Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: photographic technology

Know Your Masks
We all put on masks (not Covid ones, thankfully) all the time. Our masks make us look better to other people. But I’m not talking about our social interactions. We are image makers, so we also use masks in our editing tools to make our images look better. Both Photoshop and Lightroom have masks, but they are very different. Understanding the differences helps us better understand our craft.
What are they
In their simplest form, masks limit the extend of the edits we make to an image. All of our editing software lets us make global adjustments to an image, like increasing or decreasing the overall exposure. Most of our editors also allow us to restrict edits to selected parts of the image by masking.
You know the situation. After we get the overall look of an image balanced the way we like we often have to “drill in” and work on smaller parts. For instance, maybe a part needs to be brightened to make it stand out the way we want or darkened to call less attention to itself. No matter what your software calls it, masks are used for this.
But how we do it and how they work on the image can vary greatly.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
A mask
In the general sense, a mask allows us to isolate part of an image so that we can make selective edits.
Without masks all of our edits would be global. That is, what we do would affect the entire image. To selectively modify only parts of the image, though, we need the ability to restrict the area to be edited. In a sense, a mask is kind of like a stencil that keeps us from painting outside of an area.
For photography, the concept of masks comes from the darkroom. In the traditional darkroom, printers used bits of paper or sheets with shapes cut out to hold light back from selected areas or to add light to selected areas during exposure of a print. This was called dodging and burning. It required a lot of planning, and it was a very tedious and labor-intensive process. One mistake and hours of work could be ruined. I personally am very glad we do not do that now.
Lightroom vs Photoshop
I’m going to use Lightroom Classic (which I will just call “Lightroom”) and Photoshop as my examples. They are what I know, and I think they are the most commonly used editors of their specific kind. Yes, kind, because for all their similarities they are 2 different kinds of thing. These differences are important to us, and we need to have some understanding of how they work in order to use them better.
The most fundamental difference is that Lightroom never modifies pixels while Photoshop will gladly do anything you want to your pixels. Because of this basic difference, the way they deal with masking and editing is also completely different.
In a sense, Adobe has created a problem for their users. They sell the 2 premier image editors. The products are tightly linked, and users often have to use both of them to accomplish their goals, but they are so different that it causes confusion.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Photoshop
Photoshop was the first capable and widely used image editor. It springs from the days when images were only pixels. It is a pixel editor, even with adjustment layers and blending modes.
Photoshop is a bare knife. It eagerly does whatever you tell it to do to your image. Like a sharp knife in skilled hands can do great work, the same knife in unskilled hands can be dangerous. Photoshop will shred your pixels with no remorse.
Inside Photoshop, a mask is a black & white image that is attached to a layer. Whatever adjustment you do on the layer is restricted by the mask. The mantra is “white reveals and black conceals”. That is, where the mask is white the adjustments are made on the underlying image. Where the mask is black, the adjustment is ignored.
But note that the mask is just another bitmap image. It can contain any set of pixels including shades of grey. For instance, sometimes frequency separation editing is done by doing something like taking, say, a copy of the green channel and pasting that into an adjustment layer as a mask. That is a complex mask, but Photoshop handles it easily.
Also, we modify images by building up layers of changes. The order of the layers is very important in Photoshop. The changes are always applied in the order you specify in the layer stack and the results will probably change if the order is changed.
So in Photoshop you can do anything you want to the pixels. They can be stretched and blurred and painted over and, well, there is little limit. Masks are just another kind of bitmap that lets us limit the area modified by a layer.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Lightroom
Lightroom Classic is the newer product and it brings a completely different design and technology approach. It is specialized to be the editor of RAW images like Photoshop is specialized to be the pixel editor.
Lightroom has become my first and often only step in editing images. One reason I go to Photoshop less is because Lightroom has added very capable masking ability and they continue to enhance it.
But masks in Lightroom are a totally different thing from Photoshop. Since Lightroom is designed to be incapable of destroying pixels, they have adopted a technology of keeping track of descriptions of the edits to be done rather than actually doing the edits. Same for masks and their edits. These descriptions are separate from the image. They are applied to the original RAW file whenever it needs to be viewed. And the order of edits usually does not matter.
Generally, Lightroom masks are constructed by combinations of gradients and shapes and range selections and brush strokes. The shapes can be composed together to make complex and useful masks. Some “AI” aids are available as shortcuts for selecting the sky, or people, for instance.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Lightroom markup example
The edit descriptions are just text that is kept separate from the image and is processed by Lightroom as needed. Here is a sample of the instructions for one of my images. This is only part of the text file, it defines one mask:
<crs:MaskGroupBasedCorrections>
    <rdf:Seq>
     <rdf:li>
      <rdf:Description
       crs:What=”Correction”
       crs:CorrectionAmount=”1″
       crs:CorrectionActive=”true”
       crs:CorrectionName=”Mask 1″
       crs:CorrectionSyncID=”4F05D072D78C40239D264FC0F8F45469″
       crs:LocalExposure=”0″
       crs:LocalHue=”0″
       crs:LocalSaturation=”0″
       crs:LocalContrast=”0″
       crs:LocalClarity=”0″
       crs:LocalSharpness=”0.215228″
       crs:LocalBrightness=”0″
       crs:LocalToningHue=”0″
       crs:LocalToningSaturation=”0″
       crs:LocalExposure2012=”0.27395″
       crs:LocalContrast2012=”-0.100282″
       crs:LocalHighlights2012=”0″
       crs:LocalShadows2012=”-0.188717″
       crs:LocalWhites2012=”0.127177″
       crs:LocalBlacks2012=”-0.061475″
       crs:LocalClarity2012=”0.730341″
       crs:LocalDehaze=”0.631532″
       crs:LocalLuminanceNoise=”0″
       crs:LocalMoire=”0″
       crs:LocalDefringe=”0″
       crs:LocalTemperature=”0.274462″
       crs:LocalTint=”-0.102011″
       crs:LocalTexture=”0.169762″
       crs:LocalGrain=”-0.100026″
       crs:LocalCurveRefineSaturation=”100″>
      <crs:CorrectionMasks>
       <rdf:Seq>
        <rdf:li
         crs:What=”Mask/CircularGradient”
         crs:MaskActive=”true”
         crs:MaskName=”Radial Gradient 1″
         crs:MaskBlendMode=”0″
         crs:MaskInverted=”false”
         crs:MaskSyncID=”780243712C904039AF01C58DADCB61FA”
         crs:MaskValue=”1″
         crs:Top=”0.219066″
         crs:Left=”0.694605″
         crs:Bottom=”0.301111″
         crs:Right=”0.787517″
         crs:Angle=”0″
         crs:Midpoint=”50″
         crs:Roundness=”0″
         crs:Feather=”34″
         crs:Flipped=”true”
         crs:Version=”2″/>
       </rdf:Seq>
      </crs:CorrectionMasks>
      </rdf:Description>
     </rdf:li>
    </rdf:Seq>
   </crs:MaskGroupBasedCorrections>
It looks intimidating, but it is not made for us to read. We never see this unless we go looking for it. Computer Science people call this a markup language. Computers process it efficiently.
It’s our technology
Photoshop deals only with pixels, and it can change the actual pixels of your image in any way you would like. There is no limit, and it can make changes that are unrecoverable. Lightroom edits are more limited in scope and only deal with information about the adjustments you would like made to your image. A benefit of Lightroom is that it refuses to destroy any pixels.
This applies to masking, too. Masks in Photoshop are bitmap images that can be as complex as the image itself. The mask is another layer to paint or edit like other images in Photoshop.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Masks in Lightroom are more limited, but still absolutely useful. The masks are combinations of the shapes Lightroom knows about and lists of changes to make within the shape. It does not matter what order you do adjustments in Lightroom.
We need to be aware of these basic design features as we are using the products. Photoshop works directly on pixels. Lightroom keeps information about how to change the look of pixels. They are fundamentally different in design. When we do not keep these behaviors in mind, we can become frustrated when switching between the tools.
It is part of the technology we use to create our art. The better we understand how it works the more skilled we can be at using the tools.
June 11, 2025
Pull Out a Moment
Isn’t that what we do so well with photography, to pull out a moment of time to examine? Most art does this, but photography excels at it.
Time
Time flows continually. It so envelops and controls us that we often do not even consider it. But we cannot escape it. It carries us along with it whether we want it to or not.
Some of us live for the future, planning for a “someday” when things will slow down or be better. Some live only for now, trying to experience life or just have fun with little regard for what may come in the future. Others are stuck in the past. Living in memories or regrets for past events.
Regardless of our attitude about it, time keeps flowing relentlessly along. No one is rich enough to buy more time. No one is powerful enough to command it to slow down or speed up. We each have the same number of seconds in a day.
But photographers seemingly have a power over time, to freeze it or stretch it and to pull moments out to keep forever. This is an amazing ability for mere mortals.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Artists view
To an artist, time can seem like a continuous series of pictures. We look at things happening and think that may have never been seen like that before and it may never happen like that again. We better capture it now before it is gone.
Much of art is based on capturing moments. Paintings are usually of a moment in time. Sculptures often depict a moment of action or a grand pose.
But photographs do it better. After all, a painting or a sculpture of a moment is probably based on photographs the artist took to record it. So the photograph is the prime material, the basis of the art.
That is because photographs have a unique ability to record moments in time. We should be proud of that and use it to our advantage and to make our art more unique.
Manipulate time
Time flows constantly and at the same speed for everyone. But through photography we can look at time differently, depending on how we choose to see it.
We can slice it very fine at 1/1000 of a second or even faster. This will freeze an instant so we can examine things happening too fast for. us to perceive in real time. Birds in flight, a waterfall, a galloping horse, even a bullet in flight are frozen into a clear moment. We can see the details of the action, the turbulence, the skill.
At the other extreme, we can compress time. Any reasonable length of time can be imaged into a single frame. This allows us to visualize or see the effects of action happening over an extended amount of time. Car lights at night streaking into a long trail. A waterfall smoothing into a velvety flow. We might be able to capture multiple lightning flashes in one frame during a thunderstorm.
All of these and more help us see action over time. It visualizes what we can only imagine without the aid of photography.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Keep a time
Whether short exposures or long exposures or a “normal” speed, this slice we capture is preserved for us to examine and contemplate at our leisure. We have plucked it out of the stream of time and kept it for ourselves.
It is said that in a fire or flood, one of the first thing people try to save is the family pictures. These are our history, our memory. Moments that are important to us. (Many online sites tell us at length how to prepare a “go bag“; it’s a good idea; but the emotional reaction is to grab important memories in an emergency.)
And they keep us together as humans. A friend told me recently about getting together for a rare visit with his brother and sister. One of them had digitized old pictures their parents took of them as children. They spent hours looking at them and sharing stories and memories. Most of these were originally shot 60-70 years ago. They still have power of moments.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
View differently
Obviously, family pictures have special memories for us. But how about art?
As I mentioned before, most art involves the capture of moments that we can look at or think about whenever we want. Photography is uniquely suited for this.
Street photography gives us insightful glimpses of people in their daily life. Landscape photography captures moments of beauty or awe in the natural world. Portraits give us a formal view of people. Whether abstract or realistic or black & white or an alternative process or any other rendering, they capture a moment.
When we capture moments, we have the opportunity to study the moments at our leisure. Time ceases to flow for these images. Taking the moment out of the stream of time gives us a unique chance to spend all the time we want with the moment. We see and understand it differently.
Years from now, that moment will still be there for us to bring out and examine again. Or our descendants may look at them and see a glimpse of what we saw, maybe even what we felt.
Time is a key component in our photography. Photography is perhaps the best of the arts for capturing and manipulating time. Other forms of art rely on the artist seeing or imagining something, then representing it. Photography allows us to see things that could not otherwise be seen.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Reflect
We see a potential image and take it. What is it for? Who is it for? Does it matter how many people see it?
It is quite possible it does not have more of a purpose than that we were compelled to make art. If we are making art, it may be sufficient that it fulfilled something in us.
Most of us would love for great numbers of people to view our work and give us lots of compliments. Especially the compliment of buying it. But is that why we do it?
Perhaps these moments in time are painting our history, marking our journey, filling our memory bank. Maybe their significance could not be apparent to anyone else.
Or maybe something is compelling us to capture these moments so that someday we can begin to understand them ourselves.
Regardless, we are compelled. We pluck these moments out of time and set them aside for reasons we may not understand. Or perhaps it is enough that they are beautiful, at least, to us.
Every time we press the shutter release, we are capturing a moment. Be very aware of that. They are our moments. They have meaning to us. Sharing them with other people is an intimate act.
“Life is a collection of moments; cherish them, embrace them, and create more of them.”
June 4, 2025
Photography is About Light
Stating the obvious? I think we sometimes forget the fundamentals of what we are doing and working with. No light, no photography. Photography is about light.
Writing with light
Remember that our word “photography” comes from 2 Greek words that together mean “writing with light”. So, from the beginning of our art form, it was understood that we were recording light on some type of photo sensitive material. Glass plates or tintype or film back then. Mostly digital sensors now.
Technology changes but still we are recording light.
Embrace that. It is what we are all about as photographers. Photography is about light.
Low light is not no light
Our technology improves all the time. It is possible to get sensors that do a fair job of imaging at 250,000 ISO. Maybe more. I don’t track the latest. The highest ISO I found with a quick scan was the Nikon D6 at 3,280,000!
A 250,000 ISO is about 11 stops of additional exposure above a nominal ISO 100 setting. Eleven stops is a huge amount as exposures go. I haven’t tried it, but at ISO 250,000 I bet you could make a properly exposed landscape shot lit only by starlight.
But the point is that very low light is not the same as no light. Have you ever been in a cavern deep underground where they turned off all lights at some point? Then we encounter the eerie experience of actual, total blackness. In those conditions it is impossible to see anything. Put your hand right in front of your face and you can’t tell it’s there. There are absolutely no photons to impinge on our retina.
We could do no photography in total blackness. Of course, other artists would be almost equally disadvantaged. I suppose, theoretically, painters could make marks on their canvas in total blackness, but they would have no way to know what they were creating. Sculptors could mold clay by feel, but they would have very limited feedback on what they were doing. But photographers cannot do anything without light.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Computational photography
One clever way to get better results in low light is used in your cell phone and by astronomers. It is generally called “computational photography”.
Computational photography does not rely on the result of one frame. Instead, tens to thousands of shots are taken and processed by computer to bring out detail.
This is how your phone takes decent pictures in low light despite having a tiny sensor. It is actually shooting bursts of dozens of frames. Then it quickly processes them in the phone. It uses averaging and other more sophisticated techniques to reduce noise and bring out the desired detail. I am surprised at how well it works.
Astronomers have special needs in photographing distant galaxies. The light levers are so low that there is nothing to see with our eye. So, they instead take hundreds, maybe thousands of images with the regular sensor on their telescope and run them through dedicated processing software. Using combinations of specialized image processing algorithms and AI, their computers “reconstruct” what is probably there.
My astronomer friends have shown me some of their new “telescopes” they got recently. These surprising instruments are generally about the size of a moderately thick hard cover book. They rely on small, cheap optics and lots of computation, but produce amazing results.
Techniques like these let images be created in what seems like black conditions. But the reality is, it is not black. Just very low levels of lighting. If it was actually black, no photography.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
See the light
As I said, the purpose of this is to remind us that our art is based on light. We need to develop a heightened awareness of the light around us, because it is critical to our art. It changes all the time and is different in different conditions.
it has been observed that a fish probably does not think about water. But we need to think about light, which is almost as important to us as water is to a fish.
Light has many characteristics and most all of them affect our photography.
We need to be intensely aware of the quantity of light at any time, its color, is it direct or diffuse, its angle, whether it is steady or changing, is our subject lit directly or indirectly, and many other properties. It sounds complicated. But learning the light is part of the craft. Learning to apply it creatively is part of the art.
For instance, it is almost an axiom of photography that you do not photograph in the middle of the day. Like the “rule of thirds”, this is one of those rules I take pleasure in violating. The reality is that it completely depends on what subjects you are shooting, the nature of your light source, and what your goals are. Shooting at midday often enhances the texture of materials. In a dense forest it can create interesting dappled light patterns. In a slot canyon or a cathedral, it can create beautiful light beams. And diffuse overcast light may be perfect for many subjects, with high brightness and soft, even illumination.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
And as a practical matter, I am not a National Geographic photographer on assignment. I can’t spend a week in the field waiting for the “perfect” shot I went out to find. I have to be creative enough to make the best use of what I find at the time I’m there.
There are no rules, only what you can do with what you have.
Tonality
Tonality is one of those important things we need to think about and know how to use. It simply refers to the difference of luminance of the parts of our image. The tonality is what lets us distinguish all the parts. It creates separation of various areas.
Think of a blank white piece of paper. This effectively has zero tonality. There is no image, because without tonal separation we cannot resolve anything. Any actual image we create has a range of tones.
If the tones are squished together, our image is low contrast. Not much tonal separation. Maybe this is what you want, like a foggy scene.
On a sunny day there is a wide range of tones. We refer to it as high contrast. Sometimes it can be too much. Do we need to use exposure or editing techniques to tame the contrast? But that is our creative choice
A low-key image involves pushing most of the tones down towards dark. But the remaining light tones stand out. Likewise, if we create a high-key image, with most of the tones pushed toward light, the remaining dark tones stand out.
Our eyes are very sensitive to tonality. We perceive tiny differences in illumination levels. Use of tones is a creative process. It should be part of our thought process and toolbox.
One of the ultimate expressions of pure tonality is black & white photography. All color is stripped away, leaving only tonality to create the image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Color
Our eyes are an incredible design. The rods and cones have different purposes but work together to give us sight. But overall, our eye is less sensitive to color than to illumination levels.
Think of being in a dim room at night. We can make out the objects around us, but the colors are hard to distinguish. Turn the light on fully and the colors pop.
Similarly, in our images, good color requires good light. We can’t see vibrant, saturated color in dim light. I mentioned low key art. Have you noticed that most of it is black & white? This is a practical result of not being able to see much color in low light.
I believe some people’s artistic vision is drawn to color and some to black & white. If you are a color person you have to be doubly aware of light. Not enough and our brilliant colors fade.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Creativity
All art processes are defined by their technology. Photography is based on light. We cannot do photography without light. To be a photographic artist, we need to be intensely aware of light and how to use it to our advantage.
Recognize it not as a limitation, but as a creative tool. Light is a marvelously varied thing. We are artists. We paint with light. Learning it and being constantly aware of it and deciding how we want to use it for any image is part of the art.
We are seldom in a place where there is no light, like the underground cavern I mentioned earlier. There is always light around. It may just be moonlight or city lights or a flash. We may decide there is not enough light to make the image we want sometimes, but there is always light to work with. Recognize it. Use it creatively.
Light is fundamental to photography. Learn to see it for what it is and learn to use it creatively. It is what you are photographing.
May 7, 2025
Photography is Technology
There is no separating photography from technology. That is its nature. Photography is technology as much as it is art. It is one of the most technical art forms.
What is technology?
One definition of technology is “the application of scientific knowledge to the practical aims of human life.” Other definitions I like refer to applying knowledge to achieve practical goals.
There is no getting around the fact that there is a tremendous amount of scientific and engineering knowledge packed in all the devices and tools we use in our photography.
Technology pervades most things in all parts of our life these days. But photography is steeped in it.
The technologies we use
When you step back and look at it, every part of the chain from initial image capture to a final print or post relies heavily on technology.
Our camera is a wonderfully crafted marvel. From the lens to the camera body and all that goes on in it. None of this would be possible without the almost magic technology behind it.
Just consider the sensor. It can convert incoming light into electrical signals in a tiny fraction of a second. These signals are read out and converted to digital data (yes, the sensor captures analog data) in milliseconds. Our tiny memory card takes in all this data, again in milliseconds.
And it does all this reliably and repeatably, day in and day out, in all kinds of weather, wherever we are.
And it is almost impossible to work with images today without a good computer and great software tools. Again, these are technologies that are marvelously better than what anyone had just a few years ago. We regularly and quickly color correct, remove distractions, change tones, and sharpen our images – with far better control and precision than in film days. If we choose, we can bend and stretch pixels in ways that could not have been imagined a few years ago.
Do. you post your images on social media for your followers to comment on? The scale and extent of the technology behind this is almost unimaginable. That post requires billions of dollars of cutting edge technology to happen.
It is impossible to do anything photographically without technology.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Shiny things
This great technology that benefits us so much can be a liability. It is all too easy to get tangled up in the learning and the process of what is happening. A lot of specific knowledge is required to do our craft well.
So we get trapped in chasing the technology itself. There are always raging arguments about how many mega pixels we need. Or which sensor has the lowest noise and best dynamic range. And are zoom lenses evil? Do we have to only use prime lenses?
Is Lightroom Classic the best place to be managing and editing our images or should we use Capture One? And Photoshop is a life-long learning experience all by itself.
Resolution, color accuracy, modulation transfer functions, RAW image processing – it can make our heads ache.
A good or bad thing about technology is that there is always more of it we “need”. Studying reviews and specifications of gear can become an obsession. So much so that some spend all their time thinking about what they would do with the next big thing if they could get it and little time actually going out and making images with what they have.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m an Engineer. I love to compare specs and I can swim in data all day. It would be a pleasant journey for me to spend a day lost in details of acutance or chromatic aberration or dynamic range. For nerds like me, comparing lenses is kind of like shopping for cars. We could talk all day about which one is best and go into great detail about why, even if we do not intend to buy one.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Accumulating
A problem with this focus on technology for its own sake is that we feel the need to always be searching for the “best”. New equipment always comes out and it is a little better than the old. We believe that to do the best job of our photography, we need the best new stuff. So it is an endless treadmill of acquiring shiny new things that will make us a better photographer.
And it can get to the point where we get into a state of analysis paralysis. Have you seen someone out in the field lugging a huge, heavy pack with most of their “must have” gear? After all, no telling what we may encounter. So we bring the full range of ultra fish-eye to extreme telephoto lenses. And, of course, macro and perspective control lenses. A backup body (or 2) is a must. And a computer for checking our images on a larger screen and maybe doing a quick edit. Just to be safe.
This person may spend more time trying to decide what to use and fiddling with equipment than they do finding subjects and composing and capturing images. Yes, “fiddling” is a technical term. ☺
From what I have seen, when painters and sculptors get together with their peers and “talk shop”, there is a certain amount of discussion of technology and tools and equipment. But not like photographers. It can be an obsession with us.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Make it disappear
I don’t want to paint a gloomy picture of technology. I like it and need it, at least when it works right. It would be impossible do my art without technology.
But go back to that original definition that technology is about applying knowledge to achieve practical goals. Its purpose is to help us do things better. It should not become an end in itself.
Great technology used right should “disappear”. It is not about the wizard’s wand or the warrior’s sword. It is about what they can do with them. One way to make it disappear is to learn to use it so well that it is fluid and natural.
I recommend that we choose a small set of equipment and learn it well. Learn its strengths and weaknesses. Yes, weaknesses can become strengths if used artistically. Think of film grain for example.
Have you noticed that a lot of music pushes an instrument to its highest or lowest range? Pushing the limits can lead to interesting effects. And it tests the skill of the performer. Our photography can be a little like that. Push the limits.
Practice with your equipment frequently. Go overboard with it. Pick up your camera every day and run through scenarios. It should be automatic. Learn to operate it in pitch dark, relying on familiarity and feel to guide you. Even if you only use one lens, get to know what it can do and learn to see like it sees. You do not always need to carry a full range of lenses. That is what feet are for. Move.
If we develop this intimate knowledge of our technology, it becomes a tool we can wield for our creativity. It “disappears” in our creative process. Great things happen.
I love the technology we have available today. It allows us to create great things. Always remember that the technology is for us to make art. Use it. Don’t be controlled by it.
April 16, 2025
Be The 1%
We can choose to be the 1% of photographers. Those who make prints. A print is a special thing with its own life.
The 1%
I’m not talking about that 1% we hear talked about in the news – the richest people in the world or the country. The latest data I could find for the USA says that, on average across the country, to be in the 1% financially you need a salary of about $600,000 or a net worth of $11 Million. Another article said that 1% of the people in the world own over 50% of the total household wealth.
I am not bringing this up to get into any discussion of income inequality, investing practices, demographics, or anything related to that.
No, I am referring to a group of photographers we can easily choose to join. Peter Eastway speculates that only about 1% of photographers make prints. Why do you think we don’t print more?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
What is a print?
First, what do I mean by a print? This may seem obvious, but I want to make sure we are on the same page, so to speak.
By a print I am referring to an image presented in a fixed physical medium. A print is an object with weight and space and presence. We can hold it and touch it. We perceive it with our physical senses. And it is “permanent”. That is, it persists unchanged over time.
A print is an enduring expression of the artist’s intent at the time. I say at the time, because it is quite possible for my intent to change with time. The print I make today may be quite different from one of the same image file 5 years ago, or even a few months ago. My vision changes and I often come to see it different. That is natural. I am the artist. Ansel Adams, for example, is famous for drastically changing his vision of how some of his famous images should be printed over time.
What is a print not? It is not an image on a screen. Not your computer monitor or an iPad or your phone. It is not a fleeting image scrolled by on social media or your web site.
Screens are important in the production of our art, but I hope they are not the main goal. Psychologically, we know that what we see on a screen is ephemeral. It has no permanence. We discount it easily. Being on a screen, we subconsciously consider it fluid and flexible.
Why a print?
A print is tangible. It is an artifact that persists in time and space. That is, it is physical. It is an object. We can hand it off to a client who buys it, and it becomes their possession.
By giving the print this life of its own, we are creating a new piece of art. It is no longer under the control of the artist. Kind of like a child growing up and going out on their own. They are your family, but they have their own life now.
As the artist, I can no longer “huddle over it” and protect and explain it. It is on its own. Now it is hanging on a wall. Maybe in someone’s home. Maybe in a gallery. But no matter where, it is now perceived for itself in isolation. It must explain itself, justify itself, fend for itself.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
New thought process?
Deciding to make a print changes our perception of what we are doing.
For one thing, we must commit our interpretation of what we see or feel in the image. We must resolve the “it could be like this or it could be like that” questions in our mind. Once we make the print, we can’t come back next week and change it. If we do, it becomes a different piece of art.
And we will go through a more stringent selection process to pick it. Out of thousands of good images, why print this one? Does it do a better job of representing my view on the subject? Is it a more perceptive representation of something I feel? Will this give my viewers more insight than the many other images I could have picked? Is this an image I will hand to the world and say, “this is me?”
New creative decisions
And making a print involves new creative decisions. What size should it be? Some images seem to call to be large while others seem to prefer being small. Should this be a paper print or canvas or metal or acrylic? Will it look best as glossy or matte? Sure, some of the decisions will be dictated by the intended application. But many are purely artistic.
And there are technical considerations that come in now. Does the file have the quality and resolution to make a large print? Can I print it and mount it myself or must I send it out to a service bureau to be done? The selected media imposes constraints on the image itself. If the desired effect is soft and ethereal then a matte finish may be best. But if the image relies on sharp detail a glossy substrate will make that pop more.
I encourage you to make your own prints when you can. A good, medium size desktop pigment ink printer costs about the same as a mid-range lens for a 35mm camera. Having your own printer encourages you to experiment more. And the immediate feedback you get is gratifying.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Technical considerations
Creating a good print is a specialized process that requires some detailed knowledge. The fundamental problem is one of basic physics. Screens generate light and emit it. It is an RGB mix, and it is additive. That is, red + green makes orange.
We see prints by reflected light. Light hits the surface of the print and what bounces back is what we see. It is a subtractive process. The ink absorbs some colors. We see the reflected light that is not absorbed. To reduce the red you add cyan. Cyan is the opposite of red. More cyan absorbing red means less red reflected.
This and other differences mean that a print will never look exactly like the image on screen. How close we can come is one of the challenges. How close we need to come is an artistic judgment. A print is another art form.
Editing the image for printing is a task on its own. We load profiles for the media and printer and inks that we are using. A special profiling view is switched on so we see a simulation of what the final print will look like. This is, at best, a fair but not exact model. The reality is it may require several rounds of test prints and re-edits to get to a final print we like.
It can be a lot of work, but it is part of the artistic process. This is work we must do to “birth” the print as its own entity.
I usually have a number of prints hanging around my studio. Some because I just like them. But often it is to live with them a while to see if I like them long term. Results vary.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Viewing it
We have gone through all this work and expense to create a print. Why? Was it worth it?
This is a personal evaluation.
Sometimes you are disappointed with the result. Some images just do not seem to print well. That could mean we did not choose the best medium or size. Maybe it would have worked better in black & white.
But most of the time you will feel the satisfaction of creating something new. Because the print is a new work of art. It is a distinct physical object with a life of its own. It lives in the world and is evaluated by viewers.
We did our best job of composition and subject selection and lighting and a host of other things. We edited it carefully and prepared it for printing. Now it passes into another realm. We have tried to guide the viewers to see what we saw, but now they are on their own to discover it.
The child leaves home and starts its own life. We are proud of it, but we cannot control it. It is not ours anymore. Likewise, a print becomes an independent entity. The viewers evaluate it on its own by their own criteria.
Something tugged their interest enough to spend more than a passing look at it. Maybe we can draw them in and take them on a journey they did not anticipate. That is joy for the artist and the viewer.
Take the leap. Be one of the 1% of photographers who make prints. It can change your art and give you a different relationsip with your images. And it can be a legacy.
April 9, 2025