Have an Opinion

Old couple in shade, Italy

I spent most of my photographic career just recording scenes. But now I think you probably won’t make a compelling image unless you have an opinion and express it in your art.

Just the facts

I started mostly focusing on just the facts. My goal was literal representation of scenes. I wanted to capture what was actually there, with no interpretation. I regret that.

Being an engineer didn’t help. It is very easy to get caught up in technical details of resolution and depth of field. My excuse is that I grew up in Texas and moved to Colorado in my early 20’s. The mountains were new to me and I wanted to record everything I could. I was basically running around saying “Wow, look at this! I never knew this existed!”.

If I had an opinion about it, it was something like awe and excitement about the new landscape. I took a lot of accurate, factual representational pictures back then, but very few are in any of my current collections. Beautiful images some of them, but little depth. Not compelling.

Is it interesting?©Ed Schlotzhauer

What makes it special?

What makes an image special or worth lingering over? That is a hard question. Great photographers have been wrestling with that for 150 years. Painters have been agonizing over it for hundreds of years. There are no rules or definitive answers (despite all the rubbish you may find on the internet).

I am not in a position to give you a definitive answer either. If I could it would make my art a lot easier to do.

I think we can agree that some images jump out at us or hold us to linger over them. If we can agree on that then we can agree that there must be some quality or qualities that distinguish one from others.

It could simply be the composition or lighting or the precision of the execution or the decisive moment or something in the scene that grabs our interest. Maybe some combination of all of that.

I am drawn to believe it is all that but more. We see far too many well executed images of beautiful scenes that seem soulless, flat, uninspired. So there must be an unidentified quality that some get but others do not.

It is probably oversimplified, but I speculate that part of it could simply be whether the photographer was excited about it. We tend to be drawn to excitement in others. When someone is telling us a story that happened to them, their excitement has a lot to do with our engagement. If it is just a “I went to the grocery store and got some oranges”, well, we quickly drift away. But if it is “I went to the grocery store and the most amazing thing happened…” then, if they can keep the story going, we will follow.

Could it be that simple with our pictures?

Express yourself

I said when I started my photography I believed mainly in literal representation. It seemed wrong to try to project my feelings or opinion on them. Now I think I was totally wrong. That is why most of those early images were completely forgetable. I wasn’t truly being authentic because I was keeping my feelings to myself.

One thing the great and very quotable Jay Maisel said was “What you’re shooting at doesn’t matter, the real question is: ‘Does it give you joy?'”.

Now I believe that unless I am feeling something strong, it is useless to press the shutter. I want to believe that my excitement will carry through in some of my images. The good ones.

Another quote that guides me is “if it doesn’t excite you, why should it excite anyone else?” I think that is a Jay Maisel too, but I can’t find it. If not, maybe I’ll claim it. 🙂 Either way, I believe it. Why should you care about any of my images unless they came from something inside of me? Not just pressing the shutter button and capturing what is there.

So it is not enough for me to just capture an image of something. I want you to know what I was feeling, how I perceived it. I may have loved it or hated it, but you be able to sense it and participate in it.

It is not only OK for me to express my feelings, I think it is completely necessary to make something good.

Curious reflections in a shop window©Ed Schlotzhauer

Nobody has to agree

But there is a dark side to human nature: when we express our feelings, some people will not agree. I know now that that is fine. When I took the attitude that everybody does not have to like what I did, it was tremendously liberating.

So now when someone says “I like that” or “I don’t like that” I basically ignore the comment. It is no use to me without more discussion. Actually, if someone does not like a picture I love to get into a conversation with them to find our why they felt that way. I will not change my image and I do not try to change their mind, but I am always curious about the reasons for negative reactions.

One of my goals is to create a reaction in you. I’m generally a positive and upbeat person and that is more often the type of reaction I aim for. But I would rather cause you to hate my work than to be indifferent to it. If you are indifferent I failed to move you at all.

I encourage you to fall in love with your subjects. Or find the subjects that revolt you and you want to have changed. Either way, feel something. Strongly. Your audience needs it and deserves it.

Today’s image

This was a quick “grab” shot, but that was because I did not want to disturb or upset the guy looking at me. I was more shy then. This has a lot of feeling for me. I was suffering and I’m sure they were, too. It was in a village in central Italy and it was about 100°F that afternoon. We were dying and the only people stupid enough to be out sightseeing. This old couple seemed to have found a relatively shady spot in the narrow street. Hopefully with some breeze. I’m sure that other neighbors would soon gather for their daily ritual.

I fell in love with the area and the way of life. They seemed to have contentment in their circumstances and the pace and traditions of their life. I came away with great respect for them. I wish I would have visited with this gentleman, but the heat was about to take me down and I don’t speak Italian. I’m pretty sure he did not speak English. So I let it go be. I’m sorry for that.

Don’t Show It All

Small cascade in Colorado Rockies

Not like that. This is a follow up to my last post on portfolio selection. A simple, overarching principle to keep in mind is: don’t show it all, or even most of it. Actually, not very much of it.

We’re proud of our work

A blessing and curse of digital photography is that we now shoot thousands of images. Of course, we’re pretty good, too. Everybody should like to see 500 pictures of my cat. After all, they are all different poses. And that big trip we enjoyed so much, here are the very best 900 pictures from that great trip to France. They’re all worth seeing.

We fall in love with our own pictures. This is a fact of life. Each one is special because it was exciting, memorable, unique for us. We remember what we experienced at the time. It makes it significant to us. To us, each one of those 900 pictures from France is worth showing to other people.

And when we are too attached to our pictures we tend to overlook problems that are obvious and distracting to others. The telephone pole growing out or your kid’s head is not seen. After all, it is a really cute expression. And we overlook all those people in the foreground of the beautiful picture of Chambord. Just look at how spectacular that Chateau is. It is too easy to convince our self that that tilted horizon is not a problem, or the poor composition, or the bad color balance.

But we have to be adult. Part of that means being very aware of the actual quality of our work and of what is appropriate for the situation. And in most situations, less is more.

Other people generally don’t care

I don’t want to pour cold water on your enthusiasm, but other people are not excited about what you have. That is a hard reality you have to learn.

They weren’t there. They did not experience what you did. None of these images have the same meaning or impact for them. It wasn’t their vacation, or their family, or their cat. Call up your pictures of France and hand the phone to someone to page through. If they are good friends, they will fake interest and flip through a lot of them. But even they will probably not look at any image for more than 1-2 seconds.

When they look at your pictures, they don’t see it the same way you did. They can’t and never will. Understanding this is a key to getting our images viewed by other people.

It gets much more challenging when we are wanting strangers to view our work. They do not know us, they were not there when the image was taken, it may not be anything they are interested in. But here, look at my pictures. Thanks, but I’ll pass.

Photographing a true icon - The Eiffel Tower©Ed Schlotzhauer

Context is key

The context where we are and where and when we are presenting our images makes a huge difference. Is it to friends or strangers? Is it one-on-one or a public venue? What is drawing people to pay attention to your photos?

Pushing pictures on social media is a main venue for many of us. The audience is friendly if it is our network. They will politely scan through a few of the pictures. A few of the viewers may even give us a thumbs up to make us feel good. But did they actually see them or care? We can’t tell. And we won’t know.

And how often have we been cornered by friends who have “a few” pictures to show us? They hand us their phone, sure we will love the 50 pictures they took of the great sunset last night. It is one of those “just shoot me” moments. But if they are a friend, we have to be polite. Back in the film days it was a common joke theme to go over to a friends house only to have them get out the slide projector to show “a few” pictures of their trip. After the first few hundred we want to fake a heart attack to get away.

Up to here we are only bothering captive audiences. We can get away with little editing and selection. It will make us look foolish, but our friends will forgive us – eventually.

But perhaps we decide we’re pretty good and book a booth in an art fair. Now the audience has no connection to us and no inherent reason to look at what we have. We will get a glance as they walk by. People will only pause to give a second look if we present something that captures their attention. They will only come in to look more closely if we show them something exceptional.

Now take it to the big leagues. We get an opportunity to show our portfolio to an art director or gallery manager. That is a tough audience. These are professional art viewers. They look at huge numbers of pictures and it is their job to reject almost everything. What are you showing that will capture their attention? It better not be 100 of your best cat pictures.

How many?

How many images are in a portfolio? There is no hard rule for this. It depends on what the portfolio is for.

Peter Eastway, the publisher of Better Photography Magazine, has a nice little ebook titled “Creating a Portfolio“. It is worth reading if you can get a copy. He tries to address this and many other considerations of putting together a portfolio.

In his Australian humor, he says “The number of photographs in a perfect album is 12. Or sometimes 8. Or maybe 24.” In other words, it depends. No rules. But the number is probably much lower than you thought, and whatever you put in needs to be the best. No filler. Nothing that’s there because you want to show some variety to widen the interest.

Peter gives an interesting test. He says do not put an image in your portfolio unless you think you will still be proud of it in 12 months time. That is significant to me. I often am enthusiastic about an image, only to find I cool off toward it with time. My filtering process has built in delays. It take months for me to elevate an image to “one of the best” status. I do that intentionally to let the initial enthusiasm be replaced with a more objective evaluation.

In general, between 12 and 20 for any collection of images in a project or portfolio works for me. I would feel free to violate my own rule if I were doing a documentary or a book. Or for a multi-year project that had significant importance to me. But I would have to make a very conscious exception.

More than a rock - seeing it different.©Ed Schlotzhauer

Less is more

I advocate that we take a mindful “less is more” attitude. Always take out images until it hurts. Then take our a lot more.

Remember, your audience has a short attention span compared to your view of your portfolio. Any weak image will loose their interest. They may even abandon looking at that point. I have heard it said that you will be judged by the weakest image in your portfolio. I believe it. It is human nature to find the worst as a way to critique the whole.

I consider building a portfolio kind of like an athletic contest. Teams have to compete in and survive multiple rounds of playoffs to be chosen the champion. Hopefully the best emerge. Same with our images. It is a brutal, hand to hand contest.

If you are evaluating coolly and objectively, every one removed makes the remaining set stronger. Remember, when you remove one, you are not saying you don’t like it or it is a bad image. You are just acknowledging that it does not hold up against the competition of the rest of the group. That is good. But hard.

It is very hard for me. If I want to select a project with max 20 images, I may pull at least 60-80 very good candidates. Doing the first cut is only a little painful. Maybe that gets me down to 50. I try to toughen up and go slashing again. Now maybe I have 35 left. OK, I swallow hard and cut some more and get it down to 30. Still a long way from 20.

The trouble now is that I really love every one of the 30 candidates that remain. The pain of eliminating any of then is extreme. Remind myself over and over that taking one out is not saying I don’t like it. It would be a lot easier to relent and let myself use all 30.

You would think it would get easier now. After all, I think all of them are great. But the reality is that there is a rank order to be discovered. Some are better than the others. That is what I still have to resolve. Eventually I get there. It is painful and lengthy. But a funny thing happens. I love the set that survives, and forget about the pain of the ones that didn’t make it.

The optimum number to show people is fewer than you think. When we learn that we don’t have to show it all, we can build stronger portfolios.

If you’re not your own severest critic, you are your own worst enemy.

Jay Maisel

The Hardest Part

Canterbury Cathedral

I have figured out what I consider the hardest part of photography. Excluding Marketing. It is selecting a portfolio.

Pick a few

It’s a common situation. Perhaps I am entering a selection for a gallery competition. Maybe a client has requested a few choices for a job. It could be just needing to pick some images for this blog post. Whatever the reason, I am faced with the problem of selecting a small set of images for a certain use.

Oh sure, I have the images that would work. It’s not like I”m not happy with my choices. The problem is selecting only a few.

I’m calling what I am doing here making a portfolio. That is not precisely correct. Formally, a portfolio is a collection of images designed for presentation to an audience. Often one-on-one. However, the process is substantially the same for that and the situations I described. So I will not distinguish them.

Embarrassment of riches

Please don’t take it as bragging, but I have lots of images that I like. I have been at it a long time. Lots as in many thousands. That’s just the ones I promote to my top level selection category. A lot of others in my catalog would be useful for certain applications.

Yes, I have a disciplined filing system. Everything is culled through multiple levels of selection. I find it is hard to pick the ones I like best from a shoot, so my process is oriented around rejecting the ones that are not as good. I don’t know why, but it is easier for me to say “I don’t like that one as well” than to say “I like that one best.” That is repeated through multiple levels. I apply more stringent criteria at each level.

Giant bear peeking into an urban building©Ed Schlotzhauer

Most of my images are filed geographically and I have an extensive keyword system for tagging all sorts of information. And I use it.

All this should make it easy to find just what I want. You would think, but no. It is easier in that I am only wading through thousands, not hundreds of thousands of images to pick. But that’s not even the most difficult part.

No guidance

We are awash in training material to help us become better photographers. Some if it is actually good. There are thousands of hours of videos on camera operation and composition and visual design. Many more on techniques in the field and techniques for post processing. And gear guides are limitless. As are books to supplement the videos. All of this can help boost our knowledge and improve our technique.

But when it comes to pulling together a portfolio, the advice is: it’s hard, keep editing, get it down to a few great images.

Thanks, but that is not really helpful. Well, it is helpful to find out that I should expect it to be hard and I have to do it myself. But where is the video that shows me to pick this image instead of that one?

Should a choose a tight theme with carefully coordinated image selections, as for a project? Or would it be best to present a range of subjects and styles to show the breadth of my work? Would it help to research the curator of the exhibit to try to guess what they would like? Why would this image work better than that one?

I feel kind of left hanging out there.

I’m on my own

That’s the point and the conclusion. We are on our own. We have to be grown ups and make responsible decisions. That is no fun. It is downright hard. That’s why, to me, this is the hardest part.

Very abstract created image. Representa the evolution of an image.©Ed Schlotzhauer

So a typical scenario is that I have to select, say, 4 images for a gallery. Open theme. I’m on my own. No guidance. It is very easy to go through my catalog and pull 50 images that I would like to submit. Another pass or two might get it down to 30 images. Then it gets harder and harder as I push on. I love every one of these images. Eliminating one seems like I am abandoning it. I know that’s not the case, but the feeling is there.

It is sometimes easier if I set it aside for a few days to let the emotions settle down. Then I do my best imitation of being coldly realistic to screen out some more. But what seems to happen is that I get down to, say, 8 images. I can only have 4. That final cut is extremely painful.

i envy people who have a colleague or mentor they can work with to advise the process. I don’t. The decisions have to be made by me with no help. I have an awesome wife, but she isn’t an artist and cannot help with this.

Well, I get there. It is painful. I come away with sadness because I had to eliminate some of my favorites in the final mix. That disappears with time, though. After a few days I can look at the final set and be proud of them.

Overthinking it

A reality is that I tend to overthink it. What I know is that the images I pull are all very good. And I know, and have demonstrated to myself often, that, with a set of excellent images, every time you eliminate one, you make the overall set stronger. That is, if you make intelligent choices. I try to remind myself of great advice I got one time that you will be judged by the worst image you show.

So why do I agonize over it so much? It’s not like I throw a great image away if I remove it from the set.

I think there are two problems. First is that I love these images and feel bad about taking one out, because I’m emotionally attached to it. I can live with that. But the second and bigger problem is, how do I know I have made the best choice?

Self doubt

That is the core of the problem. There is no guidance. I am on my own. There are much bigger and more important choices in life that are like this. Who to marry, what career to pursue, where to live, what investments to make, etc. We must use our judgment to make the decision. It hurts. We want someone to look over our shoulder and tell us we did the right thing. Unfortunately, being an adult doesn’t work like that.

Picking some images for a use is way down in importance from those big life events. Why is it so painful then? I think it is the same fear of failure and the consequences. But I try to be realistic.

So I try to convince myself that the final set I choose will be excellent. Even though I feel like I am in the spotlight and I am being examined to see if I am worthy, I know that if I do the best I can, that will be good enough. And if not, well, nobody dies.

I tell myself that, but it doesn’t feel like it when I am in the pain of the process.

All parts of the photographic process are interesting and challenging. All are subjective, But there seems to be a lot of help to be had in all phases of it up until the final image selection.

Resources

There actually are a couple of resources I have found to help give some education in this. Unfortunately they are not freely available. Peter Eastway, editor of Better Photography magazine, has written an excellent ebook on creating a portfolio. As it says, it is specifically oriented to putting together a portfolio or exhibit. But it still gives a lot of good insights.

Creating a Portfolio might be available at www.betterphotographyeducation.com without a subscription. If not, it is an excellent publication and you will enjoy it. 🙂

Another option that I have found out is not paywalled is a three part series of newsletters in the Paper Arts Collective newsletter. This is a hidden gem of a publication. The series I’m referring to was titled Evolution of a Small Project, and it traced the decisions and selection process he went through to put together an exhibit. If you do prints then you should check out Paper Arts Collective.

But I come back to my original problem. It is hard, no one can really help you, you have to make hard choices yourself based on your judgment and artistic vision. And you have to have confidence in your decisions. To me, it is the hardest part.

Human Effort

Kentucky Coal Miner

I have been considering what makes “art”. I have only gotten as far as believing a necessary ingredient – maybe the only one – is human effort.

Random beauty

The world is a riot of random beauty. Flowers, trees, waterfalls, mountain ranges, oceans, sunsets abound. When you think about them, most of them are exceptionally beautiful in their way.

I am blessed to live in Colorado. We have all of those things above (except oceans) and more. It is fall here as I write this. The last two weekends I have been out for long drives within a few hours of my home. The fall aspen colors are great. I’ve seen waterfalls and mountains and interesting trees and even burn areas – yes, they can have a kind of beauty of their own. It is a new moon time and I have been blown away by the beauty of the night sky in dark areas of the mountains. I’m not bragging. Most of you probably live in a beautiful area if you learn to appreciate it.

Beauty like this and grand landscapes are some of the first things that come to mind for most of us when we think about going out to take pictures. How can we not take great pictures when we are surrounded by natural beauty? Well, that’s where the difference happens that changes it from a pretty picture to art.

Blank canvas

Let’s look the other direction and imagine our self a painter. We have a blank canvas in front of us. What will we put on it?

This makes it a little easier to think about creativity and art. One of the unique things about photography is that the sensor records whatever we have framed in our viewfinder. One of our challenges is to very selectively limit what we want to see. Painters must design their composition and add every element, color, and brush stroke manually. A very different skill set, but still, as I will argue, the same kind of art.

So everything that ends up on the canvas had to be consciously placed there by the artist. What the painter creates is undeniably a work of human effort.

Interpretation

Have you experienced a time when two photographers have been together at a location, but you each got very different results? How can that be? You saw the same scene in front of you but made something different out of it.

Actually, that is not only common, it is typical. It is a difference between art and reporting.

When a newspaper journalist (there are still a few of them) sees a scene or event, if they are an honest reporter, their goal is to accurately report it to their readers. They want to capture the essential information without bias, while keeping it interesting. Whether in words or still images or videos, they want their audience to have an detailed first hand account of it.

But let’s say another crew of filmmakers was there at the same time. They have no implied imperative to be factual. Their focus may be on the drama of the scene, or it’s visual impact, or how it affects people, or even how it supports their particular political bias. Is this group doing a bad job?

No. Not if they are clearly interpreting events from a subjective viewpoint. What they bring back will probably be vastly different from the newspaper reporter. It may even be difficult to believe it was the same event. By taking a loose interpretation of facts, they had more freedom to create art.

When you are out photographing, are you reporting or making art?

Two photographers

Let’s get back to those 2 photographers at the same scene. It could be that one takes a very conventional, factual approach. Implicitly he believes this landscape shot should encompass his field of vision and it should show “just what he saw”. No more. No less. The result could well be a beautiful photo that many people would love to hang on their wall.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

But let’s say the other photographer takes a very different approach. Let’s say for him, a wide shot of the whole scene is not how he relates to the spirit of the place. Instead, he zooms in on a small part of the scene. Say a small cascade with fallen leaves on it. By getting low and close and using a slow shutter speed and a polarizer, he gets the motion of blurred water among the rocks with reflections of the seasonal colors. Not something you could look at and definitely know the location. But the viewer gets a feel for the place and time as expressed by the photographer.

Which is better? I can’t say. Maybe neither. Depends on their skill and vision. But one is more likely to be art.

Created

Now we come around full circle to my statement about human effort. One photograph is exactly what you would have seen if you drove to the same overlook. Some skill was required to successfully capture the image, but you know almost nothing of what the photographer was feeling about the scene.

The second image demonstrates effort by the artist to create a scene for us to see. By scanning, evaluating, focusing in, moving, they bring us to a new point of view. This photographer is trying to create something beyond a straight image anyone would have seen and taken. It has (potentially) elevated the dialog and given us a new insight. I say potentially, because it may be a failure. Still, he tried.

I am showing my biases. For me, at this point in my journey, the more interesting images are the result of effort to understand and interpret my feelings. It is not totally black & white, just a statistical prediction.

Human effort

These feelings about human effort are not just my own conclusions. Are there any original thoughts left to think?

W. Eugene Smith, for instance, said

“I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.”

Guy Tal pointed out in his great book The Interior Landscape that

“Poetry” derives from a Greek word meaning “to create” or to bring something into being. “Art” derives from a Latin word referring also to items brought into being by human skill (as opposed to things occurring naturally or randomly).

So “art” and “poetry” basically mean the same thing, just from 2 different languages. Art is an act of creation that comes as a deliberate use of human skill. We bring something into being. Our art may be, as Smith said, at odds with the literal facts. I like that phrase.

Is it art?

Ah, the existential question behind all this. What is “art”? At this point, I have to come down on the side of a definite “I don’t know.” I have heard it said that “anything created as art is art.” I’m at a loss to do much better than that. I say that because I look at a fair bit of “art” and for a lot of it, I have to just scratch my head and think “Really? What were they thinking?”. So I obviously do not understand. Maybe I can’t understand.

But for this little subset of the universe I am writing about today, maybe we can make some judgments.

So, is photography art? Yes. It absolutely can be. If it is created as art, it is art. It requires artistic sensibilities to do a good job. I’m not talking about selfies.

Is a representational photo less “good” than an interpretive one? I can’t say. It varies with time and context. You do what you have to do. Make your own art and follow your own values.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

I used to be a straight representational photographer. I did everything I could to capture a scene exactly and in detail. Just like it was. Over time I have morphed into someone who values interpretation more. Even trending into abstraction and occasionally surreal. For the most part, if I show you something, I want it to be interesting and fresh. Perhaps that is a natural progression with maturity, like tending to prefer drier wine as your taste gets more sophisticated. I don’t know.

Sorry to disappoint you. At this point I can only suggest you do your art and I will do mine and let’s not judge each other. If we are both happy with what we are doing, what else matters? And that is part of the beauty of it all. I used to be an engineer. One thing I appreciate as an artist is the much higher level of ambiguity. That is also a sign of maturity.

Get in a Flow

Mountain lake at sunrise

You have probably heard of flow states. Maybe you have experienced it. It is a wonderful place to be. Let’s talk about what it means to get in a flow. It does relate to art. Trust me.

What is it?

The concept of a flow state was described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Good luck with the pronunciation. It is actually fairly easy after you hear it.

Csikszentmihalyi was a child in Eastern Europe during WWII. It was a deeply traumatizing experience. And he noticed that, even after the war, many people were not able to recover mentally. He was very curious as to why.

Eventually he moved to America and studied psychology. His main research focus was happiness, what it is and how to achieve it. The identification of what we now call flow was a minor part of this research. He found that people were their most creative, productive, and happy when they were in this flow state.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s words, flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (1990).

He discovered that flow was a state people could get into temporarily where amazing and beneficial things happened. They had almost complete concentration on their task. Time would seem to speed up or slow down. The activity they were doing was intensely rewarding and pleasurable to them. And there seemed to be effortless ease in what they were doing.

Who experiences it?

Different people have differing predisposition to get into flow states.

Autotelic personalities tend to experience more flow. An autotelic is someone whose personality is driven by internal rewards more than external motivations like money or power. They are creative and curious and independent. This leads them to pursue goals that motivate them and give them internal satisfaction.

At the other extreme, people with a neurotic personality find it difficult to get into flow. Some think this is because their anxiety and self doubts inhibit the conditions leading to flow.

What happens to the brain?

Many researchers approach the study by trying to identify the mechanisms in the brain that support flow. I don’t have much interest in looking at it this way, but I will note some of the thoughts.

Some believe there can be an interaction between the default mode network (DMN) and the executive control network (ECN) in the brain. The DMN is the background processing we do, as when we daydream. The ECN is most active during problem solving and it helps tune out distractions. They feel that when these 2 centers work together in the right way we can achieve flow.

Another theory attempts to show that flow is achieved through expertise and practice. The idea is that as we become expert at certain tasks and reinforce that through repeated practice, we train the brain to perform it more effortlessly. The brain can sort of turn in to an automatic mode and let go and let the creativity flow.

This second research seems to be “winning”, and it is what I subscribe to.

Gothic cathedral repeating forms© Ed Schlotzhauer

How to achieve it

Flow is generally something that happens when we are completely immersed in a task that engages and energizes us. It seldom works to say “I’m going to go get into a flow state.”

As an example, some of the researchers studying the theory studied jazz guitarists. They instrumented them and recorded their brain activity during improvisation sessions. At a high level summary, less experienced musicians had to concentrate hard on what they were doing and did not enter flow states. Experienced musicians tended to go into “automatic”. They concentrated on the sensory aspects of playing the guitar and little time thinking about what to do or how to improvise. They had a low level of DMN and ECN activity. This seems to support the expertise theory.

That’s a lot of theory, but it doesn’t say much about how to achieve flow. You have to be expert in the task you are doing, and you have to have a extensive base of practice. Putting yourself in an environment where you are not distracted or interrupted helps, at least until the flow really kicks in. And being the type of person who is curious and self-driven and intuitive with a good ability to concentrate certainly seems to help a lot.

Does it relate to art?

I believe it is as common and valuable for artists as for jazz musicians or software engineers.

Let’s re-examine the qualities I mentioned above for who gets into flow. Aren’t artists generally curious and self-driven and intuitive and with a good ability to concentrate? Don’t we have an intense desire, even need, to create? Aren’t we independent and self-reliant?

We are prime to be able to find flows! The other missing piece is expertise and practice.

This is one reason I recommend that we need to study to become expert in our craft. Using our tools should be fluid and natural. Exposure and depth of field and shutter speed and mechanics of using our camera should be automatic. This frees up our conscious attention for exploring composition and framing and expressing out feelings.

And practice, practice, practice. Shoot frequently, daily if possible. Shoot something, anything. It’s OK to throw them away. The practice is worth is. All that practice is building the equivalent of muscle memory. Your fingers just know how to make the adjustments. Can you take out your camera in complete darkness and turn it on and set it up? Practice.

When you go out to shoot, immerse yourself in the experience. Concentrate fully on what you are doing. Let the rest of the world fade away. If you are lucky, you will find afterwards that you were in flow. Whether or not you were, do your work. Plunge yourself into your art.

Candles in a church© Ed Schlotzhauer
Chartres Cathedral

It is a positive experience

I have experienced it, many times. As a software developer, I experienced this strange and exciting feeling regularly, long before I ever heard the term. Sometimes I would realize that hours have vanished and I forgot to eat lunch. And the productivity of what I did in those sessions was astounding. It was great to finally hear it described and find out I wasn’t crazy.

As an artist it seems to happen different. I seldom work a scene for hours, although I may spend hours in a post processing session. But I may spend significant time wandering and looking and being immersed in the thought process. I believe this is a kind of flow. It seems to have the same result, where creativity flows easily and effortlessly. And it can produce a set of images that are above the norm of what I would expect.

Even writing articles like this can achieve a flow state. I sometimes open a blog intending to make a few notes and jot down some thoughts I had, and realize a few hours later that I have nearly crafted a complete article. And I sometimes read through it and think “wow, did I write that?” 🙂

A result

Being in a flow is joyful. It is a happy state. But it is a result, not the goal. A flow state indicates that we have become completely immersed in a task that engages and energizes us. One that we are expert in and practiced enough in that we can sort of let go and let it happen. Kind of like those jazz guitarists they studied doing improvisations. It is not easy, it requires major commitment. But it is worth it.

So study your craft. Gain deep knowledge and experience. Be familiar with ideas from other artists. Practice constantly (10,000 hour rule?). These will make you a better and more creative artist.

Maybe, someday, you will look back on a block of creative energy you have just spent and think, that was probably a flow state. It feels great. Enjoy! Remember, Csikszentmihalyi discovered the idea of flow because he was researching happiness.

Note

I found 2 different rationale for calling it “flow”. One was that in Csikszentmihalyi’s interviews it was common for people to describe what was happening as “their work simply flowed out of them without much effort.” Another description says people sometimes described it as like being in a river flow. They were swept along with little effort.

Decide what to call it when you experience it yourself.