Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: fine art photography

  • How Fragile is my Style?

    How Fragile is my Style?

    Some photographers say you should look at and study as many examples of other artists work as you can. Others say you should not view other’s work. Underlying it is an assumption of how much our own style might be affected by other artist’s work. Is my style fragile and easily influenced or is it inherently robust?

    I have been reading the book More Than a Rock by Guy Tal. (I have no financial incentive in recommending this) Guy is a very thoughtful writer and the book is challenging. I recommend it. It has no tips for taking pictures, it is about why we take them.

    Artistic Promiscuity

    A recent chapter titled Artistic Promiscuity made me examine some of my beliefs. Like many artists, I occasionally have self-doubt about my style – about whether I really have one. Guy poses the situation ‘I was baffled when I recently heard from a fellow photographer asking if I would recommend avoiding viewing other people’s photographs as a means of isolating one’s own “vision”.’

    A vocal proponent of just such a position is my friend Cole Thompson. His blog is well written and has some great insights. But he has a controversial position for his own life, he does not look at other people’s images. He calls it Photographic Celibacy.

    Guy attacks this straw man he set up, arguing about artistic history and how creativity flowed and developed over time as artists were inspired by other artist’s work. And he talks about how seeing great art is inspiring and elevating, especially to another artist.

    He goes on to say “So be promiscuous, at least when it comes to art. Seek and study and contemplate and revel in art of all kinds and genres and styles – the more the better. Find what inspires you and articulate to yourself why it inspires you. Borrow but don’t steal; incorporate but don’t imitate. Find inspiration, wisdom, and knowledge in the works of others, and in return strive to inspire others with your own work. Such has always been the way of artists.”

    Guy’s advice is very mature and inclusive. He has a strong world view and belief structure. A self-confidence that comes from experience and values. It is good advice, at least for him. It may not be universal advice for everyone in every stage of development.

    Photographic Celibacy

    Cole, on the other hand says; “As I stopped looking at other people’s images and focused on what I was creating and what I thought of my work, my Vision began to emerge. The work I am creating now is my work, not an imitation of someone else’s.”

    He has been on this path for years and is not likely to change his mind. He says “Ten years later and I’m still practicing Photographic Celibacy because I find it a useful practice for two reasons: first I’m still inclined to copy other’s work. … And the other reason I still find Photographic Celibacy useful: it keep me focused on what I am doing and not what others are doing. When I look at the work of others I find myself comparing their images and successes to mine. Sometimes I get discouraged at the large number of great photographers out there and all of the great images being created. All of this is an unnecessary distraction that keeps me from my purpose: creating images from my Vision.”

    This seems to work well for him. Cole has a distinct style and he is a great photographer.

    What is Vision?

    These two good artists disagree in how to develop your vision and grow as an artist, but what do they believe “vision” really is?

    Guy says “There is nothing to find – your vision, voice, and personal style are already in you by virtue of the unique amalgam of experiences, sensibilities, stories, and beliefs that make you who you are.”

    On the other hand, Cole says of vision “It is the sum total of your life experiences, it is the lenses you see the world through, it is your photographic personality and it is your inner voice (or the ‘force’ for you Star Wars fans). There is no need to be able to define, identify or describe your Vision. All you really need to know is that your Vision is there and then follow it.”

    Put these side by side and they are really saying the same thing – our vision is a unique property of who we are. It is inherent in each of us.

    Who is right?

    It seems that the Artistic Promiscuity position and the Photographic Celibacy position share the same belief of what Vision is. The difference is how to get there.

    Who is right? I believe Guy is right for Guy and Cole is right for Cole. They each recognize something about themselves that requires or allows them to behave in a certain way.

    Cole adopted his philosophy early in his formal career when he had doubts about his vision and style. He recognized that he was being influenced by other artists and needed to isolate himself to discover his vision. He recognizes and clearly states that this path is not for most people.

    Guy seems to be have a personality that thrives on the inspiration from other artists. He is confident in his vision and does not feel any temptation to imitate them.

    They are both right – for themselves.

    Fragile style?

    So is style really fragile? Probably not, but following and expressing our style is a very personal and individual journey. We may be going to the same place but we all take a different path to get there. Some of us get lost on our path and end up in the weeds.

    I admire that Cole recognized his nature and need and acted accordingly. It would be great to have the confidence of Guy, but in reality I am more like Cole. I am getting better, but the artistic spirit is a strange mixture of fragile and robust.

    Theodore Roosevelt said “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

    I think this is a wise warning. It is well proven that spending too much time on Facebook is destructive because you compare your everyday life that you know has problems to the happy, exaggerated image others portray.

    Likewise, being a photographic artist is a difficult thing these days. Everyone in the world is a photographer it seems. We are flooded with beautiful images all the time. It is hard not to compare ourselves to the best work we see out there and not feel doubt. It is hard sometimes not to think we should do work more like something we admired.

    Promiscuous or celibate? I think we have to know our own nature enough to decide.

    Is style fragile? No, not if it is really just who we are. It is probably not the style that is fragile but it can be hard to have the confidence to believe in ourselves and follow our own style. It can be hard to go against the stream of popularity. And some of us may need a quiet place to recognize our style and get to know it.

    How about you? What are your thoughts about style?

  • Not All Who Wander Are Lost

    Not All Who Wander Are Lost

    You are probably familiar with this quote, even if you can’t place exactly where it is from. I’ll get to that. The point here is to talk about my need to wander. I am seldom lost, especially when I wander.

    This quote is part of a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Fellowship of the Ring:

    All that is gold does not glitter,
    Not all those who wander are lost;
    The old that is strong does not wither,
    Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

    This is only half of the poem. The rest is specific to the plot of the story. But these 4 lines are golden. I may write about each line sometime.

    This time I am drilling in to the second line: “Not all those who wander are lost.”

    Get lost

    I am admittedly weird. I intentionally try to get “lost”, in the sense that I end up in places few people visit, that aren’t apparent on maps, and I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there. One characteristic of this kind of place is that there are few if any people around.

    Perhaps I am just an anti-social loner, but this kind of place invigorates me. I experience a kind of freedom I don’t feel in well populated areas.

    No, I don’t think I am dangerously deranged. As a matter of fact as I’m writing this I have to leave in a few minutes to meet with a group of friends. As much as I like friends and companionship, I will leave them for times to seek out the “off the map” experiences I crave.

    So far I find that these times of solitude are best experienced alone. I am shy and quiet. If people are around I find the “noise” drowns out the voice of the wilderness I am trying to listen to. With people around I feel compelled to “get on down the road” or get to dinner at a reasonable time. Not so when I am alone.

    One of my joys is to get an extremely detailed map and try to explore the tiniest, most remote roads I can find. And that is paper maps – a lot of the places I like to go don’t have cell phone service, so forget Google Maps, and I often can’t trust my Nav system in the car. They are seldom detailed enough.

    Don’t be foolish

    I am painting a picture of just heading off into the wild randomly and getting into all kinds of predicaments. When you go out to explore barren areas, don’t be stupid. Even though I generally travel alone, I have a good 4-wheel drive vehicle (with a large gas tank), food, water, and winter or summer survival kits. And I try to give someone a general idea of where I am going and when I should be back. And I’ve done this type of travel for a long time.

    Getting stuck in some of these places can be dangerous, even life threatening. Know what you are doing and be prepared. Ease into it to get a lot of experience before heading off solo.

    So, what’s it going to be — safety, or freedom? You can’t have both. – Louis Sachar

    I personally am willing to take a fair amount of risk to live a more free and rewarding life.

    Renewal

    I find that getting away and taking time to “listen” to that part of the world is refreshing and renewing. It does not have to be a conventionally beautiful place. I can easily be as renewed in the barren plains of eastern Colorado or Wyoming as I am in the mountains. The image at the top of this post is in eastern Colorado.

    When I come to one of these places and I feel a connection to it, I have a better chance of getting images I love. Ones where I feel I have something to say. I find I am usually missing that deep connection in a place that is just beautiful and where other photographers often record the same scene.

    Even if I do not get any great images, the renewal of my mind and soul is well worth it.

    Get found

    We live in an increasingly noisy world. Our jobs demand almost full time engagement. The giant media companies demand we be “plugged in” 24/7 because of fear of missing out. Learning to be content in solitude is an antidote to this. It is a way to take back control of your mind. Don’t be afraid of missing something. Those things actually don’t matter much compared to the benefits of our mental health.

    I don’t fully understand it, but there is something about the wild or neglected places that are uplifting to me. I don’t really know what it means to “find yourself”, but I often experience something that must be like it when I spend time in some remote places.

    Right now it is not as important to me that I understand the why. It is sufficient for my psyche that I know how to get found. And when I am found I can do work that calls to me, lifts me up, and pleases me.

    I hope it calls to you, too. Try it sometime. You might not know until you unplug for a while and try. Let me know what you find.

  • Get Out and Take Pictures

    Get Out and Take Pictures

    The image above was taken on a beautiful Colorado afternoon in the mountains. It was 1 degree F, snowing, and windy, about a foot of fresh snow. Awesome! Except for the wind. Still, an excellent opportunity to get out and take pictures!

    This is a theme I keep coming back to. You don’t improve your technique or vision by sitting around thinking about it. You have to take pictures. And evaluate them and throw most away. Daily should be a goal. Up to a point the weather shouldn’t matter.

    My inspiration comes mostly from the outdoors, so that is what I will talk about. If you do your work in the studio and that is where you get your best, most creative ideas, great for you. I will be outside taking my inspiration from the world around me and getting exercise, fresh air, vitamine D, etc.

    Shoot in these conditions

    Cloudy day? GREAT. Use that giant soft box to look for those soft light images you have been wanting to take. And if it is scattered, broken clouds that is great too. It gives much more interest to the sky.

    Sunny? GREAT. Use it. In Colorado, where I am most of the time, the sun is harsh and clear, not filtered through a lot of atmosphere. Conventional wisdom is that you can’t take outdoor images during the middle of the day when the sun is overhead. I like to challenge that. It is a good creative exercise.

    Raining? GREAT. Unless it is a thunderstorm or really pouring down pack up a minimal set of gear and get out. Your camera is probably more water resistant than you think. Just keep it covered as much as possible and wipe it down frequently. And it won’t hurt you to get wet.

    Snowing? GREAT. See above. I love good snowy pictures. I am amazed at the range of moods I can find.

    Fog? GREAT. I love it. I don’t get nearly as much practice with this as many people do. It is too dry here. But fog is great for moody, minimalistic compositions. And the junk areas you pass by every day take on a whole new interest when blurred by the fog.

    Cold? GREAT. Bundle up and get outside. Take an extra battery, because your camera battery is not as robust as you are. Other than the battery, your camera is pretty tough. I have a beard and I sometimes come back with my beard completely caked with ice. You warm up.

    Hot? GREAT. For me personally, this is one of the conditions I like least. I grew up in the southern USA. Summer days could be 110 F. I hated it and moved away when I could. Still, I challenge myself to go out almost every day in the summer. (It’s usually only in the 90’s here)

    Practice leads to…

    You get the idea. If you see a dedicated athlete, musician, writer, teacher, engineer, whatever, how do they get better? They practice. Every day. Obsessively. That is not all they do, but the good ones all do it.

    That basketball player may spend hours shooting free throws or practicing layups. That is not playing a game. But the point is it is building the reflexes and the muscle memory that will be used in the game. Making the moves automatic.

    When we are out for our daily practice do not have the attitude that every image has to be great. They won’t be. Mine are not even if I am trying to shoot good ones. Practice is to build skill. Plan on throwing most away.

    And the process lets us evaluate what we are doing. We can think more about what we like and what we will avoid. We see what works for us and what does not. This leads to helping us to perfect our style.

    I have mentioned before that one of my heroes is Jay Maisel. I think he is in his 80’s, but I believe he still goes out walking every day looking for pictures. He’s starting to get pretty good. 🙂

    Discipline

    Have you heard music or other things referred to as a “discipline”? It is a very appropriate term. To build skill you must discipline yourself. The repetition, the striving to improve each time helps you grow into your skill.

    Photography is no different. Constant practice helps us improve our skills. Technical decisions become quick and effortless. We learn to more easily analyze a scene and hone in on the part that is important to us. Most important, we learn what we want to bring to our images.

    Plan on throwing most of your practice away. The real benefit of these images if learning.

    Have you tried this? Do you agree? Let me know.

  • What is DPI?

    What is DPI?

    DPI is simply an acronym for “dots per inch”. It should be a simple concept, but people sometimes get twisted up in knots over it. Our printer manufacturers have not helped the situation.

    What are “dots”?

    Unless you are reading a printer spec sheet, dots just mean pixels. A pixel is a “picture element” – the smallest piece of a digital image. By convention, a pixel is a triplet of red, green and blue values. That sounds very technical, but it just means they are 3 values carried around together, say something like 95, 134, 47. By convention each value can have a range of 0 to 255. That is not representative of what camera sensors really do anymore, it is the convention. The convention comes from the 8 bit representation of color values way back in early times. The maximum value 8 bits of binary data can represent is 255. The practice has been established and perpetuated by Photoshop over the years. The actual data range we use is a subject for another post.

    The image that gets stored in your computer is a grid of pixels. The camera I am using most often right new creates an image that is 8256 x 5504 pixels. That makes a lot of data!

    A fuzzy quality metric

    Your camera does not know the concept of DPI. As a matter of fact, DPI is a fairly useless term unless you are printing an image.

    Have you ever had someone tell you they need a file that is 8×10 inches at 300 DPI? Unless you are sending the file to whoever does your photo printing, it really means they do not understand what they need.

    At best DPI is a metric for the quality of an image viewed or printed at a certain size. The more pixels you have in a given distance, the better the image should look, in general.

    But in most people do not even know the pixel resolution of their screen or printer. If you save a file in jpg format there is a good chance the default is 72 DPI. This was considered the “normal” screen resolution – way back. The main monitor I use is 219 DPI. And it is several years old. And I don’t really care, because that is a number that is never important to me. I never use it for anything.

    DPI really doesn’t matter for the screen

    One of the reasons DPI doesn’t mean much for most of us is that our computers scale images for viewing on our screen. And they usually do a really good job. But what most apps do is map the pixels available to the pixels of the screen. So if you look at a file that says it is 10″x10″ at 72 DPI, you will see a 720×720 pixel image. It will be however large 720 pixels measures on your screen.

    When you view an image on your screen all that really matters is the resolution. The DPI number is generally ignored.

    Size matters

    If DPI is not as important as many people think, then is resolution unimportant? No. Absolutely not. The number of pixels you have to work with is always an ultimate limitation of what you can do with the file. As is said in many things, size matters.

    With plenty of pixels imaged through good glass you have the flexibility to print large, or to crop tightly or to create images of astounding detail. Also, massive numbers of pixels gives sharper edges and smoother gradients.

    DPI for printers is a whole different thing

    The major printer manufacturers have confused the issue for us. A printer ad may proudly proclaim it does 4800 DPI! This is technically correct, but not helpful. They are talking about the density of ink drops they can lay down on the substrate (paper). But printers do not print pixels.

    A drop of print ink is not a pixel. You do not send the printer an image scaled to 4800 DPI!

    A printer takes the pixels available in a given area and transforms them to densities of the subtractive colors needed to come close to reproducing the colors and gradations contained in the original pixels. This is a complex technology and I will not attempt to explain it here. Sufficient that you remember a drop of ink is not a pixel.

    Where DPI means something

    When you know how large of a print you wish to make then DPI becomes meaningful. The number of pixels available combined with the desired print size give us the DPI. DPI is a measure of the amount of information available for an inch of print.

    For optimum printing the guideline is supplying a source file of around 250-360 DPI. This gives the printer driver enough information to do the ink transform we talked about above.

    My Canon printer, for instance, has a “standard” resolution of 300 DPI. It can print well with a range of values, but this is considered optimal. This means that one of my image files of 8256 x 5504 pixels could be used to print an image of 27.5″ x 18.35″ with no scaling or loss of resolution. That is the size of this image at 300 DPI.

    If I want to print one of my images at a more typical size, say 18″x12″ I could scale a copy of my master file down to 300 DPI. Or not, because Photoshop or Lightroom is perfectly capable of scaling it down when printing with little discernible degradation. One person even says that higher DPI gives better results.

    If I have an image with insufficient pixels I could just try to print it. Printer drivers do amazing things. Or I could scale it up in Photoshop, which also does an excellent job within limits.

    It’s those limits that you have to be able to estimate. If you have a 2 MPixel image and you want to print it poster size, well, your results probably will not meet your expectation. No free lunch.

    Conclusion

    So what about DPI? Don’t sweat it unless you are printing. Only if printing is it a meaningful metric. And it is only meaningful when you are taking about a particular image printed at a particular size.

    There are plenty of technical issues to stress out about. This should not be one of them, unless you are producing high quality prints.

  • Memory

    Memory

    Photographs are memory. Most of us take “snapshots” to record moments we want to remember. Facebook, Snapchat, and most other social media exists on snapshots.

    I have a whole image library of family and friend pictures. They are very important to me personally, even though I do not share them on social media (I’m one of the last remaining holdouts in the world).

    My images are my memories

    I also have a large library of my professional images. These are just as much my memories as the pictures of my grandkids. In some ways these are even more important.

    I have a terrible memory for dates, which is weird, because as an engineer, I have a better chance of remembering your phone number than I do your name. My wife can ask me when we went on a certain trip and I might guess a date that is 10 years off.

    But when I see one of my images, the whole context immediately comes back as a well formed memory (except for the date ☺). Without hesitation I can tell you where it was, what time of the year, what the weather was like, what trip it was on, who we were with, and what the circumstances of the picture were. And if it was a trip, what we were driving.

    Is this relevant to you? Probably not. It definitely is to me. These are my memories. Sometime in the future, if I start loosing my memory, I hope these will still bring back these contexts for a long time.

    But I want you to hang my images on your wall. Why should you want my memories? You don’t. I hope to bring other things that are of value to you.

    Place

    If I tell you that when making a certain image the temperature was -10F and the wind was blowing and my hands were freezing even with gloves on, that might give you some greater sense of the situation. Kind of like the image at the top of this post. This brings a notion of place to the appreciation of an image. You didn’t experience it directly, but you can empathize.

    Even better, though, is if I can bring this sense of place into the image. So you can feel the bone chilling conditions by looking at it. If I am sufficiently skilled and if my story telling skill is up to it, it can often be done. I try.

    This example isn’t necessarily a place many of us would want to be. I’m weird that way. But I think it illustrates that an image doesn’t have to be about puppies and beaches and sunsets to tell a worthwhile story. And a story can be compelling enough to make you want to have it to look at, even if you’ve never been there and don’t want to. It brings more of the world to us.

    Connections

    More powerful even than a strong sense of place is the connection it can bring you. I believe most of us long for more connection to nature, to the real world. It feels like home.

    Unfortunately, most people these days live in cities. Even if they are not directly in a city, most people are so busy with everyday life that they lose touch with the real world. When you are so busy, you forget.

    Images, on your wall, where your can meditate and reflect on them, are a powerful antidote to this disconnection. Especially if the images are places or things that symbolize where you want to be, that make you feel whole. Even if they are just of something that makes you stop to look and think.

    Some ask me why my landscape images almost never have people in them. This is part of my value system. I feel that if people are there, that is their place, their memories. If no one else is there, it is pristine, unclaimed in a sense. It can be your place, your memory. Even if you have never been there, you feel that it is someplace you would like to be. You can visualize yourself in the scene. It becomes a connection for you to that world.

    The knowledge that such places exist, even if we do not see them ourselves, is powerful and centering. Pablo Picasso said “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” I believe this is one of the things that makes art worthwhile.

    I hope you will adopt some of my memories to bring more peace to your day.

    Is this true for you? Let me know what you think. And check out my online gallery at photos.schlotzcreate.com. Contact me if you find something you connect to and would like to have.