Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: Artist

  • Don’t Rush

    Don’t Rush

    It seems most people rush to share results of any photo outing on social media immediately. But why? Does that make sense? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you have a few great images ready? Let your work and vision mature.

    Don’t be a slave to social media

    I am freely admitting my prejudice here. I am not a fan of social media and I don’t participate in much of it.

    A lot of people I see feel compelled to post some of everything they do to social media as soon as they are within cell phone range. They put themselves under a lot of pressure. If you are dependent on the “likes” and upvotes you get online, you serve a very capricious master. And what if several people don’t like your work? What do you do? Change? Abandon what you are doing? Who is deciding your style and artistic interests?

    It’s not collaboration

    Is your art a group process or are you, the artist, solely responsible for your creations? “Collaboration” is one of those powerful sounding words thrown around in corporations these days. I’ve been there. I know there is a place for it in corporations where they’re trying to achieve at least an average result and wanting to make several special interest groups feel included. But I claim it is not appropriate for our art.

    Our art should be a highly personal expression. To a degree, it should not matter if it is not universally popular. Maybe we should not try to be universally popular. If it appeals to the masses and looks like “everybody else’s” art, is it a creative expression? My work is going to be my own total responsibiity.

    Ask why you are sharing

    If you are sharing on social media, I think it is important to ask why you are doing it. Likes feel good, but do these people actually buy your art? Sorry to be crude and talk about money, but isn’t that the grease that lets things run?

    If your social media strategy is well tuned and you have a good mailing list of people who are real customers and eager to buy your work, good for you. That is a reason to publish on social media.

    But, how fast should you do it? Conventional wisdom on social media is that you should show work in progress. This is where I tend to disagree. I believe we should never show our work until it is ready.

    Curating takes time

    A lot of my art has to mature. I may have an idea of something I want to pursue, but my first attempts are usually not representative of where I will end up. It is typical for me to have to work with an idea or a subject for a while to refine my view, to understand my underlying feelings about it. The ideas have to age, to mature some. This can take from days to years.

    So if I’m shooting a project, the first images I shoot may be scatter shots all around the idea I haven’t really “discovered” yet. After doing work on the project a while I begin to understand what I really want to say and what will make the best visual presentation. It could be that one or more of those original images actually work for the final project, but that is almost an accident. It usually means I shot an image instinctively even though I did not consciously understand where I wanted to go. But projects can last from weeks to years, so my vision likely evolves over that time.

    In a similar way, it is sometimes the case that I shoot an image, I like it, but something tells me it is not complete yet. Maybe it needs to be worked as a low key black & white image. Maybe I need to do some serious cropping to isolate the part that really interests me. Perhaps I need to composite it with some texture or other elements to complete the look. Or maybe it just isn’t as good as I originally thought.

    Be patient

    If you’re like a lot of photographers, you shoot a lot of images when working a scene. Sometimes it is not immediately clear to me which is the pick of the group. I often have to live with them a while to understand what I was really drawn to. It may take days or weeks before I can look at the set and say “this one” is the one that captures what I was feeling at the time.

    If I am under pressure to get a quick look out to social media, I would find that what I am publishing is not really representative of what I end up with. Maybe that is OK for you. But I do not want anyone to see what I would consider inferior work. A secret of most photographers is that they seem very good because you only see about 1% or less of what they shoot. They throw away or rework what doesn’t work before it ever gets out of their studio. What you do see is good.

    A line from a famous old Paul Mason ad said “We will sell no wine before its time.” I don’t know if this is still true or if it ever was, but the idea has merit. Don’t be in such a rush to get things out. Wait for them to mature. A few great images is more impactful than a bunch of mediocre ones.

    Today’s image

    This is a pano I shot earlier this year. At first it was a pick of the day. I really like the clouds and mountain shapes. After living with it for a while, though, I realized I do not like the foreground or the middle ground (the lower forests are too dark). And there is more visual clutter to remove than I wanted to do. So this went into the “eliminated” pile. There was another one that I liked much better.

  • Overcome Boredom

    Overcome Boredom

    I have written before that we should be able to find interest wherever we are, even if it is familiar territory. I still agree with this, but sometimes it helps to do something different. It is easy to get stagnant without a refresher. So what can we do to overcome boredom?

    Love the familiar

    There is a comfort and special knowledge that comes from working with well known subjects or locations. We get to know all of the moods, the look in different lighting and conditions, the “best” times. When we have a familiar subject we can work when we want, we are not dependent on the luck of what we find the day we are there. We can keep coming back whenever we want to explore how we best like to see it.

    This has always been true. Claude Monet was drawn to his water lilies. Some artists only do portraits, because they are energized by the personal interactions. Guy Tal mostly does images of the Colorado Plateau in Utah. That is what he loves and it is where he lives.

    Probably most of us have a favorite place or subject we are more drawn to and spend a lot of time working with. It is natural. Familiarity tends to build strong ties and a deep appreciation.

    Stagnant

    But if we are not careful, we can get stagnant. We get into a rut. If we keep doing the same familiar thing over and over without injecting new thought or new creative approaches, we will cripple our art.

    Are we able to see something new in the familiar territory? Can we look at the same thing and visualize it differently? This is a skill. Like any skill, it must be developed by thoughtful practice.

    I mentioned Claude Monet. How much can you do with a small pond with water lilies? Well, I recently visited l’Orangerie in Paris. This museum has a special wing built to host an incredible set of paintings he did of his garden. It hosts 8 images, each 2 meters high and 91 meters long. Yes, each painting is 299 feet long! It is quite an experience. This, to me, is an example of creating a fresh approach to a familiar subject.

    Seeing new approaches to the familiar is a great creativity exercise. Sometimes, though, the subject doesn’t support the depth of vision required. We burn out on certain subjects. That is OK. Take what we have learned and fall in love with a new subject. This is one of the advantages of doing projects. A project gives us a subject or a theme to pursue for a while until we feel it is exhausted. Some may run out in a few weeks. Some last our whole career.

    Shake yourself up

    However we do it, we have to shake our self up. Shake off the rust and barnacles. To pull out of the rut and make our work fresh again. What works for you is intensely personal. I am not one to try to tell you what you should do. I don’t like it when someone presumes to know what I need without even knowing me.

    Some things commonly recommended are projects, travel, workshops, classes, and tools. I have tried all of these and all have varying degrees of impact on me.

    I mentioned projects already. This has been very useful for me. Having a project as a focal point for your creativity is stimulating. Taking a subject or a concept you have never seriously considered and trying to make a coherent and excellent portfolio around it is a great creativity exercise. It might give you a fresh viewpoint on other things, too.

    As a personal example, I just returned from an international trip. Rather than going with the idea that I would shoot “everything” that is interesting, I had 4 projects in mind for the trip. Yes, I shot lots of pictures just because they were interesting, but I found myself drawn to my project ideas in a deeper way. They gave me a focus for my creativity.

    Travel is almost universally recommended. Getting out of your comfort zone and into a new environment tends to change our perspective. I believe almost any travel is useful, but that idea of getting yourself out of your comfort zone is important. What I mean is, if you live in Philadelphia, traveling to Cincinnati would be interesting, but going to Utah or France would have a lot more impact. Those are a major change of comfort zone.

    Other tools

    Workshops and classes have good results for a lot of people. I find myself not drawn to workshops for a variety of reasons, many related to my personality and learning style. I do, though, take a lot of classes. Mostly online. There is a wealth of instruction available now. I get many of my classes from CreativeLive or Kelby One. And I get no consideration for referring them.

    Sometimes new tools or technology can spur us on to new levels. New camera bodies with great built in features might cause us to try new things. New software tools might give us incentive to apply new techniques to our work. To think in different ways.

    Whatever works for you, find a way to do it.

    Feed your head

    Like Jefferson Airplane said way back, we have to feed our head (but hopefully not the way they did). Our creativity comes from within. We must protect it and grow it. If we let ourselves get stuck in a creative rut, all our work starts to look alike and we are just repeating the same things over and over.

    Sometimes this is the result of boredom from focusing on the same subjects and the same locations too long. Get out of your comfort zone. Get scared when you cannot find new things to do in your work. Don’t repeat yourself.

    I don’t want to do that. I hope you don’t, either. And have fun while you are doing it. After all, this is your art.

  • The Product or the Experience

    The Product or the Experience

    There is a lot of contradicting statements and articles floating around, especially about photography. I think a lot of it comes down to the statements being more or less true, but the assumptions behind them are different. One of the biggest and often unstated assumptions concerns whether the focus is the product or the experience. Should the focus be the final produced piece or the artist’s state of mind?

    What is the output?

    I am talking about fine art, not commercial photography. What is the purpose of an artist? How do you measure art? Is the artist to be graded on the number of works he creates? Or are there other values or metrics that are important?

    Have you ever been to a great location and not taken any pictures? I have. Sometimes I just want to soak up the experience as it is happening. Enjoy the wonder of the moment. Or maybe I get there and discover I am drawn to something completely different from what I anticipated.

    I will go where my interests take me and not worry about the original plan. Does that make the outing a failure? Not to me. For me there are other considerations besides getting a planned shot or even getting any at all. So the results I value may not be just a particular image.

    That does not seem to be true for some people. There are those who plan an outing to the last detail. Making sure they show up at the “right” spot and time to get the classic light on the subject. If the weather is not what they wanted or conditions have changed, like a forest fire that alters the landscape totally, they are devastated. Not getting the planned shot is a failure to them.

    The product

    Is the goal of an artist to make the most nice works he can? Is an outing a failure if it didn’t result in some minimum number of “keepers”? I think this is a mindset many have. We tend to be very production oriented. Society in general pushes the idea of efficiency. . Sometimes we believe it for our art.

    So, for those times we have gone out to photograph a well known, iconic location , what is your attitude if it doesn’t work out?f Is that a wasted trip? What if all you got was a memory? If your only goal was to recreate someone else’s photograph, I guess it was wasted for you.

    What of the experience you had? Did you experience wonder at the great scene? Did you let yourself be drawn to some smaller scene within the scene? Maybe to something else entirely? Or was the disappointment of having your goal thwarted overwhelming?

    Even if it is not a great icon, what is your goal when you go out? Are you desperate to collect a certain number of good images? Why?

    What is a good image worth compared to a great one? If you create 1 image that you consider shows the peak of your ability as of now, isn’t that more worthy than having a whole memory card full of mediocre pictures?

    My point is that, for art, it is not a game of numbers. Quantity is not better than quality.

    The experience

    Some would say photography is about the experience. That if the artist experiences significant emotion or awe or connection, and if he is able to capture it in a way that helps others participate in the same experience, then maybe he has created art.

    There are a lot of “ifs” and “maybes” there. That is part of the problem. I tend to buy in to the intent of this, but there are a lot of pitfalls.

    One problem with the equivalence postulate is that it can be very difficult to transfer a feeling or experience from one person to another. Or from a piece of art to a person. You have seen it. Have you ever made an image that is dripping with meaning for you, but have someone else look at it and say “meh…”.?

    It is easy to say that I must not be skilled enough as an artist if that happens. Perhaps. But our viewer wasn’t there when we were. The image may not touch the same things in them that it does in us. We all have different experiences and values and feelings.

    I think the point for me is that we should first make images that touch something significant in us. If we are able to do that, them perhaps our viewers can see some of it, too. Then we will have been successful at communicating our experience. If we cannot share our experience through our image, then at least it is notable for us.

    Which are you?

    I have made it pretty clear which way I lean. My images should capture an experience or an idea that is meaningful to me. It is my goal to have you see significance in some of them, too. That said, it can be significant sometimes to just say “wow, that is beautiful”.

    If you are on the other side and feel like you need to collect images of famous scenes or make works that are popular with many other people, then that is your decision. It is your life and your art. I don’t understand why you would let things external to you dictate your interests, but whatever makes you happy.

    Whatever you do, enjoy your artistic life.

    Today’s image

    This article came across as kind of heavy and preachy. So I Iightened up some on the image. But not going off theme.

    This was from a visit to a “famous” landmark in Kansas. It was interesting and I’m glad I went there, but when I turned around, the road leading in to it was more interesting than the landmark. There was no reason to dream there would be a picture here, but I remember this more than I do the landmark. Look around. Be open and flexible.

  • Recording the Obvious

    Recording the Obvious

    The great photographer Edward Weston once said “I see no reason to record the obvious.” But isn’t recording the obvious what most of us do most of the time? What are the alternatives?

    Cameras record everything

    As I have pointed out many times, our marvelous high tech sensors are great recording devices. They do a great job of capturing what they are pointed at.

    Because of that, these days our phones have become an invaluable data capture device. We record a sign we want to look into later, or a wine label we want to remember, or selfies of us and friends. When I rent a car I always do a 360 degree bracket of it before leaving the lot, just in case there are and disputes about when some damage happened. We have our phone with us, so when in doubt, snap a picture.

    Most of this is never intended to be considered art. It is just data. Maybe memories. They are a ubiquitous part of our lives.

    Most pictures are of a clear, well defined subject

    Most of these images, whether on our phone of our “real” camera, follow the rules of composition we have been taught. The subject is centered and as sharp and well lit as we can do. Perhaps we have a clear foreground, middle ground, and background. Maybe we have made the lighting interesting: high key or low key or strong side light.

    What is common is that the photos are “of” something. They are generally straight representation or even utilitarian.

    I do not dismiss this as unimportant. But it is not art. If we want to make art we have to take a different path.

    Can there be more?

    Trillions of pictures are taken every year, no exaggeration or typo. One more image I take is just a drop of water in the ocean. Why should I bother? How can I stand out? What can we do to be a new voice?

    We are often told to be creative. But almost everything has already been tried. True creativity, in the sense of something that has never been seen, is very rare. We may never do something truly creative, but we can do work that is fresh, because it captures our feelings and point of view.

    If we try to get in touch with what we feel and our reaction to a scene, we can capture it in a way that no one else has seen. We are unique, in that our thoughts and experiences and values are different from anyone else. Therefore we should be able to see things somewhat different.

    This difference that is unique to us is what sets our work apart from everyone else. We just have to follow our unique view and not try to make our work look like everyone else’s.

    Look for the story within the story

    You walk up to a beautiful landscape. There are 20 other photographers there snapping away. What do you do? Are you going to make the same image as all the others?

    Go ahead and shoot it. Capture a record of that standard scene. Get that out of the way. Now start responding to it at a deeper level. What do you really see? It may be a famous scene, but what draws you? Everyone else is using wide angle lenses. Maybe you feel like using a telephoto to isolate just part of it. Small sections of a scene can give an impression of the whole. This is making the picture “about” something.

    It doesn’t matter what people expect to see there. What do you see? What tweaks your interest? One fresh, interesting frame is better than a whole memory card full of “me too” shots. You are the audience you have to please.

    Look deeper

    I find it useful to keep asking myself questions and demanding an answer. Especially “why?”. Forcing myself to go through 3 or 4 levels of why questions about a scene can reveal a lot. But only if I make myself answer truthfully and with some detail. It is too easy to accept a vague idea of what I feel. No, be specific.

    Can you find something more there than the surface image? Is it actually interesting? Does it excite you? Paraphrasing the great Jay Maisel, “If the thing you’re shooting doesn’t excite you, what makes you think it will excite anyone else?”.

    So peel back the layers until you discover the truth or essence of what you are drawn to. It doesn’t have to be a deep, profound truth. It could simply be “I really like the way the water is flowing over that rock.” But you have identified what part of the scene you are drawn to and why. Now the resulting image can clearly convey your intent.

    Edward Weston famously told us “This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.” (Guy Tal based a whole book on the idea. It is good. Get it). This statement is pretty Zen-like, but it brings up a lot to think about.

    How can a picture of something as simple as a rock actually be about a deeper idea? Maybe it can or maybe it can’t. I have to say that some of the pictures in Mr. Tal’s book did not bring deep concepts to me. That is the problem of conveying feelings to another person. It doen’t always work. But, the artist attempted it and discovered something meaningful for him. Perhaps I cannot perceive it, but it was there for the artist. It is an honest attempt to bring me more than a rock.

    Get over the obvious

    So I encourage us all to dig below the obvious when we are creating our images. The obvious may be pretty, but is there any substance to it, in the sense of engaging our brain, our thoughts, our feelings?

    I have come to believe that I just bring you the same images you would have shot if you were there, I have probably not added much value for you. I owe it to you to force myself to understand what I was drawn to and capture my feelings, while making a beautiful image.

    Today’s image

    New Orleans French Quarter comes alive at night. The color and interest of this scene really drew me in, but it lacked depth. I had an idea of what I would like to see and I refined it as I watched various people stop and look in. This person finally paused there in the entrance, alone, questioning, swiveling. He seemed torn between conflicting ideas. Go in or keep going? To me this captured inner conflict and moral ambiguity. Choices.

  • Reality

    Reality

    Is reality objective? Is there one reality that we all share? Do our perceptions and experiences and values form a reality for us? How do we know?

    Objective reality

    Is there an objective reality? Sorry to disappoint you, but I will leave most of this discussion to the philosophers. I have know some of them and listened to them discuss this, and I know I cannot follow the twists of their arguments. It’s above my pay grade as some would say.

    I believe most of us wish for an objective truth. It would seem like it would make this chaotic and confusing world make more sense. While I can’t help much with arguments for objectivity, I can give some perspective against it.

    It’s personal

    Even though there may ultimately be a “true” reality, doesn’t it seem like we each perceive our own version of it? Why else could we have a society so polarized? In America these days, if an event happens about half the people see it one way and the other half see it the opposite way.

    Are half the people at any time totally foolish? More likely nearly all of us are wrong. We have lost sight of the societal norms we used to share. When we collectively believed in certain rights and wrongs, in shared goals, in expectations of behavior, it was much easier to share a common view. To see roughly the same reality.

    I cannot solve this problem and it would be foolish to waste effort here trying. My point being that each person’s reality seems to be based on their values and perceptions, on their beliefs, and on who they listen to and talk to.

    Do we form it?

    I think I can safely say we form our own reality to a large degree. The conclusions we come to may be false. There may be objective reality we completely miss. But our own reality is what we perceive. The way we choose to react to what happens to us.

    There is an old story, completely made up I”m sure, about a psychologist studying kids to understand their perceptions. They made 2 identical rooms piled high with horse manure. One boy was put in each one with a shovel. In the first one, the boy cleared out a little space and sat down and did nothing. When they interviewed him and asked him why he did that, he said the place was filthy and smelly and there was nothing of interest there and he couldn’t wait to get out. But they found the other boy gleefully digging through the piles of manure and throwing it all over. When they asked him why he was having so much fun he said with all this manure , there must be a pony around.

    Reality is based on perception and our choices of what to believe. Each of us can look at the same facts and perceive a different reality. We do it every day without even realizing it.

    There are, of course, limits to this. Objective reality often intrudes on us. You may truly believe you can levitate, so you step off a cliff to prove it. Objective reality wins.

    Just because we believe something strongly does not necessarily make it true. Even so, it could form our personal reality. At least until objective reality crushes us.

    Seeing through our own lens

    But this isn’t a blog about philosophy. It is about art. Where does that come in to this discussion?

    I have touched on this before, but I believe a photographer can either think they are capturing and presenting objective reality or they can realize they have a subjective viewpoint.

    I know I have been on both sides of this dilemma. Way back as a young photographer and engineer, I thought the goal was to be impartial and objective. Being an engineer pushed me strongly toward the objective side. “Pure” photography. Think Mr. Spock.

    Now I realize it is almost impossible to be truly objective. Even if I attempt to present a scene “just the way it is”, I am making subjective decisions of framing and composition and lighting and timing. These selectively view only parts of the scene and strongly influence the perception of the viewer. Any scene I photograph is influenced by my point of view and feelings.

    As I push further and further into fine art, I realize strongly that my point of view and subjective judgement are a primary component of the image. It is the reason for the image. One of the mantras is “is the image I made the same as what anyone else there at the time would have made?” If it is, then why did I bother? I am not adding anything. I am not sharing my experience or my perception.

    A work of art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t art at all.

    Paul Cézanne

    Photography as seeking reality

    But let me come back for a moment to the perception of reality in a photograph. I think this is a trap most people fall into because we don’t really examine our perceptions.

    I believe most people consider a photograph to be reality for 2 reasons. First, they know the sensor records the live scene it was exposed to, so therefore this must be real. But second and more subtle, I believe most people are wishing for truth.

    We want confirmation that there is truth and absolutes, even if we do not really know what they are. So we invest photographs as a symbol of truth.

    This is one reason why people love pictures of beautiful landscapes, sunsets, waterfalls, forests, etc. It is a reality to grab onto. We wish it to be real, so we believe it. We want truth.

    I confess that I love to take these beautiful pictures, too. It is good for the soul sometimes. Please take pictures of beauty when you find it. But remind yourself it is a subjective view of reality.

    Whose reality?

    So do not be too quick to accept a picture as truth, an objective reality. It can be beautiful. We may love to hang it on our wall and look at it every day, but it does not necessarily represent reality.

    The reality we see is the artist’s reality. It is the sum of their perceptions and feelings and values. Do not lose sight of the fact that, if you were standing next to them at that time, you might have perceived something different. You might have pointed your camera in a different direction or framed it different. Your reality could differ from this other artist.

    A photograph is reality, but it is the artist’s reality.

    No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, then he would cease to be an artist.

    Oscar Wilde