now – 2D art – so this interests me a lot. All 2D art is about how we choose to fill the frame. The process is very different between camera-based art and paint-based art

    Composition

    Composition is the art of filling the frame. This is one of the holy grail topics of art. Theories, opinions, and good and bad advice abounds everywhere you look.

    It is easy to get inundated: rule of thirds, golden ratios, leading lines, diagonals, eye lines, visual flow through the image, contrasts, etc. All of these things are real; all are important; none make a great image. At least, not by themselves.

    That is the thing, Composition “rules” are the basics that everyone needs to study, but they are not what actually makes art. Pick one for example: the golden ratio (or golden mean, or Fibonacci ratio). The principle was worked out by the ancient Greeks or earlier and is still taught today. It is still a valid principle to create pleasing constructions. An attempt to simplify it has led us to the famous and often abused “rule of thirds”. Most of us are aware of this guideline and think about it when composing a scene.

    Composition rules are just a catalog of things discovered over the ages as ways to achieve good effects. They do not mean much in themselves. Following all the rules does not mean you have a good image and ”’breaking” the rules does not mean you have a bad image. I recommend you learn and follow the rules, unless you decide not to.

    Regardless, the principles of composition are equally applicable to all forms of 2D art.

    The frame

    One of the less discussed elements of composition is the reality of the frame, the border, the edge of the image. Strange and wonderful things can happen as you create within this constraint.

    I think we often just disregard it as just the fence we can’t go outside of; the crop rectangle that determines the aspect ratio of the image. While this is true, it can be more.

    We need to be very aware and careful of things entering or leaving the frame. And we must consider how compositional elements like diagonals interact with the frame boundary. And extraneous bits of stuff along the edge can be very distracting. Making clever use of the frame can add energy and interest to an image.

    I believe these things are more important in photography than in painting. But that’s just my opinion.

    A blank canvas

    We are to one of the most fundamental differences between painting and photography, which is what the artist starts with. In general, a painter selects every element for inclusion in his frame. A photographer consciously decides what to exclude from his frame.

    The painter starts with a blank canvas. Nothing exists there unless he chooses to put it there. All aspects of the composition are completely controlled and deliberate. He is not constrained by the reality of the real scene, if there even was one. He has no excuse for distracting elements or poor composition.

    A full canvas.

    A photographer, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. When the shutter opens, everything within the field of view of the lens is immediately recorded by the sensor. The artist here has to do most of his work before recording the image.

    Photography is the unique art of taking out what we don’t want. We do this by where we place ourselves, lens choice, shutter speed, and mostly, looking through the viewfinder to see what the image will look like and making adjustments. All the while tuning and enhancing the overall composition. This takes a lot of practice.

    The great Jay Maisel said “You are responsible for every part of your image, even the parts you’re not interested in.”. We have to learn to really see what is in our frame and recognize and eliminate distracting parts. The natural tendency is to fix our attention on the subject and not see the bad bits. This awareness has to be learned.

    It is true that we can do a lot of housekeeping in Photoshop, but a good craftsman only uses that as a last resort. It is much better to eliminate the problems up front if possible. Plus, capturing what you want saves a lot of post processing time. Just my opinion, but “no problem, I can fix that in Photoshop” is a lazy and sloppy attitude. I assume if you read this you don’t mind me expressing my opinion. 🙂

    The artist selects

    Filling the frame is a process of selection. Painters decide what they are putting in. Photographers decide what they are taking out. Either way, the artist must become skilled in being aware of the composition and how all the elements of the image work together to support it. This is design. It is what we do.

    The frame gives an image space to live in. It can support the composition. It may enhance the drama or sense of space. All in all, the frame is a very important part of the creativity of image making. Never overlook it as you are planning your art.

  • Becoming an Artist

    Becoming an Artist

    I consider myself an artist. I would like to share what I see as my journey to this state. Becoming an artist is not something I decided to do. Looking back, I see it was a journey I was on for a long time. Let me explain.

    Early camera days

    I first picked up a camera when I was in college. I wish I could tell a moving story of a valued mentor who inspired me and set me on the path. No. No one encouraged me or gave me an example. I just did it, probably on a whim. Or maybe even then there was a creative urge that needed an outlet.

    Like most people I just took shots of family and friends, pretty scenes, you know, the conventional stuff. Occasionally an image stood out to me, but in general they were definitely not memorable.

    Balancing the left brain

    I had a long and rewarding career as an engineer. I loved it. In many ways it was perfect for me. I could burrow in on problems and devise solutions. It required constant learning, which led me to learning how to learn and self-pursuing the equivalent of several masters degrees. I was having fun.

    But subconsciously I also knew I was spending too much time on left-brain activities. You know, the logical, analytical, quantitative processing that we all do, but some people do a lot more. I was drawn to balancing myself more with visual and intuitive activities.

    I was lucky to live in Colorado. My wife and I would often head out for a long weekend, or even a week, of hiking, jeeping, and photography. We didn’t leave Colorado all that much for many years.

    Even so, my photographic work was uninspired and uninspiring. I shot untold thousands of slides (pre-digital days). I still have most of them. The times I have looked back on some of them, I’m embarrassed to say they were technically competent, decently composed, but lacking in much feeling or excitement. Very few are worth spending time to bring them forward into my current portfolio.

    I have stacks of record shots of beautiful places. But something was missing and I couldn’t place it.

    Software architect

    Later in my career I taught myself software architecture. Wow. I didn’t know there could be such rewarding creativity in engineering. I had the privilege to design a few relatively large software systems and direct the work of excellent developers. It was a joy.

    A strange unintended consequence happened, though, The more creative experiences I had in my work, the more I sought and wanted. Design in all forms had me addicted. I was no longer content to just develop software, I wanted to be more involved in the design of things. Studying design became a hobby and obsession.

    I still had not expanded my view to realize the design I concentrated on was just a small part of the world of creative endeavors. My photography continued, but it was still a background activity. There was lots less jeeping and outings since the kids were growing up.

    My photography continued. That is a thread running through my story. I moved to digital somewhere along the way and had no nostalgia for the loss of film. I was improving. Sometimes I liked the images I shot. But not that often.

    User experience

    Somewhere later in my career I expanded my interests to embrace the new field of user experience design. This was much larger than user interface design or human factors. It dealt with feelings, emotions, likes and dislikes. Those are uncomfortable subjects for a hard-core engineer!

    But it was a revelation. People don’t buy or use something because of a logical evaluation of pros and cons. They buy it because they like it. It makes them feel good.

    Most of those years as an engineer I pushed difficult to use things on people and assumed they would spend lots of time learning to use them. That works if their company is paying them to suffer through it, but in general it is not a good strategy. Engineers design things for engineers and assume everyone will learn the technology and lingo.

    Now there was a whole new view. Feelings were real. Emotion was something that could consciously be designed for. You could actually determine what people had trouble with and intentionally design the product to make it pleasing to use.

    I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end of my engineering career. The creativity I saw here and the embrace of feelings took me away from normal engineering. I did finally realize this new creativity was directly applicable to my art. It was a clear step toward me becoming an artist.

    My photography became much more than recording scenes of places I have been. I was conscious of feelings. I wasn’t as interested in making a record of something as I was of surprising, of revealing something different or interesting.

    Artist using photography

    I finally resigned my engineering career and declared myself an artist. That was hard, but exciting and empowering. I no longer worked for anyone. I could pursue my own interests. I could create according to my own vision. Even if that meant sitting out on the limb while I’m sawing it off.

    I am unapologetic that my art is based on photography. Photography as an artistic medium has important benefits, even if it is abused by many.

    All digital images need work on the computer. Sometimes I am able to capture an image whole. It is almost ready when it comes out of the camera. All it needs is minor color and tone correction and some “punch”. But sometimes an image is just a sketch. It is a starting point that needs a lot of work to develop it into the image I want to show to people.

    Either way, or any other way, this is art. This is creative. I love it. I feel fulfilled.

    Can’t not do it

    I can’t not do it. For you non-US readers, please forgive the terrible grammar. This is a popular catchphrase that refers to something you are so passionate about you are unable to avoid doing it. My art is a can’t not do.

    It is not just something I want to do. It is not even just something I do. It is something I have to do. I am compelled. I do it all the time, unconsciously, even if I don’t have a camera in my hand. It is the way I see the world now.

    I”m grateful for the life experiences I have had. I suspect I needed those years of discipline to get to where I am now. I could not have jumped directly to this point because I needed to mature and refine a lot of viewpoints and thought processes. Your mileage may vary. I hope you are able to find the best path for you. “How artists get there is as important as how they arrive.” – John Paul Caponigro

    If you consider yourself to be an artist, or if that is your goal, I hope you are able to become obsessive in your work. A lot of people view artists as a little crazy. Maybe they’re right.

  • Controlled Abandon

    Controlled Abandon

    Practice controlled abandon. – John Paul Caponigro

    Different people have different styles of working. I don’t think there is a one size fits all approach. Some people seem to need a very detailed, planned shoot. That is not best for me. I find out more and more that throwing out most structure is what works. Mr Caponigro calls it “controlled abandon”. Not a bad description.

    When I get into it, it is instinctual, reactive, “shooting from the hip”. My subconscious recognizes scenes I would like and guides me to frame them best. I trust the process because my mind knows what I like and I have trained it to recognize interesting opportunities.

    In a workshop one time Bob Rozinski, who was, among other things, winner of International Nature’s Best photography contest, told me “you think too much”. Well, I think I have solved that problem. Maybe it’s time for someone to tell me I should slow down and think more. 🙂

    Surprises

    I like to be surprised by scenes I find. If things turn out to be exactly what I anticipated, it is usually fairly boring. I don’t like to be bored by my art.

    It is far preferable to me to find something that gives me a shiver of excitement. That awakes a sense of wonder. If that is my reaction maybe I can convey it to my viewers. When I’m editing a set of images I can definitely tell the ones I was bored with. They may be perfectly exposed and well composed, but there is no thrill there.

    Surprises often become the start of something new. A surprise may being a new insight on how to see something. It may open up some possibilities I had not recognized. I view a surprise as being a potential growth opportunity. Being stopped by a surprise makes you ask questions of yourself. That is always good.

    Time

    Time, or at least its perception, is a variable. It seems to flow at different rates for different activities. Remember those classes you could swear lasted for hours, even if the clock said they were only 45 minutes long? On the other hand, think of times you’ve been out with good friends and you discover you have occupied 3 hours, and you were surprised because you thought it had only been about an hour.

    We can have the same distorted sense of time when making images, or editing. If you’re lucky you will learn how to get into a “flow” state. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who popularized the term describes it as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

    Have you experienced it? I have, many times. I got practiced at it in my Engineering career. When caught up in an interesting problem there were times I realized it was 6pm and I forgot to have lunch and hadn’t even been to the bathroom for hours. It was wonderfully satisfying, and productive, addictive, even.

    The same can happen in a creative, immersive activity like art. Approaching it with controlled abandon helps. In another quote Mr. Caponigro says: “Time did not seem to move as it ordinarily did. The world grew quiet. I was absorbed by beauty. I had no idea what I was going to do with the images. I simply made exposures as a sign of recognition, recognition of beauty. “

    Critical thinking

    Is there a place for critical thinking? Of course. The mind is marvelously complex and multi-layered. We are always processing from several perspectives. If you are a responsible adult you are aware of many factors, even in a “flow” state: don’t step off that cliff beside you, don’t put your hand there without checking for rattlesnakes, get off the road there’s a car I hear coming behind me.

    Many of us, though, let the critical thinking control too much of our creative life. It is easy to come up with good reasons to not take a picture. Sometimes to our detriment. Or to analyze a scene too long and miss the moment. Over thinking can be worse than under thinking.

    French photographer Alain Briot, who lives and works in the Southwest US deserts, described an ideal shoot as “shooting fast and leaving critical thinking aside were critical to get the shot. It was all about getting immersed in the subject, shooting away and not seeking perfection.“

    Don’t see, FEEL

    This brings me to what I believe is critically important to good creative expression, at least for me. Trust your feelings before your head. Your head, the critical thinking aspect, will try to talk you into safe, logical, not very creative choices. Your feelings may pull you to discover something different.

    I love the part of the previous quote by Mr. Caponigro where he says “I had no idea what I was going to do with the images. I simply made exposures as a sign of recognition, recognition of beauty..” Seeking beauty for it’s own sake as opposed to only shooting for a definite commercial interest. We don’t all have the freedom to do this, but I strongly recommend you do it some. It’s good for the soul.

    It is best to go out empty, the great Jay Maisel says. By avoiding preconceived notions of what we intend to find we are more open to seeing and reacting to what is really there. It is the learning to see that is difficult for many. By “see” I don’t mean just having the visual acuity to be able to resolve the details of a scene before you. I mean we actually consider each element and what it looks like and how it could be photographed. How do the things around us cause us to react? Do you feel something for that old rusty car hidden in the bushes that nobody else pays any attention to as they go by? Maybe, at just the right moment, in the right light, from the right angle it is beautiful.

    Channel your creativity

    So to me, I interpret “controlled abandon” as a type of channeled creativity. The channeling is the control. We focus our consciousness on being open to perceive our environment. The abandon is to put aside preconceived notions and logical processes and get down to our feelings and instinct. We allow ourselves to just react to what we find.

    Instinct is a fuzzy term I use, because I don’t know a better description without writing a book. I believe our creative instinct is a combination of inherent vision and years of training to refine that vision to a set of decisions that happen below the conscious level.

    Get out and let yourself go. React. Follow the beauty. Controlled abandon. You might discover a new side to you that you didn’t realize was there.

  • Boundaries

    Boundaries

    We have or experience boundaries in all aspects of our lives. Some boundaries are essential. Boundaries set limits to define acceptable behavior to allow society to function. But the boundaries I am talking about here are the ones we accept or even impose on ourselves in our creative world.

    What is it that bounds you?

    Most of us are limited by the beliefs we have accepted or been taught. Beliefs are not at all bad. They are necessary. It is when they limit you into a box you can’t break out of that they become a burden. Beliefs should be carefully examined and modified or discarded as we progress through life. Sometimes our beliefs become outdated because we grow to a new level of understanding.

    That is pretty philosophical. Let me take a simple example of a landscape shot. We know what it looked like and we believe it should look like that. But why? Why is it only allowed to look like the exact reality that was there? What is reality? What if you want it to be different? It is probably only your beliefs that prevent you from experimenting with something else and maybe ending up at a completely different place.

    Who sets your boundaries?

    Most of us learned photography from educators or mentors or tutorials. This is great. All are good ways to build skills and learn the craft.

    Many of us, though, simply accept and follow the instruction we were given. We might even proudly tell people “I learned the style of [____] from [____ ]” (fill in your favorites). Congratulations. But so what?

    The great artist you learned from has developed a set of values and skills over the years. They are based on their perceptions, the way they see the world. Their art reflects themselves and their experience. As it should. When they teach a student they are training them to think or view things like themselves.

    Why should you follow their precepts? Doing so limits you to being an inferior clone of the instructor. When we develop our own vision and become confident in the worth of our creativity we will have to uproot some of those fences our instructors put in place to help guide us.

    All the education you have received is good, in that it makes you what you are today. Learn all you can from all sources but reserve the right to form your own opinions. Don’t be complacent. Follow your own path.

    Technical boundaries

    All artistic medium have their own boundaries. Whether it is material properties or technology or physics, everything we use has limits.

    The wonderful cameras I use have hard technical limits. For instance, even though they have excellent dynamic range (the range of dark to light they can capture) it is not as great as some subjects I want to photograph. I have to learn techniques to deal with the limit, like HDR. Or I have to learn to make art that exploits those limits to create something new.

    Great artists tend to push the envelope of their medium. They discover ways to use the limits to express themselves in new ways. Don’t be afraid to push the limits.

    Mental limitations

    For most of us, though, our values and beliefs define our boundaries, not the medium. We hold ourselves back. We avoid pushing past or even seriously questioning the fences we have set up in our minds. Worse, we don’t usually even realize these limitations.

    A lifetime of criticism and training gets deeply embedded. You have to do this. Never do that. Always compose like this. Avoid doing this in post processing. Repetition leads to acceptance and eventually we become blind to alternatives. Fearful, even of trying anything outside the norm as we know it.

    Do you remember the famous Apple 1984 ad? You should watch it. It is a great classic and it has a very important message. Group think and indoctrination prevails in any group. It doesn’t change until someone stands up to it and says “I don’t think so”.

    Overcoming boundaries

    Your biggest creative boundaries are deeply held within you. You have to accept that they are there and learn to take them out and examine them and decide if they should stay or go.

    I recognize that this advice will only be useful to about half the population. The ones who are introverted enough to have the gift of introspection. I know enough extroverts to realize that they don’t think this way. I’m not saying that is good or bad, but since I don’t understand you I can’t offer much advice for you. Personally I observe that a disproportionate percentage of artists I know are introverts.

    I believe the first step to becoming our own is to ask “why”? Ask it of ourselves when we turn back at a “don’t go there” point. Ask it of other people who tell you you shouldn’t do something. Listen to the answers. Be honest with yourself.

    If you find the answer is because somebody you respect told you that is not the way to do it, maybe it is time to experiment. Maybe doing it is right for you even if not for them.

    Asking “why” puts you in a somewhat of a confrontation position. I don’t like that, but I realize it is necessary sometimes. You may get scorn or criticism. You may get evasive answers. But ask, at least ask yourself. Remember, as far as your creative direction, you are the only one who can answer.

    Permission to color outside the lines

    In a previous post I referenced a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon that is very meaningful to me. If you remember, Calvin was doing a paint by number but he wasn’t using the color codes or painting in the lines. When it was pointed out to him, it seemed a bizarre concept to want to paint their picture rather than his own.

    That is perfect! If we accede to other people’s boundaries, we create their art, not our own.

    I have been following this path for years but I still find myself stopped by boundaries I had not consciously acknowledged. I have to constantly give myself permission to go further, do it different, don’t worry about whether or not it looks like the original. It is important to remind myself that if I feel it I can try it. If I can express a reason that makes sense to me, that is good enough. I may not like it after I try it but it is very important and healthy to try something different.

    It is hard to truly give yourself permission to color outside the lines.

    But learn to do it. Make yourself do it. It is worth it. You start to discover what you really see and feel. It becomes your art.