Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: Artist

Being a Tourist
Yeah, we’re highly trained and experienced photographers who always take “serious” photographs (whatever those are). But do you ever find yourself being a tourist? I recommend it as a balance to our vision.
Tourist
Tourism is huge business. Especially after Covid restrictions people seem to be in a frenzy of wanting to travel. So much so that it has become a problem for popular areas. And many people are just rotten and inconsiderate tourists. Don’t be a bad tourist. I am not discussing any of these issues. Just the subjective point of view of a tourist.
Tourists queue in front of the Louvre in Paris in 2017. The museum shut down for one day earlier this year after employees walked out due to overcrowding (Credit: Getty Images)
I have written before about how I like to travel. This is a different take on it.
The desire for travel and tourism seems to be inherent in most of us. It is a longing to explore and experience new and different things.I liked this definition of what a tourist is:
In simple terms, a tourist is an individual who embarks on a journey to explore new places, experience different cultures, and seek relaxation or adventure. They are the adventurers, the beachcombers, the culture enthusiasts, and the thrill-seekers. They are the ones who venture beyond their everyday lives to discover the wonders that the world has to offer.
As a photographer
All of those things can be true of a tourist, but a photographer may have additional objectives. I realize that many people on vacation only want to take selfies and classic tourist shots of iconic places. Nothing wrong with that if it is what gives you pleasure. But I am discounting it here, because I have additional goals and, if you are reading this, I figure you do too.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Whether traveling or being in my home area, I want to shoot images that reflect my vision. That bring a unique and different perspective on what I am seeing. This can be a challenge as a tourist. We are in unfamiliar territory seeing new sights with perhaps a tight schedule or even the dreaded “group tours” to deal with.
If we are traveling to a distant location for vacation, we probably cannot justify taking all the gear we would like to have. We may have language and transportation challenges to overcome. And we may not be in full control of our schedule.
Ultimately, unless you are one of the fortunate ones who can plan a multiple week stay in one location, we are under real or perceived time pressure. I hope you do not plan one of those “6 countries in 5 days” trips. But even with a more leisurely schedule, we know we have places to go and things to see in the time we have.
This means we do not usually have the luxury of settling in and getting to know an area. To find the rhythms and pace of the place. To learn to see beyond the superficial. We are a tourist.
Out of control
In effect, this renders us out of control. We have to live with the schedule and the travel arrangements and the lighting and the weather and whatever other conditions you encounter. Usually we cannot say “I will come back tomorrow to get a better shot”. Tomorrow we are likely to be someplace else.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
And in this situation it is very hard to have a feel for what is good. Everything is different from our normal experience. Wow, what a great street scene we think. But in reality it is mediocre at best. If we looked around or spent much more time we could do much better. But we don’t know because we do not know what to expect and what is good and bad and we are pressed for time.
We know that if we could control the circumstances better we could make better images. But we usually can’t do that.
If you are a control-oriented person, this will be extremely frustrating. I am not a controlling person, I tend to take things as they come, but it can still be quite annoying even to me.
Out of your comfort zone
Being a tourist in an unfamiliar area puts us out of our comfort zone. Everything is new and calling to us to be photographed. It is hard to take more than standard tourist shots, because we do not have time to think much about each subject. We may not have the chance to walk around it to view it from different viewpoints or contemplate it at leisure before having to rush off to the next sight. And we seldom have the chance to compare it to other similar scenes to find the best one.
Dealing with this and making shots we will be happy with when we get home takes a lot of discipline. We have to learn to be flexible and able to respond to circumstances instead of carefully planning and controlling our shoots.
Strategies
I have informally developed some strategies I use to try to survive in these situations. Let me cover it with disclaimers: these kind of work for me; no guarantee they will be right for you. As always, these are descriptive, not prescriptive. I do not believe in dictating a methodology to anyone.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
When you are a tourist, everything is interesting. Go ahead and shoot that tourist shot. You will want it for the memory. Now that that is out of the way, pause and look for the more interesting thing. That may be a detail of the main subject. It may be something totally different if you turn around and look. If you are on a dreaded group tour, spend time scanning for interesting shots while the guide is describing the current historical monument.
I try to go with some project ideas in mind. This helps to channel my thoughts away from just the tourist views to some themes I will be paying attention to. On a recent trip to France my themes I tried to keep in mind were: antiquity, Joie de vivre, trees, devoted to God, and think B&W. It is not that I was actively working on these project ideas. Just that they gave me a framework for considering the sights I encountered. I find doing this gives me more focus and helps me avoid running off randomly in all directions.
And I try to get into a kind of flow state. I am unlikely to truly achieve flow, but I can approximate is by being tuned in to what is happening around me. The goal is a heightened sense of awareness. In this mode I recognize a possible shot more quickly and can be ready to react to it. I want to be shooting instinctively for fast moving situations and more meditatively when possible.
Being mindful
I know it doesn’t sound like it from what I said above, but I think the thing that helps is to be very mindful. Experience openly and freely, but keep the analysis running in the background. Take it all in but be very conscious of how you are reacting to it. Quickly reinterpret what you are seeing through your own vision filter.
Remember, as a tourist you are breaking out of the ordinary. Use that you your advantage. Shake up your habits.
We all tend to form habits. Talking about photography, John Szarkowski referred to this as “habitual seeing” . Being a tourist everything is fresh and new. It is a great chance to break some habits and see things in a new way, flex your mental muscles. Try to bring this new found ability to see back as one of the important souvenirs of the trip.
In the definition I gave of a tourist above, one of the key words to me is “experience”. If we are mindful and actively trying to capture that experience we are more likely to get some images that represent how we felt and experienced the trip.
If it fails
Keep in mind I am suggesting that you be experimenting on what may be a big expensive trip. When you are trying something new, you may get worse results, not better. No guarantees.
My argument is: that’s OK. You’re not going on a National Geographic assignment where you are contractually obligated to bring back certain results. This is our art. We should always be experimenting. If you are disappointed with some of your results but you come back a better artist, isn’t that a win? It is for me. The experience is more important that the product we bring back. However, in my case, my wife is there beside me taking all the conventional selfies and tourist shots on her phone. So they will be there if I want to see them. 🙂
These shots of mine are all “tourist” images from a trip to France. Hopefully they are not just standard boring travel shots.
December 18, 2024
En Plein Air
This is a big buzz with my colleagues who manually put pigment on a substrate (e.g. they paint). There is an aura that makes it something exotic about creating “en plein air”. Actually, plein air is what I do, too.
Plein air
In itself, plein air art is not a new concept, or even an artistic concept. It has been done commonly by painters since the 1800’s.
It is sometimes spoken like an advanced technical term. Something your have to be an insider to truly appreciate. But it is just an everyday French phrase. I have been studying French recently (another story) and was surprised to find this in normal use. It literally means “plain air”, or outdoors. Nothing fancy or hidden there. If you go to a “plein air” concert it just means you are going to an outdoor concert.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
In painting
So if you are a painter and you gather up all your stuff and take it outside to paint scenes from nature or whatever is in front of you, you are painting “en plein air”. Does that make it different or special? Maybe. Monet thought so. I”ll talk about that in a minute.
But to give the painters credit, it required some technical and workflow innovations for this to happen. We forget history sometimes.
It used to be (pre-1800) that artists had to find or buy their own pigments. Then they had to purify them and laboriously grind them into an extremely fine powder and mix them in a binder, usually a type of oil. By the way, you know those beautiful warm, rust toned palettes favored by Renaissance artists in Italy? Ochre pigment was a common, naturally occurring mineral there. Coincidence?
But then, sometime in the early 1800’s, the technology for producing and selling pigments already ground and mixed and in tubes was developed. This allowed the artists two things: first, they could get any colors they wanted. But second, and more important for this discussion, it became much easier to take your oils with you. As the desire to move about grew, enterprising vendors also developed smaller, portable easels and pre-stretched prepared canvases. Artists were not tethered to a studio nearly so much.
Now artists could pack their gear into a relatively small bundle and go where they wanted. One of the places they moved was outside.
Monet
I find I use Monet as an example a lot. I like his work, but another thing is that he was an innovator and revolutionary. He fought the entrenched art establishment and helped establish a whole new style. Something photography is still struggling to some extent to do.
Monet was one of the early practitioners of the plein air movement. One of the motivations of the whole Impressionist movement was his and others desire to paint outdoor scenes in the light of the moment. As Guy Tal put it in his marvelous book The Interior Landscape, (I get no incentives for promoting it) “Monet famously credited the success of his work to the emotions he felt when working out in nature … As Monet himself put it, ‘My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects.’ “
Working outside and observing fleeting effects. That’s what I like to do, too!
©Ed Schlotzhauer
I work outdoors
The same impulse motivates me, even though the technology I use is very different. I find and capture my images almost exclusively outdoors. Shooting in a studio does not motivate me.
Seeing things most other people do not see excites me. Finding those things, even if they are little, seemingly insignificant things, that I can show you in a new way gives me joy. Especially if I can show you something and you share my joy and excitement.
I admit I do not have the patience for painting. It’s too slow for me. Spending a few hours or days capturing a scene would be so frustrating to me that I would quickly give up. Seeing something, visualizing what this could be and what to do with it is hard and takes lots of experience. That is one of the fun and creative parts of photography to me. And it is fast enough to not bog me down or interrupt my creative flow. The process of capturing and producing the artifact doesn’t need to be so difficult.
Other than post processing work on my computer, my images come from outdoors, en plain air.
A new genre?
Have I created a new genre of art? Should I trademark the term “plein air photography”? Sign up for my workshop!
Well, I probably can’t do that. Photography has always been strongly associated with the outdoors. I think the first surviving photograph was an outdoor scene. Admittedly early photographs were outdoors because that’s where a good light source was available. Flash had not yet been invented. Even when it first was, it was difficult and dangerous to use (and smoky).
But those are technical considerations. The fact remains that photography has always had a strong connection to the outdoors. Especially for crazy people like me who photograph outside year around in a place like Colorado.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
It’s the outdoors that motivates me. I’m a hunter. That’s where I find most of my prey. And my inspiration. It is not an uncommon obsession. Look at publications like Luminous Landscape, Nature Photographer’s Network, Outdoor Photographer magazine and many others.
To the painters, if working outside motivates you, excellent. We share a common bond. I hope the outdoors inspires us both to do our best work. But working outdoors is not a new concept or unique to painting. Plein air just means “outside”.
I’ll be looking for you outside. But we will just pass each other. I’ll be moving about a lot discovering and shooting a lot of things while you are painting. Not to say one is better or worse, just very different art forms. Both en plein air. Let’s wave to each other.
December 11, 2024
Have an Opinion
I spent most of my photographic career just recording scenes. But now I think you probably won’t make a compelling image unless you have an opinion and express it in your art.
Just the facts
I started mostly focusing on just the facts. My goal was literal representation of scenes. I wanted to capture what was actually there, with no interpretation. I regret that.
Being an engineer didn’t help. It is very easy to get caught up in technical details of resolution and depth of field. My excuse is that I grew up in Texas and moved to Colorado in my early 20’s. The mountains were new to me and I wanted to record everything I could. I was basically running around saying “Wow, look at this! I never knew this existed!”.
If I had an opinion about it, it was something like awe and excitement about the new landscape. I took a lot of accurate, factual representational pictures back then, but very few are in any of my current collections. Beautiful images some of them, but little depth. Not compelling.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
What makes it special?
What makes an image special or worth lingering over? That is a hard question. Great photographers have been wrestling with that for 150 years. Painters have been agonizing over it for hundreds of years. There are no rules or definitive answers (despite all the rubbish you may find on the internet).
I am not in a position to give you a definitive answer either. If I could it would make my art a lot easier to do.
I think we can agree that some images jump out at us or hold us to linger over them. If we can agree on that then we can agree that there must be some quality or qualities that distinguish one from others.
It could simply be the composition or lighting or the precision of the execution or the decisive moment or something in the scene that grabs our interest. Maybe some combination of all of that.
I am drawn to believe it is all that but more. We see far too many well executed images of beautiful scenes that seem soulless, flat, uninspired. So there must be an unidentified quality that some get but others do not.
It is probably oversimplified, but I speculate that part of it could simply be whether the photographer was excited about it. We tend to be drawn to excitement in others. When someone is telling us a story that happened to them, their excitement has a lot to do with our engagement. If it is just a “I went to the grocery store and got some oranges”, well, we quickly drift away. But if it is “I went to the grocery store and the most amazing thing happened…” then, if they can keep the story going, we will follow.
Could it be that simple with our pictures?
Express yourself
I said when I started my photography I believed mainly in literal representation. It seemed wrong to try to project my feelings or opinion on them. Now I think I was totally wrong. That is why most of those early images were completely forgetable. I wasn’t truly being authentic because I was keeping my feelings to myself.
One thing the great and very quotable Jay Maisel said was “What you’re shooting at doesn’t matter, the real question is: ‘Does it give you joy?’”.
Now I believe that unless I am feeling something strong, it is useless to press the shutter. I want to believe that my excitement will carry through in some of my images. The good ones.
Another quote that guides me is “if it doesn’t excite you, why should it excite anyone else?” I think that is a Jay Maisel too, but I can’t find it. If not, maybe I’ll claim it. 🙂 Either way, I believe it. Why should you care about any of my images unless they came from something inside of me? Not just pressing the shutter button and capturing what is there.
So it is not enough for me to just capture an image of something. I want you to know what I was feeling, how I perceived it. I may have loved it or hated it, but you be able to sense it and participate in it.
It is not only OK for me to express my feelings, I think it is completely necessary to make something good.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Nobody has to agree
But there is a dark side to human nature: when we express our feelings, some people will not agree. I know now that that is fine. When I took the attitude that everybody does not have to like what I did, it was tremendously liberating.
So now when someone says “I like that” or “I don’t like that” I basically ignore the comment. It is no use to me without more discussion. Actually, if someone does not like a picture I love to get into a conversation with them to find our why they felt that way. I will not change my image and I do not try to change their mind, but I am always curious about the reasons for negative reactions.
One of my goals is to create a reaction in you. I’m generally a positive and upbeat person and that is more often the type of reaction I aim for. But I would rather cause you to hate my work than to be indifferent to it. If you are indifferent I failed to move you at all.
I encourage you to fall in love with your subjects. Or find the subjects that revolt you and you want to have changed. Either way, feel something. Strongly. Your audience needs it and deserves it.
Today’s image
This was a quick “grab” shot, but that was because I did not want to disturb or upset the guy looking at me. I was more shy then. This has a lot of feeling for me. I was suffering and I’m sure they were, too. It was in a village in central Italy and it was about 100_^°F that afternoon. We were dying and the only people stupid enough to be out sightseeing. This old couple seemed to have found a relatively shady spot in the narrow street. Hopefully with some breeze. I’m sure that other neighbors would soon gather for their daily ritual.
I fell in love with the area and the way of life. They seemed to have contentment in their circumstances and the pace and traditions of their life. I came away with great respect for them. I wish I would have visited with this gentleman, but the heat was about to take me down and I don’t speak Italian. I’m pretty sure he did not speak English. So I let it go be. I’m sorry for that.
November 27, 2024
Don’t Show It All
Not like that. This is a follow up to my last post on portfolio selection. A simple, overarching principle to keep in mind is: don’t show it all, or even most of it. Actually, not very much of it.
We’re proud of our work
A blessing and curse of digital photography is that we now shoot thousands of images. Of course, we’re pretty good, too. Everybody should like to see 500 pictures of my cat. After all, they are all different poses. And that big trip we enjoyed so much, here are the very best 900 pictures from that great trip to France. They’re all worth seeing.
We fall in love with our own pictures. This is a fact of life. Each one is special because it was exciting, memorable, unique for us. We remember what we experienced at the time. It makes it significant to us. To us, each one of those 900 pictures from France is worth showing to other people.
And when we are too attached to our pictures we tend to overlook problems that are obvious and distracting to others. The telephone pole growing out or your kid’s head is not seen. After all, it is a really cute expression. And we overlook all those people in the foreground of the beautiful picture of Chambord. Just look at how spectacular that Chateau is. It is too easy to convince our self that that tilted horizon is not a problem, or the poor composition, or the bad color balance.
But we have to be adult. Part of that means being very aware of the actual quality of our work and of what is appropriate for the situation. And in most situations, less is more.
Other people generally don’t care
I don’t want to pour cold water on your enthusiasm, but other people are not excited about what you have. That is a hard reality you have to learn.
They weren’t there. They did not experience what you did. None of these images have the same meaning or impact for them. It wasn’t their vacation, or their family, or their cat. Call up your pictures of France and hand the phone to someone to page through. If they are good friends, they will fake interest and flip through a lot of them. But even they will probably not look at any image for more than 1-2 seconds.
When they look at your pictures, they don’t see it the same way you did. They can’t and never will. Understanding this is a key to getting our images viewed by other people.
It gets much more challenging when we are wanting strangers to view our work. They do not know us, they were not there when the image was taken, it may not be anything they are interested in. But here, look at my pictures. Thanks, but I’ll pass.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Context is key
The context where we are and where and when we are presenting our images makes a huge difference. Is it to friends or strangers? Is it one-on-one or a public venue? What is drawing people to pay attention to your photos?
Pushing pictures on social media is a main venue for many of us. The audience is friendly if it is our network. They will politely scan through a few of the pictures. A few of the viewers may even give us a thumbs up to make us feel good. But did they actually see them or care? We can’t tell. And we won’t know.
And how often have we been cornered by friends who have “a few” pictures to show us? They hand us their phone, sure we will love the 50 pictures they took of the great sunset last night. It is one of those “just shoot me” moments. But if they are a friend, we have to be polite. Back in the film days it was a common joke theme to go over to a friends house only to have them get out the slide projector to show “a few” pictures of their trip. After the first few hundred we want to fake a heart attack to get away.
Up to here we are only bothering captive audiences. We can get away with little editing and selection. It will make us look foolish, but our friends will forgive us – eventually.
But perhaps we decide we’re pretty good and book a booth in an art fair. Now the audience has no connection to us and no inherent reason to look at what we have. We will get a glance as they walk by. People will only pause to give a second look if we present something that captures their attention. They will only come in to look more closely if we show them something exceptional.
Now take it to the big leagues. We get an opportunity to show our portfolio to an art director or gallery manager. That is a tough audience. These are professional art viewers. They look at huge numbers of pictures and it is their job to reject almost everything. What are you showing that will capture their attention? It better not be 100 of your best cat pictures.
How many?
How many images are in a portfolio? There is no hard rule for this. It depends on what the portfolio is for.
Peter Eastway, the publisher of Better Photography Magazine, has a nice little ebook titled “Creating a Portfolio“. It is worth reading if you can get a copy. He tries to address this and many other considerations of putting together a portfolio.
In his Australian humor, he says “The number of photographs in a perfect album is 12. Or sometimes 8. Or maybe 24.” In other words, it depends. No rules. But the number is probably much lower than you thought, and whatever you put in needs to be the best. No filler. Nothing that’s there because you want to show some variety to widen the interest.
Peter gives an interesting test. He says do not put an image in your portfolio unless you think you will still be proud of it in 12 months time. That is significant to me. I often am enthusiastic about an image, only to find I cool off toward it with time. My filtering process has built in delays. It take months for me to elevate an image to “one of the best” status. I do that intentionally to let the initial enthusiasm be replaced with a more objective evaluation.
In general, between 12 and 20 for any collection of images in a project or portfolio works for me. I would feel free to violate my own rule if I were doing a documentary or a book. Or for a multi-year project that had significant importance to me. But I would have to make a very conscious exception.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Less is more
I advocate that we take a mindful “less is more” attitude. Always take out images until it hurts. Then take our a lot more.
Remember, your audience has a short attention span compared to your view of your portfolio. Any weak image will loose their interest. They may even abandon looking at that point. I have heard it said that you will be judged by the weakest image in your portfolio. I believe it. It is human nature to find the worst as a way to critique the whole.
I consider building a portfolio kind of like an athletic contest. Teams have to compete in and survive multiple rounds of playoffs to be chosen the champion. Hopefully the best emerge. Same with our images. It is a brutal, hand to hand contest.
If you are evaluating coolly and objectively, every one removed makes the remaining set stronger. Remember, when you remove one, you are not saying you don’t like it or it is a bad image. You are just acknowledging that it does not hold up against the competition of the rest of the group. That is good. But hard.
It is very hard for me. If I want to select a project with max 20 images, I may pull at least 60-80 very good candidates. Doing the first cut is only a little painful. Maybe that gets me down to 50. I try to toughen up and go slashing again. Now maybe I have 35 left. OK, I swallow hard and cut some more and get it down to 30. Still a long way from 20.
The trouble now is that I really love every one of the 30 candidates that remain. The pain of eliminating any of then is extreme. Remind myself over and over that taking one out is not saying I don’t like it. It would be a lot easier to relent and let myself use all 30.
You would think it would get easier now. After all, I think all of them are great. But the reality is that there is a rank order to be discovered. Some are better than the others. That is what I still have to resolve. Eventually I get there. It is painful and lengthy. But a funny thing happens. I love the set that survives, and forget about the pain of the ones that didn’t make it.
The optimum number to show people is fewer than you think. When we learn that we don’t have to show it all, we can build stronger portfolios.
If you’re not your own severest critic, you are your own worst enemy.
Jay Maisel
November 20, 2024
The Hardest Part
I have figured out what I consider the hardest part of photography. Excluding Marketing. It is selecting a portfolio.
Pick a few
It’s a common situation. Perhaps I am entering a selection for a gallery competition. Maybe a client has requested a few choices for a job. It could be just needing to pick some images for this blog post. Whatever the reason, I am faced with the problem of selecting a small set of images for a certain use.
Oh sure, I have the images that would work. It’s not like I”m not happy with my choices. The problem is selecting only a few.
I’m calling what I am doing here making a portfolio. That is not precisely correct. Formally, a portfolio is a collection of images designed for presentation to an audience. Often one-on-one. However, the process is substantially the same for that and the situations I described. So I will not distinguish them.
Embarrassment of riches
Please don’t take it as bragging, but I have lots of images that I like. I have been at it a long time. Lots as in many thousands. That’s just the ones I promote to my top level selection category. A lot of others in my catalog would be useful for certain applications.
Yes, I have a disciplined filing system. Everything is culled through multiple levels of selection. I find it is hard to pick the ones I like best from a shoot, so my process is oriented around rejecting the ones that are not as good. I don’t know why, but it is easier for me to say “I don’t like that one as well” than to say “I like that one best.” That is repeated through multiple levels. I apply more stringent criteria at each level.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Most of my images are filed geographically and I have an extensive keyword system for tagging all sorts of information. And I use it.
All this should make it easy to find just what I want. You would think, but no. It is easier in that I am only wading through thousands, not hundreds of thousands of images to pick. But that’s not even the most difficult part.
No guidance
We are awash in training material to help us become better photographers. Some if it is actually good. There are thousands of hours of videos on camera operation and composition and visual design. Many more on techniques in the field and techniques for post processing. And gear guides are limitless. As are books to supplement the videos. All of this can help boost our knowledge and improve our technique.
But when it comes to pulling together a portfolio, the advice is: it’s hard, keep editing, get it down to a few great images.
Thanks, but that is not really helpful. Well, it is helpful to find out that I should expect it to be hard and I have to do it myself. But where is the video that shows me to pick this image instead of that one?
Should a choose a tight theme with carefully coordinated image selections, as for a project? Or would it be best to present a range of subjects and styles to show the breadth of my work? Would it help to research the curator of the exhibit to try to guess what they would like? Why would this image work better than that one?
I feel kind of left hanging out there.
I’m on my own
That’s the point and the conclusion. We are on our own. We have to be grown ups and make responsible decisions. That is no fun. It is downright hard. That’s why, to me, this is the hardest part.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
So a typical scenario is that I have to select, say, 4 images for a gallery. Open theme. I’m on my own. No guidance. It is very easy to go through my catalog and pull 50 images that I would like to submit. Another pass or two might get it down to 30 images. Then it gets harder and harder as I push on. I love every one of these images. Eliminating one seems like I am abandoning it. I know that’s not the case, but the feeling is there.
It is sometimes easier if I set it aside for a few days to let the emotions settle down. Then I do my best imitation of being coldly realistic to screen out some more. But what seems to happen is that I get down to, say, 8 images. I can only have 4. That final cut is extremely painful.
i envy people who have a colleague or mentor they can work with to advise the process. I don’t. The decisions have to be made by me with no help. I have an awesome wife, but she isn’t an artist and cannot help with this.
Well, I get there. It is painful. I come away with sadness because I had to eliminate some of my favorites in the final mix. That disappears with time, though. After a few days I can look at the final set and be proud of them.
Overthinking it
A reality is that I tend to overthink it. What I know is that the images I pull are all very good. And I know, and have demonstrated to myself often, that, with a set of excellent images, every time you eliminate one, you make the overall set stronger. That is, if you make intelligent choices. I try to remind myself of great advice I got one time that you will be judged by the worst image you show.
So why do I agonize over it so much? It’s not like I throw a great image away if I remove it from the set.
I think there are two problems. First is that I love these images and feel bad about taking one out, because I’m emotionally attached to it. I can live with that. But the second and bigger problem is, how do I know I have made the best choice?
Self doubt
That is the core of the problem. There is no guidance. I am on my own. There are much bigger and more important choices in life that are like this. Who to marry, what career to pursue, where to live, what investments to make, etc. We must use our judgment to make the decision. It hurts. We want someone to look over our shoulder and tell us we did the right thing. Unfortunately, being an adult doesn’t work like that.
Picking some images for a use is way down in importance from those big life events. Why is it so painful then? I think it is the same fear of failure and the consequences. But I try to be realistic.
So I try to convince myself that the final set I choose will be excellent. Even though I feel like I am in the spotlight and I am being examined to see if I am worthy, I know that if I do the best I can, that will be good enough. And if not, well, nobody dies.
I tell myself that, but it doesn’t feel like it when I am in the pain of the process.
All parts of the photographic process are interesting and challenging. All are subjective, But there seems to be a lot of help to be had in all phases of it up until the final image selection.
Resources
There actually are a couple of resources I have found to help give some education in this. Unfortunately they are not freely available. Peter Eastway, editor of Better Photography magazine, has written an excellent ebook on creating a portfolio. As it says, it is specifically oriented to putting together a portfolio or exhibit. But it still gives a lot of good insights.
Creating a Portfolio might be available at www.betterphotographyeducation.com without a subscription. If not, it is an excellent publication and you will enjoy it. 🙂
Another option that I have found out is not paywalled is a three part series of newsletters in the Paper Arts Collective newsletter. This is a hidden gem of a publication. The series I’m referring to was titled Evolution of a Small Project, and it traced the decisions and selection process he went through to put together an exhibit. If you do prints then you should check out Paper Arts Collective.
But I come back to my original problem. It is hard, no one can really help you, you have to make hard choices yourself based on your judgment and artistic vision. And you have to have confidence in your decisions. To me, it is the hardest part.
November 13, 2024