Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: art

  • Another Way to Copy

    Another Way to Copy

    My previous article talked about using presets to make our work look like another artist‘s. This is going to continue talking about another way to copy another artist. Not directly or intentionally, but with the same result. That way is going to the same locations.

    Trendy locations

    It seems like locations are as trendy and popular with photographers as clothes styles are with some other people. Can’t you look at a lot of popular photography and score pretty well in a “guess the location” game?

    Some locations get over-photographed to the point of becoming cliche. Do you get tired of seeing pictures of Iceland or Greenland or the Antarctic or Africa? A little closer to. home, how about Yosemite or the Tetons or the Palouse region or fall images from Vermont?

    It is not at all that these places are not beautiful. Just that there is a herd instinct to rush to do the same thing. It seems like a photographer publishes a nice image of a fresh new location and everybody wants to follow to get, what, the same picture?

    The problem of visiting iconic locations

    There is nothing wrong with these locations. Absolutely not. They are iconic because they rightly deserve to be. The problem is our own and what we commonly do when we get there.

    From my own experience and from reading others’ experiences it seems there is a common trap we fall into. An often photographed location causes a certain amount of awe and wonder. We see the famous image we have dreamed of and shoot it. And then we are kind of done.

    Most of us can’t, on that first visit, see beyond the obvious. This is common. The location is famous and grand and set apart in our mind as this special thing. We have always seen it a certain way and we are locked into only seeing it that way.

    Access is important

    What is the difference between our shots of iconic locations and the, probably better, work we do routinely? One significant difference is access. I want to thank Brooks Jensen, the editor of LensWork magazine for helping me see this insight in issue 152, Editors Comments. He, in turn, was inspired by a comment of David Hurn. He proposed that the most important aspect of a potential subject is that we have access to it.

    What we routinely see and shoot we become very familiar with. We become analytic in looking at it. Having the freedom to frequently return to the location gives us the opportunity to see and evaluate it in all seasons and weather and lighting conditions. From all angles and possible views. It becomes an old friend we know well. When we take a shot of it, it likely captures its true personality. We know its best side and its worst.

    These familiar scenes may not be the grand locations most people think about. But we can represent them in meaningful ways, because we know them well. And we know them well because we have access to them.

    Access, frequent return visits, is what builds this familiarity.

    Approaching an icon

    So what strategy can we use when we get the chance to visit one of the. icons? I agree with Mr. Jensen that photographing exotic locations is actually more difficult than photographing the familiar.

    Don’t avoid. traveling to these places! Travel is usually worthwhile for many reasons. But perhaps we need a strategy for approaching the great locations.

    I suggest that when we get there, give in and have fun shooting all the normal tourist views. These are your first impressions. Then when that is out of your system, slow down and start being more analytic. Be suspicious of the conventional scenes you just captured. Try to look beyond them. Find a new point of view you have never seen. Ask yourself how you feel about this thing or place. How you relate to it and perceive it. Why are you taking this picture? Stop and think and just look a while before proceeding.

    Make it a mini photo project. That involves having a theme, a point of view, knowing what you want to say, maybe having a story behind it. You will probably find that few if any of your initial “wow, I’m here” shots make it into the final project. The important ones will be the more thoughtful views where you were interacting with the subject on a deeper level.

    Go your own way

    We can even use that learning to take back to the familiar subjects we see every day and have easy access to. The familiar should not be less exciting. Probably it should be more exciting, because we have the access and opportunity to get deep into the subject.

    Sometimes I go out among my familiar surroundings with nothing in mind. My plan is to just react to these familiar subjects in, hopefully, a fresh way. Sometimes I go out with a project in mind, looking for opportunities to add to it. Either way works, because of the frequent and easy access I have to the material. On our home ground we have an advantage. No one else gets so much access to the subjects you are intimate with every day.

    Never try to copy another artist, unless you are doing it for your education, to learn a new approach. Do not publish these as your original work. You are copying. Trust that you have a viewpoint and believe you have something to say with your work. You do.

    Today’s image

    No challenge guessing the location. Yes, I shoot icons. Everybody does. This was not my first visit to it, so I approached it differently. I didn’t want just another tourist shot of the famous Eiffel Tower.

    After walking around it for a while, I was drawn to this composition. I felt inspired by its immense size and beautiful curves and lines. I didn’t have a wide enough angle lens to capture it in one shot, so I had to shoot multiple and manually stitch them together.

    Maybe this is still a common shot of the icon, I don’t know. I don’t look at many others. But is seems different to me and I like it. It is one of my best memories of it.

  • Created From Joy

    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.

  • I Want That Job

    I Want That Job

    I got a job ad recently that really caught my eye. The position was for an “Intermediate Unreal Technical Artist”. My first reaction was: I want that job! But my scatterbrained mind spun up a lot of questions.

    Unreal

    The “unreal” part immediately got me. Yes, I know that Unreal is a 3D animation platform. It looks quite capable. You don’t have to write me about that. But that is not the point. Just the surreal nature of the job description gave me a laugh.

    Depending on where I am mentally at any time, I like to take flights into the unreal. I never guessed it could be a paying job.

    The coincidence I could not ignore is that I have been working on a project I call Terra Incognita. It envisions imaginary, unexplored regions of our world. In doing it, I had to become an unreal artist, for real.

    It turned out a little more difficult than I thought to create imaginary, unreal worlds that look real. I want you to look at my images in this project and tell yourself that it could be an undiscovered part of the world. Creating a fake Sci Fi movie scene was not interesting to me.

    Intermediate

    The “intermediate” adjective added to the surreal situation. The possibility that there might be quantifiable levels of unreal-ness in our artistic abilities jumped out at me.

    Well, I knew that I wanted my images to seem real, not fantastic or unworldly. But what would an intermediate level unreal artist be capable of doing? Would I have to be an advanced unreal artist to look real? Or does an advanced unreal artist only do obviously fantastic scenes? Would a beginner unreal artist “fail” in his unreality and create a real seeming scene? Should I be striving towards beginner or advanced level unreal art?

    Inquiring minds want to know. I never knew the questions lurking here.

    Technical

    And it says they are seeking a “technical” unreal artist. Again, the surreal nature of the words caught me. If there is technical unreal then is there non-technical real or non-technical unreal or technical real?

    Technical real is probably what most photographers do all the time. After all, we use high resolution lenses on great high mega pixel sensors to capture huge amounts of detail. Photography is inherently a technical art. We want our images to be more real than real.

    The job posters seem to be seeking someone to create unreal scenes with a high degree of technical precision. Although I know what they mean, it still sounds absurd. Would non-technical unreal be like old 1950’s Sci Fi movies with the rubber creatures and terrible sets? Actually, what they did back then was the highest degree of technical unreality they could do before computer graphics.

    Maybe non-technical reality would be street photography shot with a cheap plastic film camera. Terrible technical quality but real scenes. There seems to be a niche market for that with people who value alternate processes.

    Artist

    And they are calling the position one for an artist. Really? Maybe in that industry, which I suspect is movies, that is true by their standards. In my experience, when someone is hired to create visual work as specified by an employer, I would call them a designer or an illustrator.

    A Pixar animated film or something like Despicable Me is a great achievement. I know there are large teams of animators and character illustrators and colorists and groups doing hair and fur and fabric. Others doing lighting and other effects. And many other teams doing software and asset management and other coordination roles. It is a large and complex process requiring many people.

    I am probably projecting too much of my values on this, but I believe an artist creates work he conceives and in his own style. That does not sound like an employee. I am not in any way minimizing productions like an animated movie, just questioning if the roles are what I would call an artist.

    The whole package

    So, could I be an “Intermediate Unreal Technical Artist”? Probably not. As much as I like the sound of it, I do. not understand it. And besides, they are looking for someone to work for them. When I retired I vowed I would not be an employee again unless I was desperate. Been there; done that. I want to only do what I choose to do and on my own terms.

    Thank you for following this strange diversion. It is quite a sidetrack from what I normally write. But as I mentioned, the coincidence with a project I am working on now was too much to ignore.

    In addition, it fits in with a long term theme I keep bringing up about whether or not photography is about reality. To me, it is not any more. Unless an image is presented as documentary, it is not to be believed as reality. And with the rapid encroachment of AI, I suggest we be very skeptical of all images, even if they claim documentary status.

    So maybe all photography is an unreal art. Maybe the job description I saw is redundant.

    Today’s image

    The image today is from the series Terra Incognita that I mentioned above. It tries to represent unexplored areas of our world. Maybe it just has not been seen before. Maybe it only exists in our imagination. Either way, consider yourself a modern day explorer flying over this never before seen vista.

    I want to hear your comments! Let’s talk!

  • Out of Context

    Out of Context

    Every image has a context, the setting or framework or circumstances where it was created. Sometimes we try to tell the context to our viewers. But really, aren’t most images viewed out of context?

    The setting

    Every traditional photographic image has a context. It was created someplace, about someone or something, for some purpose. That is an inescapable reality. Photography records the world around us. But how important is it for an artist to bring the context to the viewer?

    If I am showing you street photography, it might help to tell you the country I’m in. That may help frame the culture, architecture, people we’re seeing. But, say I’m shooting in the USA for an American audience. Does it really matter if it is in New York City, or Cincinnati, or Seattle, or Dallas? You look at the image and try to read the subject and deduce what the scene means to you.

    Context in this case is supplied from a shared cultural experience. We all know enough of what it is like in a large American city to understand the image.

    Or for a landscape, if it is an interesting picture, does it really matter if it is the Colorado mountains instead of the Sierras, or the Maine coast as opposed to the Oregon coast? The impact of the picture is what intrigues us.

    The story

    And about story, we are told repeatedly that we must tell a story in an image or a project. I struggle with this. Somewhere I missed the training to understand this. Or I read too much into what “story” means.

    One legacy of growing up as an Engineer is I start out thinking fairly literally about a proposition. To me a story has character development, conflict, and resolution. What writers call the story arc.

    Personally, I don’t think many images tell much of a story unless they are about people. Even then, when we see a person we are compelled to figure out or create a story to explain what we see them doing, or their expression, or gesture. Regardless of the artist’s intent.

    But I seldom present images of people. To me, a landscape or an old rusty truck or an abstract motion blur doesn’t tell a story. If it does, the story would be something like “pretty” or “gritty” or “interesting shapes”. Is that actually a story? That seems weak.

    My inclination is to say most images do not, by themselves, tell a story. But they might provide enough structure for the viewer to invoke whatever memories or meanings they want. To create a story for themselves.

    Do we have to supply the story?

    As artists, we often feel compelled to write the story and present it to our viewer to help understand the image. Or, more likely, a gallery requires us to do it. Sometimes that is successful. If they actually take the time to read it. Maybe for a photo project people will read the artist statement summarizing the intent of the project. Maybe.

    Even if viewers read a title, they tend to make up their own story about what the image is. Is that bad? I don’t think so. It is their story. If they are happy with it, great. I sometimes ask viewers to tell me what they are thinking when they see one of my images. Often I am surprised. Sometimes they are far off of what I saw and felt or what the image is actually “about”. Their story may be completely outside the context of the “real” image. But they are not wrong, because this is what they experienced. I believe the best art leaves room for varying interpretation.

    I know that a well written story sometimes adds a lot of context to an image. But part of me thinks a strong image should stand on its own. If I have to explain it, it is lacking impact. A type of exception I often see is a project like Cole Thompson’s Ghosts of Auschwitz. His images are strong and impactful by themselves, but a few words taking you to the context of where they were taken and what he was feeling makes it a deeper experience.

    Maybe the story is already there

    What I’m about to say goes against all the conventional wisdom we normally hear. Maybe we do not write the story. Perhaps, in general, the scene is already telling its story. We see it, recognize it, frame and compose it, and try to help it tell its story in the best way we can. But it is its story, not ours. Maybe we give ourselves too much credit.

    If this is true, maybe we are documenters more than creators. This aligns with an interesting statement Ben Willmore makes when he says that in composing a scene we should reduce the negatives and enhance the positives. Doing that does not really change the story. Maybe we can slant the story some and write some of our own vision into it.

    I am not minimizing the creativity and skill needed to make a good image. Not at all. I know it is exceptionally hard and I wrestle with it every day. I’m just suggesting that maybe we are not actually writing the story. Rather, we are helping our subject tell its own story. Maybe our job sometimes is to recognize the story that is already there and help to bring it to life.

    In isolation

    This idea carries over into viewing an image. When we view an image in a gallery or on the wall or online, we are typically seeing it in isolation. A gallery may provide a title and perhaps even a short statement posted on the wall next to the image. People may or may not read it.

    Does that matter? Once an image is printed and hanging on a wall, it is complete in itself. When someone looks at it, their appraisal or appreciation of it does not need to be tied to my knowledge of the context or its meaning to me. The image tells its own story, or it does not.

    I actually love to provide an image that raises more questions than it gives answers. It would be a joy to me for someone to buy it and hang it on their wall at home and pause over it every time they see it. For them to feel free to create varying stories to fit it. When they are showing it to friends I want then to say “today I see…”.

    When they buy the print I could give them a written description of what it is, the context where it was created, and what it meant to me. But then it is all my story. Isn’t that taking away some of their joy and creativity in participating in the art?

    An image exists

    So if we typically see images by themselves, that means when a viewer takes the time to look at it, the print has to be strong enough to “tell it’s own story”. Or at least to tell a story to them. It must be able to communicate something meaningful to the viewer. Perhaps its job is to connect to memories or to raise interesting questions that make people want to live with it.

    If we have to use words to complete the image, maybe it is not strong enough. The words can supplement the effect, but they should not be required to make us see it as a good image.

    Context could be important, but usually we should not push it too hard. As artists, we should not be so arrogant as to believe the viewers will or should internalize the context and meaning we intended. Part of their appreciation can be to make their own stories. As an artist I have created this image, but I have to send it our on its own to make its place in the world.

    Today’s image

    To me, this image has a lot of story. But who wrote the story? Not really me. I saw it, and stopped and took the time to frame it and compose it and narrow in to what I thought the story was. Then I edited it some, not altering any important components.

    I can’t honestly say “look at this great story I told”. No, I found a story already existing and tried to put a little of my touch on it to bring it to you.

    Would knowing the context make this a better story? Or would it interfere with you discovering your own story?

  • Why Photography?

    Why Photography?

    Photography is my chosen art. Obviously I wouldn’t continue doing it unless I loved it. But why? Why photography?

    Faults

    I’ll be honest. As a modern art form, there are negative aspects to photography. I’m talking about people’s view of it, not what I believe of it. And I’m not making a pun about photographic negatives. Many “serious” artists and critics view it as a lesser art, if art at all. After all, it is too easy. Just point your camera at something and take a picture. Where is the art?

    The critics view photography as a mechanical art. Where the camera does the work and the photographer just holds the camera and pushes a button. How can it be “Art”, with a capital A, if it is fast and easy?

    Billions of people are taking trillions of pictures every day. So it is considered a “common” craft. Just for selfies. But those critics discount the difficulty of doing something special in a field that is so crowded. Millions of books are written, but we still celebrate the relatively few authors who creates a standout book.

    And photography can be reproduced pretty easily. You can get a stack of prints made at Walmart for a few bucks. This, too, devalues it in many people’s estimation.

    And it’s getting to where your AI chatbot can make a fairly realistic picture. Is there any photography anymore? Or painting, for that matter?

    Alternate view

    But let’s examine some of those statements. I’m a firm believer that something is not correct just because people say it, especially if it is “experts” talking.

    It is true that trillions of photos are taken every year. Very few of them are considered art, even by the people taking them. They are for utilitarian purposes, mostly selfies to post on social media. Of the ones whose makers consider them to be art, most are, well, forgettable. In this crowded field where the majority of people on the planet have a camera and take pictures, it is extremely difficult to take a memorable one. It takes a lot of skill and vision and technique and luck to make one of the exceptional ones.

    And the fact that they can be reproduced easily should not be a factor, except for top collectors. The ability to make prints is actually democratizing. And a great art print is a very different thing than a cheap drug store copy. The materials and ink and care that goes into an art print sets it apart. If you have seen and handled one you have experienced the quality factor. A great print can be shown on your wall the rest of your life and be passed down to your heirs.

    Even painters very often have prints of their works for sale. And they usually request a significant price for them. Does that make their prints not art?

    It’s what I can do

    I said I was being honest. I long ago discovered I have little talent or patience for drawing or painting, and sculpting is too slow and expensive for me. Does that mean I’m not an artist? Absolutely not. I found areas I have an inclination for.

    I originally latched onto photography as a creative outlet to my highly logical, left-brained Engineering career. Intuitively I knew I had to have a balance. It served it’s purpose, even though I wasn’t very good at it.

    But being somewhat obsessive and a perfectionist, I later pushed myself to learn and understand why I considered myself mediocre. So I improved my knowledge and education and technique. I learned about design and composition and lighting and editing. And I moved beyond just straight representational images of big landscape scenes and even pushed myself into uncomfortable areas like abstract and surreal.

    So when I retired, I was eager to go full time into art as a creative activity. I do not regret it. It has been a great move for me and I feel I have grown rapidly. I would have gotten frustrated and quit if I had tried to force myself into doing art I was not suited for.

    Fast moving

    A joy to me in photography is that it is relatively fast moving. Move, see, compose, shoot. I get into a flow and can spend hours creating. And likewise in post processing. Unlike some photographers, I like it. Working with the images on the computer is another important part of the creative process of photography. I can edit for hours and not even realize what time it is.

    This pace and rhythm of photography is part of what works for me. An important component of my creative energy. I know myself enough to know I would not be happy spending weeks working on a painting, to then have to set it aside and not touch it again.

    My images are much more malleable. Even after “finishing” one I can get a new idea and revisit it, maybe alter it, maybe create a new work based on it. What I shoot is raw material. The elements emerge, combine, re-emerge and get re-imagined in a very fluid way. I love this.

    Versatile

    This immediacy of photography also enables one of the other things I love about it. I can do it anywhere, almost any time. Day or night; walking around town; looking out an airplane window; winter or summer; in the rain or snow or fog; alone or with other people.

    If most painters see a scene they want to paint, what do they do? Take a picture. They use that to work up sketches to define their image. I skip directly to the end. My “sketch” may well be the finished image. I’ve done 20 interesting images before they finish a sketch.

    I never have to worry about what pallets of colors I have with me. Did I bring a large enough blank canvas? Do I have the right grades of pencils with me? Are they sharp? Don’t care. I can take a crisp, detailed shot of a rusty truck and turn around and take a time exposure of a stream. The camera is a powerful tool that lets me express my art in a variety of ways. But I am the artist and only I determine what I want to accomplish.

    Element of reality

    Another aspect of photography that is unique and significant to me is that photography contains elements of reality. The sensor records the scene in front of it as imaged by the camera lens, to the extent I allow it. That is, I may blur it or overexpose it or underexpose it. That is an artistic choice. But I am working with a capture of reality.

    Photography is unlike any other art in this respect. To me, there is something honest in that. That, even if I composite or heavily edit or alter the colors or tones to create a completely different scene, still, the component parts are pieces of reality.

    I enjoy images of mine that are straight captures of a real scene and I enjoy the ones that are created scenes that do not exist. Both contain reality. One much more directly than the other.

    I don’t use Photoshop as a blank canvas to paint imaginary scenes on. I have no problem with those who do that. It is another good talent. But I don’t. Everything I create is built from pieces of reality. In my weird value system, it wouldn’t be photography if it did not contain actual elements captured by a camera.

    Easy to reproduce

    I love that after editing an image and thinking it is almost ready, I can make a test print on my printer in my studio. In a few minutes. A print on paper is very different from an image on screen. Most of us are only used to seeing images on screens.

    But a well done print on high quality paper is an entirely different thing. It becomes a physical object with presence. Our relationship with it is different. We hold it and look at it differently. We feel the texture and the forms and colors of the image are seen in a new way. A print changes our perception.

    And this is just a test print. Usually it will have to be edited more and reworked is some ways to eliminate problems we did not notice until it was on paper. After a few cycles I now know how to print this image. This next one that comes out of the printer is one I can be proud of. We eagerly show it off, because it expresses our intent, what we saw and felt when we captured the image. It has become a physical piece of art. And I can push a button and make another one for you. Does this devalue the medium? Not to me. I think that is fantastic.

    This is a unique feature of photography. I love it.

    Photography is a versatile, fast moving, high quality art form. It has advantages and disadvantages over other types of media. But that is true whenever you compare one type to another. It is the perfect art form for me. I hope I have given you a clear picture of why photography for me.

    Today’s image

    A busy airport at night is a wonderland of lights and shapes and movement. If you are that nerd who gets his camera out and shoots out the window during takeoffs and landings. I am. I love the colors and abstract forms. 🙂

    It also illustrates one advantage of photography I discuss in other places. The ability to record time. Not just a still instant, but movement over a period of time if we wish.

    This is one of those scenes you seldom see painted. We cannot see this directly with our eye. The painter would have to take the picture then paint it. But is that different from taking a photograph and making a print?