Diablo Range and San Joaquin Valley Fields. 2016. Canon 5DSr. Click to order a print. Next Workshop: Fine Art Digital Editing & Printing Hands-on: December 3-6, 2016
Welcome to the November 2016 Edition of the Stephen Johnson Photography Newsletter.
This month's View From Here column features photographs and explorations from recent travel. We hope you find the column interesting and will consider sending us some comments. Our Tutorial Section features a video tutorial on using viewing filters to judge color balance on prints. LATEST NEWS:
Steve in daily group discussion with his December Image Editing Workshop. Scholarships and Mentoring As part of our ongoing commitment to photographic education, there is one student scholarship spot in many of our classes. Please pass the word along. For discounted time studying with Steve, keep in mind our Mentoring Program. With all of our busy schedules and limited budgets, destination workshops or classes become a challenge, but many of you still have questions you need answered, or feedback on some new work. We want to remind you of our Virtual Online Consulting Program. This service allows all of you out there around the globe to consult online live with Steve on technical, aesthetic and workflow issues using Skype and your webcam. Our Essays and Tutorials from the past couple of years can now be found on our Newsletter Archive and some on Google Blogger. We hope you can come by the gallery and see the new Panoramic Prints we've added to the National Parks Gallery, and the Exquisite Earth exhibition with its accompanying very special Exquisite Earth Portfolio 1. We invite you to join us on a workshop, rent lab space, or just say hello and let us know what you are up to photographically and what you might like to see us offer. We value your input.
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FEATURED PRINT November 2016
Dawn, Washington Monument, Reflecting Pool. Washington DC. 2016. Dawn. Washington Monument. 2016. 11x13 Pigment Inkjet Print on Cotton paper My friend Brain Barger and I decided a dawn at the Lincoln Memorial would be a great thing to get up and do. It wasn't hard with the sun rising after 7am. We didn't expect the light mist on the ground that made the whole area seem quite ethereal.
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Mori Point Headlands. DJI Phantom 4 A higher view experimenting with my new drone. Surf and cliffs at dusk over Mori Point.
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Midtown Panorama over Central Park. New York. 2016.
Canon 5DSr.
by Stephen Johnson Drones, DC, Music and New York I've been doing my first experiments with drone-based photography. I haven't yet made a photograph of consequence to me, but I am learning to control the aircraft. My confidence is slowly growing that it's safety features are good, and that if I am careful, I am not going to crash it. That effort takes time. I am excited at the prospect of l gaining some elevation and perspective on the landscape that I see. I miss the platform on my van, and just don’t get up in airplanes often enough.
Flying has meant a lot to my photography. Flying has always been expensive, high and fast. I will continue to seek opportunities to fly in conventional aircraft and window seats in jets on my travels. But it has always been of interest to me to get lower and closer. Drones seem to offer wonderful opportunities for such views. My new DJI Phantom 4 seems like a good learning tool before I take on bigger drones and serious cameras. I feel like a babe in the woods with my drone, as afraid of crashing as I am excited about seeing. It is a lot to keep track of, including just being able to really see the image on my iPhone. I am starting to test it over more dangerous terrain, like open ocean. The challenge of being the pilot and the photographer is as I always feared it would be as a pilot flying my own plane, it is a lot to keep track of. In this case my life is not in danger, but the drone investment is real and so some level of risk is felt. Clearly, it is better not to do this alone. Having a spotter along would be great, just to help keep track of what the aircraft is doing.
Over the years, I've been amazed at how many photographs I've managed to get from commercial aircraft window seats. I've talked about some of the ways of helping the process along, dark shirts, sears opposite the sun, etc. On my way to LA two weeks ago, the view going down the length of middle California, the hills, the haze, the great Valley beyond, and hints of the Sierra even further east, kept me glued to the window. Lately I've been making sets of photographs moments apart for stereo views, and experimenting with sequences to stitch into panoramics.
Dawn Mist on Lincoln Memorial Meadow. 2016.
Any time I go to Washington, I have to go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. I am never disappointed. The Apollo 11 Command Module has been moved from near the front entrance and is no longer covered in acrylic, thus allowing for a whole new exploration of its historic surface and contours. I found myself staring at the reentry burn marks, imagining the lunar surface moving below the portals, the docked Lunar Module, Michael Collins alone in the spacecraft watching Neil and Buzz head off for the first extraterrestrial human landing, the moon rocks moving through the nose dock. These were all in my mind as I meditated on what was sitting before me.
Reaction Control System (RCS) Jets. Columbia. Apollo 11 Command Module. 2016.
I did find myself staring at the spacecraft, my mind drifting and my imagination full. Part of me could almost see Columbia, not just where it was six feet from me, but also those wondrous places this physical craft had been.
Apollo 11 Command Module. In orbit around moon from the Lunar Module Eagle. I stumbled into a real treat at the Air and Space Museum on this visit, a photographic exhibition in a special exhibits gallery in featuring images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. I found myself getting lost in the large prints of the lunar landscape. It was magnificent.
What we can't imagine, we can never make real.
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| Steve Earle. Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. 2016. A Musical Digression A little music photography plunged into my life in early October with the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park. I had forgotten about the concert, was reminded by my favorite radio station KPIG in Freedom, CA, and sprung into camera prep. After charging batteries, clearing memory cards and arranging what I could carry, I hit the road for the oh so terribly long 20 minute drive into San Francisco.
A few of my favorite musicians were playing, including Terry Allen and Dave Alvin. We got to see Shawn Colvin with Steve Earle, Jackson Brown and others. The performances were great, the intimacy very enjoyable, and some of the photographic opportunities were just fine.
Back to Recent Travels
Visiting New York is always a trip. It is so unlike anywhere else. With the Photo Plus trade show every October, I've had the privilege of coming to New York annually for more than twenty years. You come to know your favorite restaurants, see some of them come and go, revisit old haunts and constantly discover new things. The corridors of stone and steel become neighborhoods of some personality. For a long time now, I've had my favorite walks, and now some newer ones like the High Line. Almost every visit I go to the Met, and MOMA. MOMA to touch base with van Gough's Starry Night. The Hayden Planetarium is always a good bet for me, as is a stroll through Strawberry Fields.
I love the architecture of the United Nations complex, and even more deeply respect its work. More than any other building, for me it symbolizes modern New York. There might also be a 12 year old boy in me remembering the shots of it from The Man from Uncle TV series. I had not been there in a very long time. I was once again impressed with the site, the purpose, and the hope.
The train ride from DC to NYC is a window into a decaying, almost-post industrial world where the rail line was the conduit, and industry was everywhere. The corridor has few natural scenes left along the way, but plenty of abandoned, graffiti-covered brick buildings that once made things, and jobs. No doubt these same buildings have chemical residue from many of those activities, but also memories steeped in another time.
Pulling out of Union Station. Washington DC. 2016.
Our constructs, both as art form or artifact, reach into a sense of decay, nostalgia and iconography in some very strange ways. The string of scenes from the rail line, to sculpture in Central Park, left me curious and touched by all of the visuals we take in. Those varied sights leave subtle impressions, remind me of the very curious role photography has in holding them all in a kind of equality.
Recently at SJ Photo It feels like I'm taking a good, deep breath at my studio for the first time in weeks, able to consider the various projects and which to tackle first. Slowing down, pondering the very local landscape of my own space feels good. It doesn't hurt that we finally have some rain here in California. The trees are perking up, green grass is sprouting on the parched fields, hot cups of tea and flannel shirts are now part of my days. I can get behind that for awhile.
2017 Pacifica Calendar now available. 20 scenes in and around Pacifica, California where Stephen Johnson Photography is located. Full page trail map included. Printed on a color laser digital press.
Recent Print Sales Given my visit to the Air & Space Museum last week, I'm pleased to report a collector's purchase of a 16x20 print of my 2011 Apollo 11 Command Module photograph. I hadn't made a large print before and was very happy with it on my Museum Etching paper I designed with Hahnemühle. I do not normally post such purchases, but it came at such a unique moment so close the revisiting that very spacecraft.
please email your comments to us
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Tidbits |
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Consulting Programs, Speaking and Exhibition Events
Virtual Education: Our Virtual Consulting and Mentoring Program is working well. Readers of this Newsletter can still get a discount by mentioning this reference when you enroll. Our One on One Program links you up with Steve at his bay area studio, or when he is on the road near you. Keep an eye on when Steve will be near your town.
Catch Steve Live: Steve will be speaking here and there over the next few months..
Canon Sponsors Steve to speak at Universities, Colleges, Photo Groups and various events around the country. If you would like more information on arranging for Steve to do a Canon sponsored event, go to: Canon SJ EOL talk
Exhibitions
Steve at Cantor Arts Center. Stanford University. July 2016.
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Steve Lecturing with George Harrison at Photo Plus. New York City. November 2016. People often want to take workshops and the dates just don't match up with their schedules. Sometimes they watch the newsletter and webpage for years for their interest, free time and the workshop to all coincide. We've decided to be proactive in creating a forum for potential students to tell us what you need and when you can take a class. Please email us with workshop ideas and suggestions. More formally, we are experimenting with a workshop poll to determine when interested people can make particular workshops they really want to take. Currently we have up a few workshops to experiment: |
TUTORIAL |
Judging color errors and the edits needed can be hard. On prints where the color doesn't look quite right, your judgments can be greatly aided by an old tool form the color darkroom days, the Color Print Viewing Filter Kit that Kodak and others have made.
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Steve demonstrating the Print viewing Filters. |
The Stephen Johnson Photography Gift Shop Featured Products |
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20 scenes in and around Pacifica, California where Stephen Johnson Photography is located. Full page trail map included. Printed on a color laser digital press. |
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Gift Certificates for Prints and Workshops! |
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Life Form Note cards 5x7 inches, $25
12 image Note card set with envelopes featuring photographs from Steve's new Life Form work. Printed by Steve in his studio in very limited numbers on a color laser digital press |
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National Park Note cards
National Park Color Note card Set From "With a New Eye" Beautiful 300 line screen offset reproductions with envelopes in clear box. A great gift. |
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PLEASE VISIT US!  Please come visit us at our gallery and see our original prints in person. The subtle detail of the prints and the beautiful texture of the fine art paper have to be seen to be understood. And while you're here, browse through our books, cards, posters, and specially priced prints. We're happy to mail you a copy of our product catalog, just send a note to info@sjphoto.com or call us. We're located at: Stephen Johnson Photography at the Pacifica Center for the Arts 1220-C Linda Mar Boulevard, Creekside Suites, 5-7 Pacifica, CA 94044 (650) 355-7507 http://www.sjphoto.com |
 Pacifica Center for the Arts from Linda Mar Boulevard We're open by appointment. To find us, use our map online at: |
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Stephen Johnson Photography at the Pacifica Center for the Arts Gallery Hours are by Appointment. |
