Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: creativity

What Do You See?
We all have different interests, which triggers different perceptions of things around us. What do you see? That determines a lot about what you will photograph.
Visual mechanics
If we are an average human beings, we have fairly similar optical equipment. We have rods and cones, corneas and irises, an optical nerve. In the brain we have the occipital lobe doing the major image processing, the parietal lobe handling spatial recognition, and the temporal lobe interfacing to memory. Memory is important to the scene recognition process.
This is fascinating in a general way, but I’m not interested in any of that for this discussion. I don’t care about the mechanisms of how we see.
If I was shopping for a car and the salesman insisted on going on in great length about the design details of the engine, he would probably lose a sale. I’m not uninterested in that, but I am more interested in what the car will do for me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Perception
In a similar way, I’m not very interested in the mechanism of sight. I want to know how we use our vision. Why do we see what we see? Do we see the same things others around us see?
I refer to this as our perception. That is not based on how well our visual system works, but in what we are drawn to notice and decide to photograph. Basically, what we choose to see.
I have heard it said that if you take 2 photographers and put them side by side in a 10×10 foot area they couldn’t leave and have them take pictures, they would be different. Sure, they would image many of the same subjects, but their work would be different. One may favor wide angle shots taking in all the field around them. The other may favor telephoto views narrowing in on details. Even if they used the same cameras and lens, their compositions would be distinct. Basically, they are perceiving different stories. They see and feel different things.
I haven’t tried this literal experiment, but I have been on photo walks where a group traveled through the same area for an hour or two. When we compared results there were significant differences in treatments and subject selection. We each had different perceptions.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Insight
To me, our perception is closely related to the insight we bring to a scene or subject. Insight in the sense of intuition. A Psychologist’s definition of insight is “when a solution to a problem presents itself quickly and without warning.” I believe that is too limited for our application to photography.
I prefer to broaden it to include more of our consciousness. The term noesis better captures it. Very simply, it is “the power of acute observation and deduction, discernment, and perception.”
In our photography, that is basically saying we are looking, we recognize the interest to us, and we know what to do with it. That allows that we could be intentionally looking to photograph the subject, or we may just suddenly recognize that it is interesting. But either way, our perception is working, our eyes are open, and our mind is engaged.
Selective attention
Most people are not open and engaged most of the time. We are glued to our tiny screens for much of our day. Even when we put them down, we tend to be lost in thought about our to-do list or an important meeting coming up or a problem we are trying to solve.
It is a human tendency to have tunnel vision when we are worrying or focused on a problem. Psychologists call this selective attention. There is an old but famous video used as an experiment in this. Try it before reading ahead to the next paragraph. Really focus on counting the passes.
Did you notice the gorilla? About half the people who are concentrating on counting the passes didn’t. This is selective attention. Even when something bizarre passes through our field of view, we can miss it completely because we are concentrating on something else.
There is a second finding that came out of this. Most of the subjects who missed the gorilla were very surprised they had done it. They seriously overestimated their ability to multitask. It seemed inconceivable to them that they could miss something so obvious.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Are you open?
When we have the privilege of getting in the “doing photography” mode, whatever that means for you, we must fight to free ourselves from the things that are stealing our attention.
When we are distracted, we will miss amazing things. Doing photography means to take ourselves out of this, to invert our attention to what’s going on around us, to be receptive.
This is being open. It is letting the noesis I described earlier function: “the power of acute observation and deduction, discernment, and perception.”
There is power in this. It turns simple seeing into deep observation and insight. We are aware of relationships and gesture and color and composition and beauty and detail that would otherwise flow by unobserved and unrecorded. It allows us to capture moments that others around us did not perceive.
I love it when I show someone an image and they say ‘Wow, I pass by that every day and I have never noticed it!” I treasure a memory of one time when I was setting up to take a picture and a woman passing by dismissively said “I don’t see anything interesting here.” But I did. That was satisfying.
It is very natural to be thinking about our daily worries. I can’t help you with that. I do too. But some of our significant distractions are self-inflicted. If we are photographers, I believe we need to set aside blocks of time where we put the phone down and out of sight and pay attention to what we are missing all around us.
We only have a certain amount of attention. Moment by moment we choose what to spend it on. Multi-tasking is very ineffective for creative tasks. When we try to do our art and something else, both will suffer.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Give yourself permission
One joy of being a photographer is that we can give ourselves permission to step out of the flood that carries most people along. Picking up our camera is an excuse and an opportunity to be immersed in the moment, in a creative flow. Eyes open, mind engaged, not distracted. This is tremendously energizing. It makes us feel very alive. We start to see.
We photograph what we are looking at. That’s the direction our head is pointing, so that is where our field of vision is. That limits what we could see. But what are we seeing? That is our choice. We “see” with our mind. What we notice in our field of view is determined by our interests and curiosity. With practice and experience we can learn to see more. To more clearly see things that are not obvious to other people.
December 3, 2025
Image Quality
As photographers, we often obsess over image quality. The highest resolution, the sharpest focus, the best light, the best composition. All these things are important, but is that really what defines image quality?
Technical perfection
Photography is more closely tied to technology than most other 2-dimensional art forms. Our cameras embody sophisticated technology. Our editing tools are leading edge, sometimes AI driven.
The field seems obsessed with specifications and details. What is the MTF of this lens? Does this sensor have 14 bits of dynamic range or only 12? Should I go to a 100 MPixel medium format system to be a better photographer?
I have chased all of this at times, and I still have that tendency. A couple of times recently I have gone through the specs and lens choices for medium format, longing for a move up to the “better” gear.
Underlying all this is the belief that better technology will give us better image quality. But a more technically perfect image is not necessarily a better one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Composition rules
The visual arts seem to accumulate a large set of rules meant to guide our work. These are generally sound principles, based on long history of practice and evaluation. Most of them are good, except for the “rule” part.
The “rule of thirds”, for instance, helps balance compositions and give some dynamic life to an image. Same for rules like leading lines or diagonals or don’t center the subject. All are good advice to keep in mind. The problem comes when it becomes an absolute rule. When a gallery or a photo club judge rejects our photo because it did not conform to one of the standard composition rules, then we are in the wrong place.
Know and use the rules, and understand that you can freely “break” them whenever you feel you need to. Guidance like these “rules” are good general advice. But general advice does not apply to each individual case. You are the artist. Your decisions create the image. Trust your intuition.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Work the scene
Other advice I have heard recently is to work the scene to develop it into the best shot. We are counseled to take many exposures from different angles and maybe with different lenses, with the objective that by shooting all this variety, one of the shots will be “best”.
It is probably true that one will be best, but is this the best, or only way, to get there? Let’s work through a scenario. Say I am there with lenses of 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm, 100mm, and 200mm (full frame equivalent). Let’s further say that that I have access to shoot front left from ground level, center above ground level, front right at eye level, and rear center at ground level. Just those individual choices give 24 shots to take. Then throw in bracketing for aperture and exposure and composition and that gives possibly hundreds of shots. For one scene.
It is true that if you do that, you may occasionally be surprised by the one you select as best. It is a great learning exercise if you are developing your style and vision. And a good exercise to go through occasionally to check yourself.
But I generally know what I want. I have the experience of shooting and viewing hundreds of thousands of images. My preferences are established, but flexible. That is, I experiment frequently so as not to fall into a rut. But I do not need to shoot hundreds of frames of one scene to get to what I would consider “best”.
And ever worse, I fear that blindly following this “work the scene” advice will lead to the best possible shot of a mediocre scene. Meanwhile, we miss the better, more imaginative, more creative scene because we were over-concentrating on one thing. I prefer to use my judgment to frame the best shot and go on to find the next, even better one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Disappointment?
I have done all of these. For years I chased technical perfection. During my time in a camera club, I faithfully followed the composition rules. I shamefully confess that as a judge I criticized some images for not following the rules. And at times I have ended up with piles of images bracketing one scene to insensibility. Usually with the result that I kept one of the first ones I shot and threw the rest away.
Many of these efforts led to technically good images that are lifeless and disappointing. They do not capture my reaction or relationship to the scene. There is no depth of insight. Only a very small fraction are printed and hanging on my wall now.
I have had to completely rethink what “image quality” means.
Image quality
These observations are strictly my personal judgments. I have no authority over your artistic values. As artists, we each should come to our own conclusions.
I have seen that many of the famous photos and paintings in history are not technically perfect. But something about them elevates them above the crowd. What is that? I know I have images shot with inferior cameras with cheap lenses that are “better” than many taken with much better cameras. This makes me wonder what image quality really means.
Now days, we are inundated with images. Most are adequately sharp and well exposed. What makes one stand out among those trillions of bits of noise?
We must reevaluate what it means to be a good image. It is no longer the obscurity of the location or the difficulty of the shot or the perfect composition or the sharp detail. None of those are enough, by themselves, to make an outstanding shot. In a Substack article, Lee Anne White said: “There are always photographs that are technically solid, but missing that something extra“. Ah, that something extra is so hard to describe.
Photography is a craft as well as an art. We must strive to do an excellent job of technical perfection, composition, etc. But those things are not the something extra that make an outstanding image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Something extra
In the crowded and noisy world of images, it seems that what we look to now is an emotional attachment. Something must touch us personally. To do that, it generally had to touch the artist, too. We must be able to let our emotional reaction to the scene come through our image.
Maybe this is what Cartier-Bresson meant by the decisive moment. Perhaps this is what Jay Maisel means by the gesture of something. Either way, an idea is that the subject is expressing something. We must be in sync with it and ready and able to capture the best expression of that.
These instances sometimes happen in a fleeting moment. Perhaps we can anticipate them and be setup and prepared. Sometimes it is a singular event, and we have one shot at it. But either way, we must recognize and react. We must understand what is happening and be mentally and physically prepared to capture it.
And being prepared involves understanding our emotional involvement with what it is. We must recognize when that gesture is best expressed to us, and pounce on it.
Of course, images do not have to be of a fleeting moment to be good and express an amazing gesture. There are those that are static scenes, where you can linger over it to wait for the right light or weather.
Still, what the viewer relates to is your feeling about it. Why did you take this picture? Why did you select it out of all the others?
Paraphrasing Jay Maisel: “If the thing you’re shooting doesn’t excite you, what makes you think it will excite anyone else?”
If an image meant something special to me, and I can capture that and make you feel what I felt, then there is a chance the image is meaningful to you, too. That it embodies the “something extra.” Isn’t this what image quality is about?
November 19, 2025
How Did You Think of That?
Most of us are not limited by our knowledge or our equipment or our environment. We are limited by the boundaries we place on our imagination. The question is not “how did you do that?”. It is “how did you think of that?”
Self-limiting
Maybe it is harsh to say we limit ourselves. But I have come to believe it.
I have gotten a lot from a quote from my friend Cole Thompson:
Many photographers will see an image they admire and ask: how did you do that? They want to know the techniques used, thinking that once they know those, they could create that image.
The question they should be asking is: how did you think of that?
Do we tend to follow what other people do, or do we create our own path? I believe we are afraid because we are not confident in our own creativity. It is safer to imitate.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Equipment
There are many excuses for our perceived limitations. One easy one is that my equipment is not good enough.
Photographers seem to lust for new equipment. If I had a medium format camera I could … That new super zoom lens would let me …
I understand. I have equipment lust like anyone. But on the other hand, I have come to believe that if you hand a Brownie box camera to a good artist, they will make good images. They will embrace the limitations and use them as part of the art.
This tells me that, in general, equipment is not the fundamental limitation. There may be specific situations that require certain technology, but artistry is independent of technology.
So, I don’t think I can use the excuse of not having good enough equipment. What I have is perfectly adequate to make art. I just must learn how.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Knowledge
Learning how brings up the excuse of not enough knowledge. I understand. I am a constant learner. Almost everyday beings a new video or article or book I consume to learn to be better. I have hundreds of hours of videos and a library of books. Photography is more closely aligned to technology than most other arts, and it is supported by huge amounts of training material.
But I also know this can become a crutch and an excuse. When will you get to the magic threshold of knowledge required to be an artist? Sometimes needing more study becomes an excuse for being afraid to go out and do it.
Again, I know. I’m talking to myself, too. I get caught up in this. Today I watched a presentation on photographic abstraction, including techniques for in-camera multiple exposure and intentional camera movement. It was educational and motivating. But I didn’t immediately go out and apply it. And if I was not an artist before seeing it, I still could not call myself one after it. Maybe the amount of raw knowledge is not the key. We do not become an artist by a certain amount of training or a degree or certificate.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a strong believer in learning. Our tools are complex. And I believe that the more examples and points of views we have seen gives us greater fluency with our art. But as an artist, the knowledge must be internalized, then re-expressed in our vision. If we are studying but not doing it, we are not making art.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Environment
I get stimulated and energized by travel. I am lucky in getting the opportunity to take a few trips a year. The places and things I see while traveling seem newer and more interesting than the stuff where I live.
But travel is a bonus, an extra stimulation. The reality is that I spend most of my time around home. I must discipline myself to see the ordinary things around me with fresh eyes.
Don’t fall into the trap of feeling like you can’t make any interesting images because you do not have the chance to travel to exotic locations. Great photo opportunities are everywhere if we learn to see them. This is the type of mindfulness I recommend. The ability to see the ordinary with fresh eyes.
I live in a relatively small town along the Colorado front range. But I seldom take a day to go into the mountains. Almost every day, though, I go out and walk a few miles, starting from my studio. I try to vary my routes, but there are only so many directions I can go.
This means I see the same areas frequently. Finding something interesting that I haven’t seen before or that looks fresh and different is a challenge. But it is a challenge I have accepted as a test of my creativity. I have been doing this for years and I can still find engaging things.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Imagination
This may seem to have wandered far from the question of “how did you think of that?” My point is that our art is not limited by our equipment or our training or our environment. Our limitation is our imagination. Can we look at something that everybody sees all the time and see it different? Can we think something new?
That is a problem, but it is a good problem. If the limitation is in our head, we have some control of it and can fix it. Or at least make it better.
I believe an important step is reclaiming the curiosity we had as kids. Remember that curiosity you had, or your kids had? Why is the sky blue? What is the moon made of? In the olden days, was everything black and white?
Curiosity like this leads to asking “what if?” questions and to looking at the world different. We can begin to think of new ways to photograph, new ways to see things. The same thing we have always seen may be perceived in a new way. Answering the questions is less important than that we were able to ask them. The questions challenge us to look again and deeper.
So, maybe, to be a better photographer, I don’t need the latest equipment (bummer), or more training, or a trip to New Zealand. Maybe I just need to re-learn how to ask interesting questions. To be curious about everything. And to not be afraid to ask ourselves “what would happen if…?”
Try it. Be a kid. Follow your curiosity. Make mistakes and enjoy them. Don’t imitate other people. Create something no one else has ever seen.
As the great Jay Maisel said: If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.
November 12, 2025
Post Exploration
We focus a lot on the process of taking pictures. And rightly. But the world of post processing is another rich opportunity for “making” images.
Taking pictures
When we think about photography, we think about taking pictures. After all, that is what photography is, isn’t it? That is where we capture the data that becomes the final image. For many, the thinking stops there. Click – picture.
Maybe crop it a little or remove a distraction. Perhaps work on the overall color. But the picture is the picture. No reason to make many changes.
Many people, especially some “serious” photographers, feel that the image should be made whole and complete in the camera. Anything other than simple edits that make no substantive changes to the original image is suspect or forbidden. That is their opinion, and they are welcome to it, so long as they do not try to bind it on me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Post processing
But for other photographers, the world of post processing is much larger than that. Yes, there is cropping and distraction removal and some color tweaks, but those are just the basic first steps.
I will go out on a limb and say that post processing is as large and important a skill as is capturing images. The world of digital imaging has thrown us into a situation where what happens after the shutter press can be as important as what happens leading up to it. And our tools have become far more powerful, enabling “darkroom” processing far beyond what any film shooter ever dreamed of. It would be foolish not to take advantage of it.
I assume you shoot RAW images. There are times to shoot jpg, but those are rare in my world of fine art photography. But RAW images require extensive editing. They look bland right out of the camera, since they did not go through heavy-handed jpg processing that is trying to make a best guess of what we wanted.
Just enhancing
After that initial round of basic edits, we get more serious for the images we pull out to work up. Now we probably do some initial sharpening. Then set overall contrast, black & white points, maybe some clarity to punch it up some more.
At this point the image is starting to take shape. Now I may spend a lot of time working on tonal gradations. Working on the details of lighting and separating element so they can be seen more clearly. Then there is working on global saturation and luminance and maybe even hue of individual colors.
We may decide to add a vignette to help focus attention on the subject. Perhaps we will use color grading or profiles to change the overall “look” of the image. Maybe so far as going to black & white.
There are so many more. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We can easily spend hours on one image doing these and many more. I have watched hundreds of hours of tutorial videos describing techniques for doing these things. Really getting in depth on Lightroom Classic or, especially, Photoshop is a project requiring years. And they are moving targets.
But at this point, we have a nicely corrected image – that is still basically the original photograph. It may be exactly the scene as we remember it, or it may have a color wash, or even be in black & white, but it is the same photograph.
Again, this is where another large group of photographers stop.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Permission to play
And that’s where I stop with most of my images. But there are other doors to open that can lead to new destinations.
Here is a statement of belief for me: pixels are raw material. They are just pieces of data saved on your computer. They do not “mean” anything except for the meaning we ascribe to them when we view them all together as an image. This is my belief. but since it is not based on laws or regulations or fundamentals of nature, it is just my belief. Feel free to disagree and act accordingly.
But since this is my belief, I am free to do anything I want with my data. There is nothing like PETA for protecting against the abuse of pixels.
I give myself unlimited permission to play with my data. And I do, to degrees. The problem is that it is hard to break away from old habits and beliefs. Too often, I am trapped by my limited thinking. I see an image. I don’t always see what those pixels could become. That, more than camera resolution or tools or computer power, limits what I make.
Permission to play does not mean I will always take advantage of my freedom. I am self-limited. My actions don’t always follow my beliefs. But I’m trying to break my mental barriers.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Making new images
I love compositing, combining 2 or more images to make something new. It is a joy when I can take 2 dissimilar images and make something different from either. Sometimes I put together 3,4, 10 images. The resulting image may only have bits and pieces of each source file. Did you know that a TIFF file has a maximum size of 4G Bytes? After that you must bump up to the PSB format. Quite a few of my experimental images do that.
And I love taking an image and processing it with different textures or digital effects to create a very different look. So much so that sometimes when I am out shooting, I mainly shoot textures. I have a good library of them.
And have you played with some of the interesting Photoshop filters that are built in? Quite a variety of tools for blur, rendering, warp, landscape mixer, distort, stylize, etc. I can experiment for hours in Photoshop trying new combinations of things.
Some actually create results I like. But you never know until you try.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
The digital world
My point is that our “photo opportunities” do not stop when we press the shutter. Capturing a good image is very important. But there are endless possibilities for improving it or totally changing it in post processing. Sometimes we see opportunities for doing more than just making an image look better. Post processing is another creative outlet.
Digital images are much more malleable than film. Pixels are just data. Data can be processed. There is a world of opportunity in the post processing, if we can break out of our limited view of what can and should be done to our pixels. I call it post exploration.
If you are a fine art photographer, the ethical choice is to do your best, most creative work. Not to protect pixels.
October 29, 2025
Lean Into It
I can’t be passive about my art, my photography. The only way I know to approach it is to lean into it. To boldly and confidently attack it.
Different styles
We all have different personalities and different working styles for our art. A portrait photographer or wedding photographer might need to be in positive control of the situation. To direct the subjects to get the shots and results anticipated. On the other hand, a street photographer may unobtrusively “stalk” the shots he wants. He works completely in the background and usually without the subjects being aware of being photographed.
A landscape photographer may plan a trip long in advance to be at a certain location at what he determines to be the best time for the shot he wants. Or another one may just go wandering with no preconceived plans or shot list.
These are examples. All show different methods of approaching the craft. But regardless of the approach or the personality, one of the common ingredients in our art is intensity.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Intensity
All good artists I know share a certain type of intensity about their craft. When they are doing their art, they are “on” – focused, earnest, single-minded.
In my limited experience, this seems to be true no matter what genre they work in. Their personality modifies the way this intensity is expressed, but it is usually there.
I think this intensity helps to focus us on where we are and what is happening. On our goals or what we are experiencing. It helps us to stay in the moment.
People talk with some longing about flow states and how desirable they are. But in my art and in the career I had before that, I find them common. Valuable and wonderful, but fairly easily achieved.
That is not bragging. I think the intensity and focus I can bring to my work enables flow. It is not uncommon for me to be so caught up in my photography or writing or editing that hours can pass without me being conscious of them. From talking to other artists, I believe this is a shared experience for many.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Mindful
I often talk about the desirability of being mindful. The intensity of our focus on our work leads to this type of mindfulness. Mindfulness in the sense that we are completely caught up in the moment. We are immersed in our art and the creative process. Other concerns and considerations do not exist for us at that moment.
Let me emphasize that I am taking about lower case “mindfulness”. Not some system of chants or meditation. It is not a semi-religious experience for me. I hold my own religious beliefs, and they are separate from this.
I believe this type of mindfulness is a result of my intense focus on my art, not a cause of my creative output. That is, my focus leads to creativity and mindfulness, not the other way around.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do it
We all get into creative slumps. No new ideas are popping up. We aren’t even enthusiastic about getting out and taking pictures or editing. That’s natural.
But I feel that one of the worst things we can do is just sit around waiting to feel inspired. At these times, I believe it is important to get up and get out and work. Go out to “do” art and do it until we loosen up and get into the moment and things start to flow.
This is what I mean by “lean into it“. It is a process of embracing what we are doing and the situation we are in, making it into something good. It is a matter of overcoming a situation or our inertia. We push back against what is resisting us, and deal with it, with confidence and determinism.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Resistance can often be a good thing. That is what exercise basically is. Forcing our body to work against the weights or the track builds up strength and endurance. I believe strongly that it works the same way for our mental powers. We need to read and think about challenging material. Things that exercise our brain. I can’t prove it, but I believe it also works for our creative powers. We learn to create better by going through the pain of creating.
Same in our photography. We often blame circumstances, and they are real and inescapable. But much of the time the real barrier is our attitude. We are not willing to change our attitude and put in the work to overcome the situation. Get out the door (or go to where you do your work), get switched on, find your intensity. Lean into it.
Nike was right: just do it.
Do one thing every day that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build courage to do the work we do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Inspiration is for amateurs. Us professionals just go to work in the morning.
Chuck Close
October 22, 2025