Tag: psychology

No Learning Required

Photography is a craft we traditionally spend years learning and practicing. What if we could shortcut all that and have some “hacks” that would let us make great images with little work or training?

The click bait

It seems like I am getting more and more click bait like this (actual names redacted to protect their anonymity, and to not support their sales offer):

Most photographers spend years trying to figure it all out on their own—slow progress, scattered tutorials, lots of frustration.

But what if you could skip that?

What if this is the year you jump straight to clarity, consistency, and results?
That’s exactly what the [program name] gives you: the proven system that pros actually use.

If you’re at the bottom of the learning curve this seems attractive. Who wouldn’t want to be able to leapfrog to the top of your game with little effort? This would save years of hard work.

For a little money, I could buy my way to success, fame, and fortune. I could become a respected artist quickly. What’s not to like?

There are 2 things: there is no secret knowledge, and it still involves a lot of hard work and learning.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Secret knowledge

It is a popular and successful sales pitch to insinuate that there is secret knowledge known only by elite practitioners in a field. If someone shares this secret knowledge with you (for a fee), you, too, can be one of the elites.

The problem with this is that photography does not rely on secret knowledge. Rather than being a closed league, like a guild, the field is very open. Most photographers readily and openly share their knowledge and insight.

Why would they make all this knowledge available? I think it is for 2 reasons.

First, many photographers rely on workshops and book and tutorial sales to supplement their income. It is just a reality. The number of people who live solely on image sales is relatively small.

Second, they know their knowledge is not secret. It does not need to be closely guarded, because it is wisdom based on years of experience. Every photographer who has been in the game long enough basically knows the same things. Most of the ones I know are eager to share their experience and help others benefit.

Learning required?

Are there “hacks” you can use to get you where you want to go faster? Maybe. Depending on where you want to go.

If you are the family photographer, there are simple things you can learn to make your images more enjoyable. Making yourself aware of the lighting and how to control it, framing the subject more deliberately, using shallow depth of field to isolate, and seeking a “decisive moment” are techniques to raise yourself above the norm.

Or if you want to make your vacation pictures less boring to others, there are “hacks” that can be used. Learning to see and use the light, actively looking at what is going on all around your frame, use wide and close and high and low views. Culling out most of your shots will help a lot, too.

If these are the kind of specific goals you have, then certainly learn the “tricks” and be satisfied. You will take better pictures but not be an artist.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Results or creativity?

So, what is the goal? Many people, probably most people, only care about getting a decent shot to put on social media or in a memory album. I do not criticize this at all. That is where their values lie. Learn some simple techniques that will improve your photos.

But if you aspire to be an artist, if your goal is to make creative and interesting images that express your point of view, that is an entirely different path. If you go to photography school, you will learn techniques like I described above. Probably in the first semester. Then you will be pushed onward to learn actual image making.

Creativity is hard. You must know the basics of the craft very well, but then you must develop your own unique way of seeing and have something to say. It goes far beyond just being able to take a good picture.

Are there shortcuts?

The ad I quoted talks about “slow progress, scattered tutorials, lots of frustration” being involved in the way photography is usually learned. Maybe they have synthesized a program that guides a person through this messy time. Or maybe they just have a rigid program to follow to make a novice a clone of the instructor.

I believe. that learning to be a creative photographer is hard work. Personally, I don’t think there is a reasonable shortcut. A good mentor can help immensely by pointing things out and giving good feedback. But you still must do the work. It is long and frustrating and sometimes you want to give up. We want to be progressing faster, but we don’t seem to be getting there yet.

Henri Cartier-Bresson famously noted “Your first 10,000 photos are your worst.” That is true. It does not, however, mean your next 10,000 will be great. As someone who has shot many multiples of 10,000, I know that it is a long and difficult road.

But we keep pushing, because something compels us to do it. Psychologists tell us we learn more from failures than from successes. As aspiring artists, we generate a lot of learning opportunities. And we do learn. Practice and ruthless evaluation eventually pays off.

©Ed Schlotzhauer

Doesn’t AI do the work?

An elephant in the room these days is AI. Won’t AI provide the shortcuts we want? Can’t we rely on it to make our images better?

Yes, we can. It already happens every day with AI “enhancements” when we take a picture with our phone. And there are many AI “enhancements” that can automatically be applied to our images in Lightroom or Photoshop or whatever your tool of choice is. It will only get more powerful and more pervasive.

If your goal is to make your image better, then yes, it will be glad to do it for you. But you didn’t do it. And by letting AI do it, you didn’t learn how to do it better next time. We become a tool of the machine rather than it being the other way around.

If our goal is to become a creative artist, my opinion is that this is going the wrong direction. An artist is responsible for all the creative decisions in making an image. We delegate some simple things to our tools, like when I put my camera on Aperture mode and let it choose the shutter speed based on the aperture I selected. That is a simple technical calculation, it is not taking creative responsibility for the image.

Maybe AI is one thing driving the resurgence of photographers shooting film and doing chemical darkroom work. They remain firmly in charge of all aspects of their image.

Look back

Sometimes looking back helps us look forward.

In my blog I have given some glimpses of my culling and evaluation techniques. I will not describe them in detail, just to say that I do not use a basic 5-point ranking scheme. My images must go through several rounds of critique and editing to progress up to my top set. The ones I would be proud to show anyone.

Recently I was going back through to catch up on my backlog of hundreds of images that are still “in progress”. It is a time to look realistically at each image and decide if it deserves to be promoted to the next level.

An interesting thing occurred. Having to revisit these hundreds of images, I couldn’t help thinking that I have been making some pretty good and occasionally creative pictures. I shoot so much that I sometimes forget to look back and see the arc that is traced by the past. It was encouraging.

Art is hard

Becoming a better picture shooter is easy. Becoming an artist is hard. It involves lots of learning and practice and self-examination. And suffering. At least the mental suffering of falling short of your expectations. But even then, there is no certificate, no award ceremony, nothing to tell you that you have arrived. You keep pushing and reaching forward.

It takes time and effort. I do not believe there are any magic shortcuts that will get you where you need to go. Put in the work. Put in the time. It is worth it.

December 17, 2025

What Do You See?
We all have different interests, which triggers different perceptions of things around us. What do you see? That determines a lot about what you will photograph.
Visual mechanics
If we are an average human beings, we have fairly similar optical equipment. We have rods and cones, corneas and irises, an optical nerve. In the brain we have the occipital lobe doing the major image processing, the parietal lobe handling spatial recognition, and the temporal lobe interfacing to memory. Memory is important to the scene recognition process.
This is fascinating in a general way, but I’m not interested in any of that for this discussion. I don’t care about the mechanisms of how we see.
If I was shopping for a car and the salesman insisted on going on in great length about the design details of the engine, he would probably lose a sale. I’m not uninterested in that, but I am more interested in what the car will do for me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Perception
In a similar way, I’m not very interested in the mechanism of sight. I want to know how we use our vision. Why do we see what we see? Do we see the same things others around us see?
I refer to this as our perception. That is not based on how well our visual system works, but in what we are drawn to notice and decide to photograph. Basically, what we choose to see.
I have heard it said that if you take 2 photographers and put them side by side in a 10×10 foot area they couldn’t leave and have them take pictures, they would be different. Sure, they would image many of the same subjects, but their work would be different. One may favor wide angle shots taking in all the field around them. The other may favor telephoto views narrowing in on details. Even if they used the same cameras and lens, their compositions would be distinct. Basically, they are perceiving different stories. They see and feel different things.
I haven’t tried this literal experiment, but I have been on photo walks where a group traveled through the same area for an hour or two. When we compared results there were significant differences in treatments and subject selection. We each had different perceptions.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Insight
To me, our perception is closely related to the insight we bring to a scene or subject. Insight in the sense of intuition. A Psychologist’s definition of insight is “when a solution to a problem presents itself quickly and without warning.” I believe that is too limited for our application to photography.
I prefer to broaden it to include more of our consciousness. The term noesis better captures it. Very simply, it is “the power of acute observation and deduction, discernment, and perception.”
In our photography, that is basically saying we are looking, we recognize the interest to us, and we know what to do with it. That allows that we could be intentionally looking to photograph the subject, or we may just suddenly recognize that it is interesting. But either way, our perception is working, our eyes are open, and our mind is engaged.
Selective attention
Most people are not open and engaged most of the time. We are glued to our tiny screens for much of our day. Even when we put them down, we tend to be lost in thought about our to-do list or an important meeting coming up or a problem we are trying to solve.
It is a human tendency to have tunnel vision when we are worrying or focused on a problem. Psychologists call this selective attention. There is an old but famous video used as an experiment in this. Try it before reading ahead to the next paragraph. Really focus on counting the passes.
Did you notice the gorilla? About half the people who are concentrating on counting the passes didn’t. This is selective attention. Even when something bizarre passes through our field of view, we can miss it completely because we are concentrating on something else.
There is a second finding that came out of this. Most of the subjects who missed the gorilla were very surprised they had done it. They seriously overestimated their ability to multitask. It seemed inconceivable to them that they could miss something so obvious.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Are you open?
When we have the privilege of getting in the “doing photography” mode, whatever that means for you, we must fight to free ourselves from the things that are stealing our attention.
When we are distracted, we will miss amazing things. Doing photography means to take ourselves out of this, to invert our attention to what’s going on around us, to be receptive.
This is being open. It is letting the noesis I described earlier function: “the power of acute observation and deduction, discernment, and perception.”
There is power in this. It turns simple seeing into deep observation and insight. We are aware of relationships and gesture and color and composition and beauty and detail that would otherwise flow by unobserved and unrecorded. It allows us to capture moments that others around us did not perceive.
I love it when I show someone an image and they say ‘Wow, I pass by that every day and I have never noticed it!” I treasure a memory of one time when I was setting up to take a picture and a woman passing by dismissively said “I don’t see anything interesting here.” But I did. That was satisfying.
It is very natural to be thinking about our daily worries. I can’t help you with that. I do too. But some of our significant distractions are self-inflicted. If we are photographers, I believe we need to set aside blocks of time where we put the phone down and out of sight and pay attention to what we are missing all around us.
We only have a certain amount of attention. Moment by moment we choose what to spend it on. Multi-tasking is very ineffective for creative tasks. When we try to do our art and something else, both will suffer.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Give yourself permission
One joy of being a photographer is that we can give ourselves permission to step out of the flood that carries most people along. Picking up our camera is an excuse and an opportunity to be immersed in the moment, in a creative flow. Eyes open, mind engaged, not distracted. This is tremendously energizing. It makes us feel very alive. We start to see.
We photograph what we are looking at. That’s the direction our head is pointing, so that is where our field of vision is. That limits what we could see. But what are we seeing? That is our choice. We “see” with our mind. What we notice in our field of view is determined by our interests and curiosity. With practice and experience we can learn to see more. To more clearly see things that are not obvious to other people.
December 3, 2025
Critique Your Own Work
It is important to be able to honestly critique your own work. Can you objectively see it as others do? I believe it is a learned skill.
It will be critiqued
Every time we look at our images, we are critiquing them. When our friends or even our spouse look at them, they are critiquing them. They will probably keep their real opinions to themselves, but inside their head, they are being honest.
And, of course, when we approach a gallery or enter a contest, we are explicitly inviting critique. The gallery manager or judge is seeing hundreds or thousands of competing images. They will be brutally honest and severe in their comparison and criticism. They are only going to choose a handful of the many competing entries they are given.
Even if we are just posting on social media to show other people where we are and what we are doing, they are forming opinions of the pictures. I would theorize that, if you care at all about images, it is impossible to look at a picture without forming an opinion. And everyone who looks at yours does it.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
First do it ourself
That may sound harsh, but I believe it is reality. Since it will happen, shouldn’t we jump in and be the most severe critic of our pictures before others do? Shouldn’t we eliminate weak pictures and fix the problems in the others? If we are very deliberate to only show our best images, that will save us embarrassment and make us look like a better photographer.
You will never see my unedited images unless I am teaching a workshop on editing and want to prove a point. I shoot a lot. Most are not great. And I don’t even intend some of them to be very good. Some are purely experimental. “What if” moments where I am exploring to see if what I did seems to lead in a useful direction.
It is common to make several shots of a scene. But I will typically pick only 1 as the best. That is the only one you would ever see. And even then, the best of a set still may not be a very good image.
And it is much more than the technical perfection of an image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Study
My friend Cole Thompson believes in what he calls “photographic celibacy“. He does not look at the work of other photographers so that he is not influenced by them.
That does not work for me. I consider it valuable to study all forms and genres of image making. There are things to be learned from photography and painting and movies, graffiti and magazines and advertising. Most any genre from Renaissance to Romanticism to Impressionism to Abstract to post-modernism can give us insight in how other artists have chosen to express their ideas.
Read books where artists discuss their thought process. Go to museums and galleries. Cultivate friends who have artistic perception. Take in as much as possible.
But learn. Don’t follow.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Learn your taste
We are artists. That means we have a point of view to share with the world, and particular visual styles we use to do it. We each must find and understand our values and style. These preferences guide our photographic decisions.
If you are new at photography, it is natural to look at an artist and say we want to make work that looks like theirs. That is OK, for a while. Copy someone we are studying to internalize how they do it. But it is important then to re-center ourself and decide what, if anything, of what we learned we want to adopt to our own art.
Maybe it is nothing. We may greatly admire their art, but conclude it is not applicable to what we feel and want to do. For example, I really like some of Joel Grimes‘ portraits. But it is unlikely I will ever do an image in his style. I don’t shoot portraits, and the edgy, high-tech style is not mine.
My point is that, with lots of experience and practice, I am learning how I see and what kind of images I want. Anything that makes me better at that adds to my skills and is valuable. Anything that doesn’t may be interesting and educational, but probably not valuable.
Give it some time
We are all basically using the same tools. It is not the technology that differentiates us.
Famous jazz musician Miles Davis said, “Sometimes, you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” This is probably true of any art form. I believe it is true of photography.
We learn and practice and imitate other artists and chase “likes”, but eventually, if we persist, we learn to be ourselves. I don’t think there are shortcuts (sorry). If you have been at it for a while, you are probably not producing the same type of work now that you did 20 years ago. Hopefully, you are now creating images that are uniquely you.
Each of us is a mix of genes and education and experience and values and motivations, tempered by our unique life experiences, and wrapped in a frail human body. No one else’s mix is the same as yours. That’s why we should not try to “be” some other artist we admire. We can’t. We can only authentically be ourselves.
But even when we learn to be ourselves, that doesn’t mean our work is good. The sad truth is that most of the trillions of photos shot every year are unexceptional. We must learn the skill of critically evaluating our own work.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Make a portfolio
An excellent way to examine yourself and understand where you are artistically is to put together a portfolio. I find that I am not as critical as I should be unless I do this. Pretend you are going to submit your portfolio to a gallery. The portfolio can’t have more than 20 images.
That limit is the problem and the beauty. It is not difficult pulling out 300 pictures you like. Forcing that down to 200 hurts some, but isn’t too much of a problem. Then grit your teeth and make the cuts down to 100. This is getting painful. You are having to cut some of your favorite pictures.
Then it gets hard. You think you can’t possibly take any more out. But the goal staring at you is 20. From here on out, you are having to do serious self-examination. Each image must be scrutinized more carefully. Every one must be justified to stay in the select set.
Liking, even loving an image is not enough. We must objectively decide if it is a strong piece of art on its own. Is the technical craft and the composition solid enough to stand up to criticism? Does it go beyond a record shot, having that “something extra“?
This is painful. When it gets down to about 30, every one you eliminate feels like you are giving up one of your children. Each picture must compete head-to-head against every other one. The weaker must be eliminated. You try to talk yourself into cheating and keeping 25 or 30 for the portfolio. But push on. Cutting the last 10-20 images is by far the most difficult. But also, the most instructive.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Self-examination
Congratulations! You have put together a portfolio! The regret over the ones eliminated will fade quickly. You just eliminated them from this portfolio. You didn’t delete them from your disk. Now it is time to reflect on what you have created and try to learn.
Just look at your images for a while. Consider each one individually. Why do you like it? How is it better than all the ones you eliminated? What do you learn about yourself from it? Then reflect on the whole set. You might be surprised to discover a harmonious style or approach, even though each may be a different subject.
Forcing yourself through the process of narrowing down a set of good pictures to a very small set of great pictures is an excellent way to learn to critique your work. Having a fixed goal forces us to make hard decisions instead of being vague.
You will probably discover that you have a set of images that you are proud to show anyone. Ones you believe will stand up to close examination by experts. And that you have a style that is your own.
Critique your own work, severely. Be such a severe critic that you are sure you will not be ashamed to show anyone the survivors. And make sure your work proves you are human, not an AI.
November 26, 2025
What Does It Mean
We’re artists. Artists create art. We’re told art is supposed to have meaning. Do we always know what does it mean?
High art
We’re repeatedly told that art has meaning. It should educate or challenge or at least raise questions. To many, art should support a cause and try to change the world.
But when we read artist statements and gallery statements, it can seem they are speaking a different language. One too high for us commoners to understand. Therefore, we are not in the inner circle. But remember, they are selling a product. The more elite it appears to be, the higher the price it can command and the more collectable it is. I understand, but I don’t like the game.
This is from the point of view of photography, because that is the main art I understand. I can somewhat understand that if you have a very labor-intensive product that takes weeks or months to create, it may be necessary to do whatever you can to make it more valuable. And putting all that time and work into it makes you want to believe it must have great artistic significance. After all, if I can create a finished photo in a few hours but you need weeks to create your painting, the painting must have deeper meaning, right?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Where does meaning come from?
But where does meaning come from? Do I put meaning in when I create a photograph? Or does the viewer assign meaning to it? Or is there even meaning at all?
Maybe all of those.
Sorry to be vague, but that is the way it seems to me. There are no clear, definite answers. Like many important things in life, the answer is “it depends”.
I think sometimes that I have meaning in mind when I make a photo. Sometimes not. I am occasionally surprised by meanings that viewers of my images describe to me. I have to try to keep a poker face while I’m thinking “where did they come up with that?”
And when I read some artist statements about images I can’t help being a little skeptical. They must be incredibly deep thinkers to have visualized all of that meaning and symbolism at the instant they took the photo.
But I typically do not operate on those lines.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Whose meaning?
This brings up the question of whose meaning are we talking about? As the artist, I may have visualized a meaning at that moment. This would be based on my cumulative feelings and experiences. But each viewer will form his own interpretation of meaning in the image. And each may be different, based on their own feelings and experiences. The viewers are experiencing the image in a different context than I shot it.
As the artist, do I have the right to decide the meaning and require everyone to line up with it? I don’t think so. The picture is mine, but each viewer’s meaning is theirs.
An art critic or curator may analyze one of my images in detail. They can talk about the composition and lighting and placement of elements and use of color and how those formed or contributed to the meaning. They could go into the symbolism it contains. How the symbols connect to some event or period and what meaning that has.
I might say thank you for complimenting my (probably instinctual) compositional design. But at the same time, my BS meter will be pegged. Maybe at some level I was aware of the symbolism and meaning he describes, but maybe not.
Do I create meaning?
I have often wondered if I create meaning in an image. I believe I occasionally use symbolism. Occasionally I touch on themes much larger than my work. But it is not my style, when making art, to be heavy-handed on meaning. I probably was unaware or only dimly aware of any symbolism when I make the image.
For example, a Sierra Club photographer might show hunters clubbing baby seals for their fur. This brutally makes their point, and it has “meaning” in the context of their cause, but it is not necessarily art. It is propaganda photography.
My art always expresses an opinion. But I do not believe I should try to force my opinion on you. If you look at my image and come to the same opinion I had, great. If not, I hope you form an opinion that makes you appreciate the image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do I know what it means?
I am continually asking myself if I even know what an image means. This is especially true when I am editing and culling images. We all occasionally ask ourselves “why did I take that?” But at a deeper level the question is “what does it mean?”
I often have to say, I don’t know. It triggered some emotion. Maybe that emotion was just that it was pleasing. But I know that sometimes I had a feeling that it had some meaning I might not have been able to express then.
I’ve stopped trying to over analyze my images as I am shooting them. That can come later during editing.
And another aspect of this I find very interesting is that the meaning or worth of an image often changes for me with time. I usually use a technique I call slow editing. That is, I try to wait for days or weeks before doing serious edits. This lets the emotion of the shoot fade and allows me to examine the images in a more detached way. Obviously, I don’t follow the common practice of downloading daily and rushing some images out to the eagerly waiting internet.
A side effect of slow editing is that my opinion of some images changes between the time I shot it and the time I edit it. Sometimes dramatically. I have been known to throw out most of a shoot that I thought was going to be significant. On the other hand, there have been times that an image I was about to throw out ends up being my favorite of a shoot. My understanding changes. A realization grows of something I must have been drawn to when I captured the image, but it did not break into my consciousness until I gave it time.
So, do I know what my images mean? Maybe over time, after reflecting on them long enough, I might have a glimmer of understanding. Perhaps I see a connection to my beliefs or values. I might, occasionally, even say an image has meaning.
But in general, I resist the presumption that my images “mean” anything of themselves. If I or a viewer give them meaning, that is wonderful. Meaning only makes sense for a human.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Make art
So, what about meaning? If you are making fine art, I recommend not worrying too much about what does it mean. Instead, concentrate on making what you consider to be your art. Pictures without art are advertising or propaganda or snapshots. Art without obvious meaning is still art.
I try to be gentle about conveying meaning to my viewers. To me, being heavy-handed robs an image of depth. Viewers will assign meaning to it. Or they won’t. It is fine with me if they just like it.
And worrying too much about meaning when I am shooting robs me of much of the emotional attachment I felt at the time. I don’t appreciate a meaningful but lifeless image. I want my images to feel fresh and lively and maybe, in a way, humorous. Sometimes just being pretty can be enough.
Make the best art you can. Put your feelings and intensity into it. Let yourself be surprised by the meaning. The best ones will have meaning, because it is an expression of your deep attachment to the subject. Your viewers want to see the meaning you felt. And they are free to create their own meaning.
November 5, 2025
Lean Into It
I can’t be passive about my art, my photography. The only way I know to approach it is to lean into it. To boldly and confidently attack it.
Different styles
We all have different personalities and different working styles for our art. A portrait photographer or wedding photographer might need to be in positive control of the situation. To direct the subjects to get the shots and results anticipated. On the other hand, a street photographer may unobtrusively “stalk” the shots he wants. He works completely in the background and usually without the subjects being aware of being photographed.
A landscape photographer may plan a trip long in advance to be at a certain location at what he determines to be the best time for the shot he wants. Or another one may just go wandering with no preconceived plans or shot list.
These are examples. All show different methods of approaching the craft. But regardless of the approach or the personality, one of the common ingredients in our art is intensity.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Intensity
All good artists I know share a certain type of intensity about their craft. When they are doing their art, they are “on” – focused, earnest, single-minded.
In my limited experience, this seems to be true no matter what genre they work in. Their personality modifies the way this intensity is expressed, but it is usually there.
I think this intensity helps to focus us on where we are and what is happening. On our goals or what we are experiencing. It helps us to stay in the moment.
People talk with some longing about flow states and how desirable they are. But in my art and in the career I had before that, I find them common. Valuable and wonderful, but fairly easily achieved.
That is not bragging. I think the intensity and focus I can bring to my work enables flow. It is not uncommon for me to be so caught up in my photography or writing or editing that hours can pass without me being conscious of them. From talking to other artists, I believe this is a shared experience for many.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Mindful
I often talk about the desirability of being mindful. The intensity of our focus on our work leads to this type of mindfulness. Mindfulness in the sense that we are completely caught up in the moment. We are immersed in our art and the creative process. Other concerns and considerations do not exist for us at that moment.
Let me emphasize that I am taking about lower case “mindfulness”. Not some system of chants or meditation. It is not a semi-religious experience for me. I hold my own religious beliefs, and they are separate from this.
I believe this type of mindfulness is a result of my intense focus on my art, not a cause of my creative output. That is, my focus leads to creativity and mindfulness, not the other way around.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do it
We all get into creative slumps. No new ideas are popping up. We aren’t even enthusiastic about getting out and taking pictures or editing. That’s natural.
But I feel that one of the worst things we can do is just sit around waiting to feel inspired. At these times, I believe it is important to get up and get out and work. Go out to “do” art and do it until we loosen up and get into the moment and things start to flow.
This is what I mean by “lean into it“. It is a process of embracing what we are doing and the situation we are in, making it into something good. It is a matter of overcoming a situation or our inertia. We push back against what is resisting us, and deal with it, with confidence and determinism.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Resistance can often be a good thing. That is what exercise basically is. Forcing our body to work against the weights or the track builds up strength and endurance. I believe strongly that it works the same way for our mental powers. We need to read and think about challenging material. Things that exercise our brain. I can’t prove it, but I believe it also works for our creative powers. We learn to create better by going through the pain of creating.
Same in our photography. We often blame circumstances, and they are real and inescapable. But much of the time the real barrier is our attitude. We are not willing to change our attitude and put in the work to overcome the situation. Get out the door (or go to where you do your work), get switched on, find your intensity. Lean into it.
Nike was right: just do it.
Do one thing every day that scares you. Those small things that make us uncomfortable help us build courage to do the work we do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Inspiration is for amateurs. Us professionals just go to work in the morning.
Chuck Close
October 22, 2025