THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

So Much To See

Traveling in Maine, Washington DC and around Massachusetts these last weeks. So many scenes, both from the air, on the water, wandering monuments cloaked in images and surrounded by exoskeletons. It made me consider the visual diversity of what I am drawn to photograph.

Looking back over such a short period of such visual diversity is actually a bit disconcerting. In looking through the photographs it is clear to me that I don't have a subject. It is everything curious, beautiful, wired, compelling, ironic, bucolic.

I remember being told in school that I needed to hone in on a particular subject matter, that my interests were too broad. For a long time I thought that to be a general comment about a photographer's body of work, not just a group of work being presented. A portfolio, or a project are very different entities than a career, and very different than the broad fascinations that lead us to to becoming visual artists.

My visual interests remain broad, even though I might be known primarily for my color landscapes and attention to pastel color. This Newsletter often embodies my wide visual interests.

We fall in love with sight itself, and all of the wild possibilities that implies. My romance is with being alive on this planet, this precious veil of air scattering light, enveloping, illuminating, bathing the earth in this thin and fragile oasis of life.

a fragile veil
on a moving crust
such a thin veneer
holding us

spinning round
in the cold of space
an ocean of blue
in such a dark place

where everything we know, every rock and tree
everybody we've loved, all of history
can be found

excerpt from "Our Thin Veil" 2012 lyrics by Stephen Johnson

Whether man-made or naturally pristine, or some ironic blend of the two, I react with my heart, call upon my sense of design and order, and intuit my way through an exploration of what I see. It could be anything.

I love wandering in Washington DC. I make a point of spending some at the Jefferson Memorial, and most always the Air and Space Museum.

Cactus. US Botanical Garden. 2013.

On this trip, the US Botanical Gardens became a priority and turned out to be a very special place. Calling ahead allowed to arrange for a tripod permit which really helped. A lunch afterward sampling Native American cuisines at the National Museum of the American Indian was a real treat.

Atrium, National Museum of the American Indian. 2013.

Washington Monument Encased. 2013.

Some of the sights were strange. Both the Supreme Court and the Washington Monument were surrounded by new faces. Both presented brand new visual opportunities that I had not expected.

The visual wonders continue.

.

...continued top of right column

I was lucky enough to take a few days after a round of lectures and spend some time at a friend's cabin next to a lake near Amherst, MA. It was a good few days of much needed quiet and slow down. As is often best, I got lost in just being, I read, enjoyed the quiet, watched the sun, fog and stars come and go.

Water Lilly Pads and Reflections. North Spectacle Lake, MA. 2013.

Not that I felt a need to resist making photographs, but it was a good short time with no agenda, no tasks that had to be accomplished. Probably a great state of mind to photograph when the impulse struck, without agenda.

Water Lilly Pads and Blooms. North Spectacle Lake, MA. 2013.

A Few Talks Ahead

Carmel Workshop

As I prepare to go back to Carmel's Center for Photographic Art in November for their annual Member's Workshop,

I thought back to an interview Jim Kasson from the Center did with me in 2004. So, I thought I would post a link to it here.

Steve at his studio after interview. Jim Kasson. 2004.

An excerpt from the interview:

JK: You are one of the few fine-art photographers routinely working in both color and black and white. What's your history with the two media?

SJ: I started shooting color film before black and white, unless you count the occasional forays in high school. When I went to junior college, I had a job in the audio/visual lab at Merced College developing and shooting color slides, while at the same time taking a beginning black and white course, so my familiarity with both media was pretty much simultaneous. I actually developed color film before I developed black and white. I was in college, I was 17, I was still getting used to having my own car and being able to drive. Suddenly, I could go to Yosemite whenever I wanted. I was backpacking at will instead of when I could get people to take me, going on over the hill and seeing Mono Lake for the first time. Having been raised among hunters, turned vegetarian, still wanting to be outdoors, but not needing the hunting as an excuse: it all came together. I’d been making things since I was a little kid. I’d always been interested in technology. Landscape photography is the medium where technology, being outdoors, and making things: it all came together. Then my first girlfriend dumped me and went off to college, leaving me with her 35mm camera. I started wandering around in the foothills with that camera, and ended up actually using one of those photographs in the Central Valley book 15 years later. I left the A/V lab and became a teaching assistant in the photography department, over the next year and a half it all started to come together.

JK: When did you start to get interested in classic large-format landscape photography?

SJ: During my time at Merced College I’d become more aware of Ansel, Edward Weston, and Carleton Watkins, and the f/64 group. I’d seen the Ansel Adams Gallery since I was a kid. It made an impression, but I’d not thought much about it beyond, “Well, that’s neat.” But when I was in college, I remember seeing what must have been an 18×22 Watkins on the wall. I think it was $800, which seemed like an insurmountable amount of money to me. It started to sink in that this was actually a legitimate way of spending one’s career. When I look back at my photographs, they weren't compelling, so it wasn't clear I could be successful. In spite of all that, when I graduated from junior college, I transferred to San Francisco State University, largely because of the photo program.

Oregon: Focus on Nature Festival

We're spending a few days in Oregon in early October, doing a series of talks and workshops with the Tualitin River Photo Society for their Focus on Nature Festival.

I will give the keynote address to the conference on my "With a New Eye: Photography Forever Changed," a groundbreaking digital landscape photography project. I will also be conducting three workshops: Twelve Steps to Improve Your Digital Photography; Photography and the Environment: A History and call to action; Fine-Art Digital Printing.

New York City: PhotoPlus

I am always happy to going back to NYC for the PhotoPlus show which I've been doing for over 15 years. I've always had a good time in New York, and it has given me some wonderful photographic opportunities, photographing, going to shows and seeing so much work and so many old friends at the show. It seem I always make some interesting acquaintances.

I'm pleased to be presenting my "12 Steps to Improve Your Photographs" talk on Friday afternoon. I usually also do a talk in the Canon booth on my recent work.

email your comments to us