One-Day Seminars

RAW Image Processing in Adobe Photoshop
$250

Stephen Johnson Studios & Gallery
Pacifica, California.

For the first few years of digital cameras, JPEG was the only picture saving option in many cameras. As a compressed format with permanent data loss, this was not acceptable. Eventually, many of us working in the industry were able to convince camera makers to support uncompressed files, but they were implemented as fully processed TIFFs and therefore were big and slow to save.

In the early 1990s, Kodak, Leaf and BetterLight pioneered in what has generally become known as a “RAW” format—holding onto their camera data and building software to process these “sensor dumps.” In response to many of our requests, additional camera makers have started incorporating a raw archive format into the file saving options in many cameras.

Preserving the data that the camera sensor can record is a very high priority for pulling every nuance of photographic information from the camera and for long-term options to reprocess and later improve the image as software improves.

Camera RAW is Adobe’s contribution toward a universal interface for accessing and interacting with a variety of camera manufacturers raw/archive formats. This one-day seminar explores this process with Adobe's new Photoshop CS3 Camera Raw processor.

To Register

Color Management Seminar:
$250

A one-day exploration of Color Management in theory and practice. The day is designed to get you comfortable with the concepts and architecture of color management and build practical experience in using profiles in printing. Monitor calibration and print profiles will be explained and you will have hands-on experience making both.

As each workstation has it's own printer, you will implement a fully color managed system during the course of the day.

To Register

Digital Black and White:
$250

Stephen Johnson Studios & Gallery
Pacifica, California.

Explore black and white photography in the digital age from file to print. Discussions will include scanning film, conversion from color files, using filtered color for traditional tonal effects, duotones controls for tonal tuning, in addition to various black and white printing options and papers.

To Register

Beauty in Photography: Inspiration and Composition
$250

Stephen Johnson Studios & Gallery
Pacifica, California.

Talking about Art is hard. There either doesn’t seem to be words to describe the motivations or reactions, or there are too many words obfuscating meaning. Learning contemporary language and references of modern art criticism may help some understand art history, but “art-speak” is rarely a tongue I hear used by artists themselves. Plain talk, real dreams and real passions are what drive us forward, sometimes irrationally, sometimes with a plan. Photography fits neatly into this long and confused history.

Why do some images move us, and other leave us cold? What makes a good photograph? What makes us pick up the camera at a particular moment? How do we work toward understanding our momentary visual curiosities and turn them into strong photographs? Why do we point the camera in one direction instead of another when the subject matter might be very similar? Why does a photographer take so long to make a photograph?

These and other such inspirational and compositional questions will be discussed in this seminar on photographic composition. Sources of inspiration will be explored, from photography to other art forms, ideas and people. There will no be rules of composition propagated here, but explorations and suggestions. A good nuts and bolts day for improving your photographs.

To Register

For information on these seminars email info@sjphoto.com or call 650 355-7507.