Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: creativity

  • Wait For It

    Wait For It

    In my last article I suggested reacting to subjects and shooting with minimal planning. This time I talk about the need to study a subject and find the optimum conditions. To wait for it. Am I inconsistent?

    Shoot what you find

    Last time I recommended that you take what you find, shoot where and when you can, make the best of what is there. Obviously, I think this is good advice, or I wouldn’t have said it.

    This is the path I take most of the time. I enjoy the challenge of working with what I find, even if the conditions are not optimum. Whatever “optimum” means.

    A quote attributed to Freeman Patterson captures the spirit of this for me. He said “It’s just light. What are you going to do with it?” I take this to mean “it is what it is”. The light is there. The conditions are there. You can’t change them. Work with it. Are you a good enough craftsman to make a great image in any light? Or are you so locked in to a certain expectation of what you want that you cannot make an image unless everything meets your criteria?

    Do you remember the blizzard conditions in the picture with that last post? It was not what I expected or wanted. That kind of day, it would be much easier to stay inside. But in retrospect, I like this image much better than “normal” pictures of plain rock walls. I worked with what I found.

    Wait for it

    On the other hand, sometimes you have to work with a thing until you discover what it wants to say.

    It is not my style or interest to plan out the optimum time of year, time of day, location, etc to get a trophy shot. I don’t care much for trophy shots.

    But you know when something keeps catching at you gently? When it seems like it is trying to tell you there is something there if you can just see it? That’s the way it works sometimes. Our subconscious is more receptive than our conscious mind.

    When you get this tingle and there is a scene you have regular access to, sometimes it helps to keep working it to see what it looks like in different conditions. This is what I call waiting to see what it has to say. Even a common, familiar, boring subject can be brilliant once. Finding that brilliance is the trick.

    If you are mindful as you are out shooting, I imagine, like me, you have suddenly seen something you walk by every day in a whole new way. Maybe it is the light that is different, or the weather, or just your mood. But something clicks and this boring thing suddenly is exciting. It is a great feeling. Like discovering a hidden secret.

    And when people ask you about it you can say, you know that thing over there you walk. by every day…? They are impressed; and incredulous. That’s very satisfying.

    Perhaps best of all, you feel like you now have a unique insight on that subject. Until now, it was incomplete. Now a dialog has been accomplished, an exchange between you the artist and this subject. You have seen what this can be, in a way no one else has.

    Resolving the conflict

    So, last time I said shoot it as you find it. This time I’m saying wait for the perfect conditions. Am I inconsistent? Am I just playing with you?

    Not at all. Both are right. There is a time for each. Do you remember that great bit of dialog in Fiddler on the Roof where someone says “He’s right, and he’s right – they can’t both be right”? And his answer is “You know, you are also right.” 

    Yes, I firmly believe both approaches are right, each at the right time and in the right conditions. Part of maturity is figuring it out.

    I completely believe you should shoot where and when you are there. Don’t pass up a shot you think you want because it could be better someday. Do it now. And if you have the opportunity, work a scene frequently to refine and improve your comprehension of it. It really is true that working a familiar subject over time will lead to deeper understanding. And with frequent access, you might indeed find it at that perfect time no one else has understood.

    You’re an artist

    And. when all is said and done, you are the artist. Only you create the image through your craft and feelings. Do the best you can.

    Are conditions unexpected and maybe not what you hoped for? Too bad. That’s what you have. Use it. Make something good out of it. It may require reframing your perspective. Changing your plans. That’s OK. We have to be flexible. That is part of the craft.

    And when we get the chance to frequently return to a familiar subject, take the opportunity to get intimate with it. Learn its moods. Dig below the surface to learn about it in more depth. Then you have the chance to catch it revealing itself to us. If you are there, if you know it well enough, if your craft is good enough, that leads to the opportunity to get an image you feel brings a unique insight into the subject. Something no one else has seen.

    A reason Monet painted water lilies in the pond at his house was because he became intimately familiar with them on a daily basis and they were changing all the time in different light and seasons. He found a subject he could live with and grow old with.

    Whether this is the first time you have seen the subject or it is an old familiar friend. Whether the weather and light is “good” or “bad”, use your expertise to make a great image if you feel it is worth it. It is up to you.

    Today’s image

    This old battered factory and silo is 1 mile from my studio. I walk and drive by it frequently. I keep my eye on it and occasionally shoot a few images. The silos are 200 feet tall and 40 feet in diameter each. An imposing sight.

    This day, magic happened. The combination of the clearing storm and the rainbow, being in just the right position to highlight the place, the light from the clearing storm being perfect. Well, it made it into something special. I had never seen it like this before and I have not since.

    I gave a print of this to a friend whose dad supervised the construction of the silos decades ago. He had recently passed away and this was very special to her. It is special to me, too. It turned a broken down old industrial eye sore into something very different.

  • Seeing the Unseen

    Seeing the Unseen

    Photography is unique in the arts. It can record things we cannot see or imagine. Photography can be an adventure in seeing the unseen.

    Unique

    Photographers are sometimes made to feel inferior. Usually by proponents of the “real” arts, like painters or sculptors. Get over it. Photography has qualities that go beyond any other arts. Qualities that make them envious.

    Photography is a technology-based art. That technology can be used along with our artistic vision to capture and create things regular art cannot. We can peer into things the human eye cannot see. We can freeze time to examine events the human eye cannot show us. Likewise, we can extend time to show the effects of movement in new ways.

    Exposure

    The human eye is amazing. But it has limits. Even though it can see a huge range of light, photographic sensors can push beyond our eye’s limits.

    When you look at the stars, for instance, we can see what seem to be an immense number. But I have astronomer friends who have a process of taking hundreds of frames of 1 point in the sky. Then they use special stacking software to combine them and sharpen them to create levels of detail far beyond what the eye can see. Even my amateur astronomer friends routinely show me pictures they have taken of distant galaxies that cannot be detected at all with the eye.

    Those same astronomer friends have solar filters – essentially completely black glass – that let them view the surface of the sun! They can see and photograph sun spots and the corona. Things that would destroy our eye if we tried to look directly at them.

    The technology and practice of photography allows these things.

    Light range

    And “normal” (non-photographic) art is all done in the visible light range. Makes sense, That is all we can see.

    But most of us have seen infrared imaging. This is done using a special dark red filter that excludes most light we can see. What is left is what we would consider heat – the world of longer wavelengths beneath the red response of our eye. It gives us a subtly different perception of the world around us. A paint artist could not do that without taking an infrared image of the scene then painting from the photograph.

    Similar filtering can be done to see the ultraviolet world beyond the highest violets we can perceive. And have you had an X-Ray? That is just imaging done in another range of “light” we cannot see well beyond the ultraviolet.

    These are somewhat niche capabilities, but they can bring us information that is exclusive to the photographic world.

    Time

    Time is one of my favorite variables that is unique to photography. One of the three legs of the exposure triad is shutter speed. By varying the shutter speed we can effectively slow down or speed up time!

    People have developed flash systems that can freeze movement in slices of 1 millionth of a second. Even the fastest bullets are frozen in midair. Explosions can be captured as they start. You’ve probably seen pictures of a drop of liquid falling into a dish. The splash patterns are beautiful and interesting. Not many things we come in contact with in our lives are not frozen at this kind of speed.

    At less extremes, a waterfall at a fast shutter speed can look like a cascade of diamonds . A bird in flight is completely frozen at about 1/1000th of a second. Every feather is crisp and sharp. We cannot see it this way with our eye.

    At the other end, long exposures capture movement over time. This is the area I like to work. Not super long. Just long enough to change our perception of what is happening.

    We have all seen long exposure pictures of waterfalls or cascades, where the water is smooth and silky. It is so common that it is in danger of being cliche. But the reason you see it a lot is because it is a pleasing effect. Some photographers make exposures of minutes. This makes clouds streak and water blur to a milky texture. Not really my thing, but I appreciate the reality distortion caused by the time shift.

    Movement

    A subset of this idea of time is where the camera is moving relative to the subject or the subject is moving relative to the camera. The camera motion side has become popular as Intentional Camera Motion (ICM).

    Like many techniques in photography, it is easy to do but hard to do excellently. Anyone can take a blurry picture because the shutter speed was too long to stop the action. Most of us have to work to overcome this. ICM deliberately pushes this “fault” to a point of art. I do ICM for some projects and I have seen a lot of ICM that I consider excellent art. And I have seen a lot more where I have to think, “yep; that’s your standard ICM”. That’s OK. Most experiments in doing something new and creative fail.

    One interesting aspect of techniques that involve movement and time is that it is almost impossible to take the same picture twice. There is always variation. The variation often leads to pleasant surprises.

    Stretch the notion of reality

    So photography is unique in giving us alternate views of “reality”. With conventional arts, like painting, nothing can be created that the artist does not first see or imagine. Photography can show us worlds or effects we did not imagine. This sometimes opens up new creative paths to explore. And the exciting thing is it is actually reality. If the camera captures it out in the “real world” (whatever that is), it is reality. What we get may be a complete surprise, but that is part of the exhilaration.

    Photographers, never feel inferior in the arts. Know that what we do is as valid as any other kind of art. And try not not to be smug knowing we have the option of being more creative than most other forms of art.

    Go explore the unseen and enjoy your discoveries.

    Live always at the ‘edge of mystery’ – the boundaries of the unknown. – J. Robert Oppenheimer

    Today’s image

    This is part of a series I did fairly recently. It combines ICM and time and subject motion and some secret sauce optical techniques to create this look. I consider it a creative view on a reality that happens around us all the time, but only photographers can see.

    Is it “real”? Yes, absolutely. It is a minimally modified shot of a real, physical subject. It is a subject most of us can find right around our town.

    To find out more about what it is, go to my web site and find a similar looking image in Projects.

  • A Selfish Pursuit

    A Selfish Pursuit

    When you think about it, most art, photography included, is a selfish pursuit. That is, it is about us, the artist. It is our expression. Is that bad?

    Revealing what things look like

    Go back to the mid 19th Century for photography and maybe a hundred years or more earlier for painting and one major reason for creating a work is to show people a (relatively) objective view of what a place looked like. People didn’t travel much back then, especially just for pleasure.

    In the late 1800’s, unless you lived close to them, you would never have seen Niagara Falls, or the Rocky Mountains, or the Grand Canyon, or the Colombia River. Not in person. So there was a need for artists to show us these sights.

    Artists like Bierstadt painted rather romantic and exaggerated views of scenery, like the Rocky Mountains. I hate to break it to you, but the Rockies don’t really look like this. A big selling point for photography was that it quickly captured “reality” (whatever that is). So photography brought views of places to a larger audience. This helped cement the false opinion that photographs are “real”.

    Its been done

    That was then. Now is different. Virtually every place has been photographed. I have a friend who specializes in wilderness photography – places few people have seen. But that is the exception, not the norm.

    Now people travel long distances comfortably and relatively cheaply. And it is estimated that about 3 trillion photos are taken a year ( a trillion is 1012, that is 1 million millions). So nearly every place people want to go has been visited millions of times and they have taken millions of pictures there.

    We don’t need another picture of Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon just to show people what it looks like. They have seen it. Many times. Too many times.

    What is an aspiring artist to do?

    Art now is about expression

    What there is to do is to show a fresh, new point of view. I won’t say we must make a creative picture. That can easily lead to producing something different for the sake of being different. This leads to a lot of difficult to understand work that may not mean anything, but it is different.

    It may be better to suggest we create work that is authentic. That is, it expresses our feeling or point of view and is also well done and artistic. Supposedly authentic work is fresh and unique because it expresses our own uniqueness. I cynically put the “supposedly” comment in because I’m not sure that many people actually have a refined point of view. A lot of people copy what they have seen someone else do.

    Anyway, authentic work that expresses us should have a well reasoned and optimized composition, a look that is consistent with our other work, and an approach to the subject that reflects our feelings about it. It does not have to be of exotic locations or subjects unless that is what we are drawn to. Actually, the subject matter can be mundane and common if we have a fresh approach to it.

    I have to do it first for me

    Therefore, I claim that art is a selfish pursuit. I have to do it for me, to express what is drawing me to the subject. If it is liked by other people, that is a plus. But if I create the work mainly to please others, I lose sight of my own uniqueness. I miss out on bringing the viewer something new because it is something that comes out of me.

    So in this special case, be selfish. Think of yourself first. Create art that pleases you. Other people will be drawn to the passion that is obviously there. They will ignore lifeless copies of what they have already seen.

    Today’s Image

    This was in downtown Denver one time. I was grabbed by the patterns and lines and reflections. I had to do something with it. The herd of people traveling through in a protected bubble, probably oblivious to most of the beauty around them, really got me.

  • Why Do It?

    Why Do It?

    Here’s a dirty secret of the photography world: we don’t make much money on fine art sales. Then why do it?

    Crowded market

    The art market in general is crowded, over-saturated, cutthroat. And photography is even worse. Everyone is a photographer. Trillions of images are shot every year. If only 1 trillion pictures are taken a year, that is an average of over 2.7 billion pictures a day. Who has time to look at anything anymore?

    And people have come to view photographs as some pixels on their phone screen. They quickly scan through hundreds of them a day. That devalues art in general and fine art in particular.

    Even if your work is excellent, how do you get people’s attention? Not many people go to galleries. If you are looking for a nice image to go over your couch or fireplace, where do you go? Etsy? Art Marketplace? Amazon? Maybe, but you will quickly drown in choices. Some of them are good.

    Other channels

    The fine art photographers I know who are making money sell through galleries or art fairs. But even that generally does not support them.

    No, most “professional’ fine art photographers support themselves through conducting workshops or selling online courses or writing books. There is still money to be made there. Seems like everybody is a perpetual beginner and needs training. A photographer who makes a name for himself can do well teaching other people.

    Fine Art

    I keep saying “fine art” photography. That is what I generally do and what I like. It is a small niche of the overall photography market.

    People whose main motivation is selling art are told, rightly, to go to Art Marketplace or Amazon or places like that and research what people are buying. Then do more of that. Following the crowd is a sure strategy to sales.

    That is not what I do and I do not want to do it. I am interested in creating art – exploring and using my creative vision – instead of copying what other people are doing.

    Self motivation

    I would love to sell more of my prints. ( photos.schlotzcreate.com or contact me ed@schlotzcreate.com 🙂 ), but maybe not for the reason you would first think.

    In my view, my art will be expressed mainly as prints. A print has many great qualities that are well beyond what a screen can provide.

    I want people to appreciate my work enough to pay for a large, excellent quality print to put in their home or office. Something they want to look at frequently over the years because it stirs something in them. It creates a relationship between us, between my vision and its effect on their life. I want to know who is buying the print and why. To me, another nice nighttime shot of the Dallas skyline they buy off Amazon does not do that.

    I spent a great career as an engineer, but I kept alive a secret desire to express my creativity through photographic imagery. It is one of the important things I do to keep growing as a human. I don’t actually have to support myself financially through my art. I can be selective. Call me privileged if you want, or call it good planning and knowing how to build a good life.

    Can’t not do it

    So I have a strong desire to share my works with people, to have them resonate with some of them enough to decide to buy them to look at for years to come. I hope my art will add something to their lives.

    But if no one sees my work and no one buys my prints, I still have to do them. Ultimately, my art is for me. It is something I need to do, that I am driven to do. My art completes something in me. It is something I can’t not do.

    I have long since given up on the romantic notion of becoming rich and famous through my art.

    Today’s image

    I can’t pass up something like this. The simplicity and distinct graphic lines grab me. In this case, I risked getting fired, because I took it at a company I worked for where they had a strict no camera policy. But I walked in this door every day and when the light was right… Well, I couldn’t stop myself.

  • How Not to be Creative

    How Not to be Creative

    You can find suggestions everywhere about how to be creative. I decided to turn it around and offer suggestions on how not to be creative. Is that creative? 🙂 I can’t guarantee that doing the opposite will make you creative, but perhaps they may be warning signs for consideration.

    Creativity

    We all want to be creative (I hope). But what it is? How do you define it?

    We all have different views and expectations. For photography, maybe it comes down to making images that seem fresh and “different” in a good way. They say that everything has been photographed. I don’t buy that. But even if it has, there are new viewpoints or treatments or lighting on our subjects. And there are still lots of things no one has thought to photograph.

    Few of us will create wholly new art genres the world has never seen. Few of us really want to. But we can do work that people look at, come back to, and admire as a whole new way of seeing a subject. We can project our feelings onto the print, giving it our unique stamp.

    We often use the metaphor of the muse inspiring us to creativity. If the muse is with us we are creative. If she is not, we can’t seem to do fresh work. Yes, our creative inspiration seems to come and go; to have highs and lows. I do not believe some imaginary Greek goddesses actually have anything to do with it. It is really happening within us.

    So rather than chasing after creativity, I want to look at ways to stifle the creativity we have.

    Distraction

    If you live in the Western world, you are probably paralyzed by distractions. Our devices and entertainment rather successfully compete for all of our time and mental bandwidth.

    People open their phones dozens of times a day because of fear of missing out (FOMO). We are expected to be online and available to our employers 24/7, even when on vacation. The wonders of the internet has opened up far too many “opportunities” to spend our time and attention.

    But rather than being an incredibly empowering technological aid to us, it has become the master we are slaves to. People are online at work all day then spend many hours at home doom scrolling funny cat videos or new dance moves or movies we don’t really care about.

    So, a great way to subvert your creativity is to be so distracted we do not have time for original thought. Creativity requires quiet time and very limited distractions. In general, the more attention we give our phones and other devices, the less opportunity to be creative we have.

    The technology is not bad in itself. I have 1G fiber and i would not want to let go of it. What we do with it is where we can hurt ourselves.

    Stress

    Another great creativity killer is stress. Stress focuses all of our attention on the problems we are facing.

    The world always tries to keep us treading water. Just a couple of days ago my fuel pump went out, while we were driving in a hard to access location in the mountains. Do you know how long it takes and what it costs to get your car towed over Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park? And do you know what it costs to replace a fuel pump? That can peak your blood pressure.

    That’s just one little example. All of us deal with many sources of stress all the time. It comes with life.

    Like our devices, stress occupies all of our attention if we let it. When we are stressed and worrying, we are seldom thinking creative thoughts. It seems more survival mode.

    So, to kill creativity, give in to worrying about stress. Fixate on those problems. Live with a survival mentality.

    Of course, we can’t just wish our stressors away. We need to deal with them. How we deal with them is up to us. Attitude is a big deal.

    Trying too hard

    Want to chase away the muse? Trying too hard is a good way.

    We should always be trying hard. What I mean, though, is trying to force our self to create something on our schedule. Just sitting there saying “I have to create something; now; do it; right now”. How does that work for you?

    Maybe it works better for you than it does for me. If I try to force myself to be creative it seems to have the opposite effect. I am a total blank.

    Actually, I can often lure creativity to visit me by ignoring it and thinking about or working on something else. I believe artistic creativity comes from the subconscious. Our minds need to be occupied with something not too demanding so our subconscious can be free to wander and think new thoughts. But then we must be conscious enough to realize what just happened and capture the idea.

    Too busy

    Another good way to not be creative is to be too busy. Busy with demanding tasks that occupy all our attention and mental bandwidth.

    The world around us encourages a high level of busyness. What do you say when someone greets you? “How ‘ya doing?” “Man, I’m staying really busy!” It’s almost a badge of honor.

    Being busy is much better than being idle. But like most things, when taken to an extreme, it can be destructive.

    If you are one of those super busy people with a full calendar, how do you find time to be creative? Maybe it is as simple as doing some prioritization and putting some blocks of time in your calendar where you will let your mind relax and give yourself the space to focus on your art.

    Imitation

    The last creativity killer I want to talk about is imitation. Are you trying to make art like your mentor or favorite artist?

    I believe this is a trap because we cannot be them. We can make work that looks a lot like theirs. But this is looking backward at what they have done in the past. We cannot be in their mind and have the same thoughts and influences that will guide them to new work. So all we can really do is copy them. That is not creative. We are not adding anything new.

    Can we learn from other artists? Of course! That is how advancements are made. The critic Lionel Trilling is quoted as saying “Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.” Many others have said similar things in slightly different ways. The consistent point made is that we take what we can learn from others and add it to our own art. Just imitating them, though, is a dead end.

    Conclusion

    Creativity is something we all have in varying amounts. It is an enabler and motivation of being an artist. But we are surrounded by many powerful forces that want to stifle our creativity.

    All the creativity sucking problems I list here are real and probably attack most of us most days. They are easy to identify but very hard to overcome.

    We cannot just pretend they are not there. Instead, we have to be very aware of them and actively work to fight them. If we don’t, we will be sucked into their trap and our art will never be seen. The path of least resistance is to give in and let our creativity be choked out.

    Fight!