THE VIEW FROM HERE

Mono Lake, Art and Conservation

In the mid-1970s I visited Mono Lake for the first time and found it to be a deeply beautiful and strange place. Over the years it was becoming clear the lake was falling. Eventually I learned about water diversions of its feeder streams to Los Angeles 350 miles to the south.

In 1979 I decided to organize a big photographic exhibition to draw attention to the unique beauty of the place. My friends and photographic mentor Al Weber and Don Worth helped curate the show, with Ansel Adams and Brett Weston contributing prints. Letters of support from Ansel, non-profit sponsorship by David Brower and Friends of the Earth helped get the project underway.

The exhibition At Mono Lake gathered work from over a hundred years of photography and nearly 50 photographers, toured the country from 1980 to 1983, was seen by over 4 million people and now resides in a permanent gallery at the Mono Basin National Scenic Area Visitor's Center in Lee Vining. A catalog drawn from the show was published in 1983 including 63 photographs from the exhibit.

A public relations campaign and lawsuit was waged against the water diversions  and was successful in mandating a minimum lake level being restored before water diversion could resume.

An Aging Exhibition and New Opportunities
The At Mono Lake exhibition is now 30 years old and needs some tender loving care. It also needs some modernization with some electronic interpretation and a exhibition catalog that represents all of the work in the show.

I have devoted some time to this project this last month or so, recreating the book in InDesign with the hope of publishing a full electronic version, illustrating the Exhibition Inventory page on the website, designing some new graphics for the Visitor's Center and some new posters that might serve as fundraiser's for the short and long-term maintenance of the show.

The Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association is the current non-profit managing affairs relating the Mono Lake Visitors Center and therefore will likely be the conduit for the work we are now doing.

A Photographic Style
My Mono Lake work is where my own photographic style emerged and matured into an aesthetic that deeply appreciates the nature of light-filled color and real world experience of the human perceived color of a place.

The whole At Mono Lake experience so influenced my thinking, artwork, and sense of the possible that it became the subject of my graduate thesis and gave me real confidence to go on to my next big photographic project on my homeland of the Great Central Valley which I did with my friend Robert Dawson from 1982-1986.

Next Mono Lake Class
One of my favorite locations to do a field workshop is at Mono Lake. The stark and beautiful scenery of this legendary lake is unlike any other landscape in the world and I enjoy seeing the work produced from the four days we spend photographing and discussing technical and aesthetic considerations.

Our 2011 Mono Lake Workshop is October 8-11, 2011. Perhaps you can join us.

...continued top of right column

A Tribute to Al Weber: A Panel at the Center for Photographic Art, Carmel

Much of this convergence of attention to the decades-old Mono Lake project came about as I was preparing for a talk about my good friend and co-curator of At Mono Lake, Al Weber, at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel last Saturday.

I first met Al in October of 1975 on one of his and Ralph Putzker's Mono Lake Eastern Sierra workshops run through the University of California Santa Cruz Extension. He and Ralph both became good friends and mentors to me, helping my career and photography in countless ways, not the least of which was the encouragement that my photographic work was of value.

Video of Steve's Talk at Al Weber Tribute. Click to open, and video may take awhile to load.

It was an honor to speak at Al's opening of his Aerial Photographs show at CPA. It was also wonderful to see so many old friends including some of the contributing photographers to At Mono Lake, Ted Orland, Richard Garrod, Marion Patterson and others.

STUFF

At the Opening Reception for Al Weber's show, I saw many old friends and met some interesting new friends as well. Wynn Bullock's daughter Barbara Bullock was there and we talked about her posing for her Dad, and about her mother Edna whom I was very fond of. She mentioned that there was now a section on her father Wynn's website devoted to her mother's work.

My old friend environmentalist Marsh Pitman came by the opening. I met Marsh in 1968 working against the election of Richard Nixon, and then later as co-chairs of the McGovern campaign where I grew up in central California. I was 15 and running the campaign, Marsh served as the adult in the room that let my management of the campaign go forward.

I made the acquaintance of another photographer, Michelle Maddox, who made an impression on me in talking with her, but even more of an impression when I looked at her webpage later. Michelle made a nice photograph of Marsh Pitman and me together.

I also ran into William Giles who I hadn't seen in 20 years or more and thought it would be nice to remind people of his very substantial work. Take a look a his website.

And now for something completely different, below is my pause to look up at the marquis of the newly restored Fox Theater in Oakland as we went in to see the Buffalo Springfield reunited after 40 years. Below is just two iPhone snapshots stitched on site in AutoStitch and emailed to a few friends before the show began. I loved the light, the curvature, the magic of rock and roll. It was a great show.

All of us have needed to copy our work at one time or another. As photographers we have certainly been asked to help other artists make slides, and now digital copies of our fellow artists paintings, drawings and other forms of expression.

Object photography has its own demands much like studio photography in general. But the process of lighting flat copy work and reproducing the color accurately is no small task.

There are some tools that can help.

ColorChecker Passport

Color balance is critical for copying artwork. It can be a very painful process to try to match the color of the original work.

You can encode the color response of your copying camera and your RAW processing by photographing the X-rite ColorChecker on your copystand, then by building a custom profile with the X-rite ColorChecker Passport software. It provides whites and neutral grays to white balance on and a custom camera calibration to use on your copy files as a starting point in Lightroom or Camera RAW.

Equalight

Getting even lighting on the subject is almost impossible. While it is very important to try for an even distribution of coverage with your lights set at 45 degree angles, there is a unique and powerful digital technique/aid available to even out slight or even major variation in coverage. it is called Equalight.

The process involves taking a picture of the blank lighting itself and using it as a map of the lighting variations that is then subtracted from the copied image. Although it is possible to do this by hand in Photoshop with layers, the Equalight software makes the process much easier and systematic.

Watercolor. Ralph Putzker. Betterlight Scanning Camera copy by Stephen Johnson.

Here are a few ideas from my friend Robin Myers, creator of EquaLight that will help you.

1. If you are setting your exposure to a white patch on a ColorChecker, or some other target, make sure the white patch is at the brightest spot in the image area. This is VERY important or you may get burned out highlights!

2. I recommend dusting the white image before using it in EquaLight. This means removing dark dust AND white specular reflections.

3. I also recommend using a Gaussian blur on the white image before use. The radius depends on the size of the original, for my 100 MB images I use a 20 pixel radius (your mileage may vary). Smaller images may require a lower radius value. Often this blurring step will remove tiny dust spots, large ones should be removed as previously noted.

National Park Color Notecard Set
Stephen Johnson
12 cards/envelopes $20 set

From "With a New Eye" Beautiful 300 line screen offset reproductions with envelopes in clear box. A perfect Christmas gift.

Studio Lab Rental

We're open by appointment. To find us, use our map online at:

Map to studio
Studio directions and site layout.

To communicate with us regarding the list, email: sjphoto-news@sjphoto.com

Newsletter Archive