Stephen Johnson Photography News

October 2023

Greetings to my guests and subscribers. Thanks for visiting my October newsletter.

This month's View From Here column explores recent classes, photography, and some photo experiences, like the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park.

My Photoshop Selections, Adjustment Layers, Tone and Color class is this weekend, October 7–8, 2023. For those who need Adobe Photoshop help—there’s one space left.

My next Black and White Vision and Printing workshop is October 21–22, with the Masterful Fine-Art Printing hands-on workshop being offered November 4–7.

— Steve

As these newsletters can cover many subjects, let me know of topics you would like to see addressed.

Fields and Clouds. 2023.

I love the view of the world from the air. From a low-level drone to a cruising altitude of around 35,000 feet, the world looks fundamentally different. I always try for a window seat on a commercial flight, and the door off on a private plane or helicopter.

This view of crop grids and circles over the midwest with clouds and their shadows below stuck with me from my July flight cross-country. Color is often so bluish and strange in aerial work that I often opt for black and white. I didn’t realize how much I liked the image until I did a black and white interpretation, taking the shadows down to inkspots.

I’m offering a 14-inch-wide print of this photograph for $195, matted to 16”x20”. This print at this price is offered through October 31. I'll be taking orders until then, and shipping them out by November 15.

Maui Fire Relief donation has been added as print Purchase Option. Unmatted 14-inch-tall print for $165. Full price goes to relief.

Serrated Clouds. Pacifica, CA. 2023.

I notice the mystical changing forms of clouds most often at sunset, when I’m staring out at the sea and sky for a long look. The sculpted clouds and their shadows struck me. A tighter crop might make a better composition, but I couldn’t resist the horizontal expanse.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Concerts, Curation and History

Many thoughts were going through my mind as I was working on this month’s Newsletter, curating an exhibition, going to see live music and delving into a park visit on the park’s 100th anniversary.

As I was writing, the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival was being held in Golden Gate Park. This year I went into San Francisco for all three days, losing myself in the simple walk through the festival-transformed park with music pouring from the trees and meadows.

I am trying of late to recognize park establishment anniversaries. It seems a way of celebrating such acts of conservation and my experiences in these treasured spaces. Along those lines, in October of 1923 Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico was created and I have featured a few photographs and journal entires below.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Golden Gate Park

The annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival is being held in Golden Gate Park this weekend as I am composing this newsletter. I’m editing the page as I’m watching the live feed from Day Three. The free live music is great to see, and gives me a chance to extend my musician series with ever more photographs of people whose work I admire. I decided to go back in for part of Day Three.

So many stages to choose from, with simultaneous good music—always makes it hard to even know where to be. This year, I went all three days.

Carlsbad Caverns. 1997

Carlsbad New Mexico. April 6, 1997

On the road a half-day and in a completely different world, roadside America, in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The state of such places wouldn't be so depressing if it didn't all look the same. It becomes hard to see the town before the line of fast food joints homogenized so much.

A cheap motel room, cheap dinner, cheap gas, and I’m back online, sitting here next to the pool watching the sun set. The air is so full of bird songs that it almost overwhelms the highway traffic. The birds and the wide sunset-filled sky give some glimpse of what this place is off the highway.

As I stare into this golden sky, tree leaves are dancing in the evening breeze. Black silhouettes of birds dart from tree to tree. Wispy cirrus clouds drift orange to the east, almost as though gently pushed by the setting sun. The light on the clouds is layered now, the lower layers purple gray, higher orange to remnant white. It makes me wonder what it would be like to sit under another planet's sky watching the sunset.

At Carlsbad Caverns, I made a conscious decision not to take the Better Light scanning camera into the caverns. I wanted the freedom to move around and to not be an imposition on the place in my first visit. So all the photographs in Carlsbad are black and whites with the small 35mm style camera, the Kodak DCS460m. They ended up being a fascinating set of 64 photographs.

Carlsbad for me was as much a respite from the Big Bend trip as it was anything, taking the time at the motel to rest a little bit, to have a fairly casual experience. Taking this elevator down underneath the ground into a national park was very strange, to see a lunchroom carved out of rock in a cavern was also very strange. It was cold down in the caverns.

It was a fascinating day, and a very difficult place to photograph well. A lot of the theatrical lighting that has been installed there has its own both weird, and at times very pleasing quality, but definitely took the character of the place from something that felt natural, to a theater kind of persona. Of course I would have been in total darkness if it not for the lighting.

I enjoyed the day very much, but the photographs didn’t feel like I was breaking new ground. I made a photograph up on top that I ended up liking, actually, of just a landscape above the elevator, just of the desert out and about.

Carlsbad was not much more than casual visit. I chose not to go back with the big camera the next day, partially because it felt so out of character with the other parks, with all of the artificial lighting, and in fact the trails are narrow enough that taking a view camera down there would have been challenging.

I'm sure it's much more crowded in the summertime, but there was still a fairly steady stream of traffic down below. It would have been an imposition on the other visitors I thought. The handheld camera or the monopod, which I think I took down, worked out okay for the 35mm digital camera.

I was in transit to White Sands, emotionally as well as physically, and so the time spent there was just not as intense.

In the Neighborhood

Endless Wonder

In my art I try to rise to the occasion, finding sacred in the ordinary, trying to hold the spectacular with tools that can only imitate my real-life sensory experience. Both become exercises in search of connection to my heart. And there is always some level of wonder present.

It’s not that I can always make that heart connection clearly visible, but in looking with respect at what feels sacred, and by taking my time, I work toward what has been the best of my work.

Sunsets over the ocean range from spectacular to gentle. Photographing those sunsets has become irresistible for me, particularly from my local seaside cliffs. Sharing them here seems repetitive, but I succumb nonetheless.

Wandering this Earth, if something is speaking to me, I have to listen. The context may not always be clear, nor the ultimate meaning. But I’ve spent a lifetime listening (visually), looking (with the camera), and that is the life I have felt compelled to live.

Fog

Living on the Northern California coast means I know fog. Growing up in the Central Valley meant I knew fog. Fog lasting weeks in the valley often got depressing. I have come to see it differently. The soft light and gentle view of the Earth that fog brings has grown on my heart and influenced the development of my photography in profound ways. Fog makes the world seem gentler.

Virtual Educational Experiences

Virtual Classes and Lectures, online live classes on various topics with limited space and Q&A sessions, are now a regular part of my workshop program. Critiques are now virtual.

Virtual Mentoring/Consulting

Existing Online Tutorials

Photo Chats

I’ve been doing weekly virtual Photo Chats with groups of photo friends to keep everyone encouraged to keep working, creating a forum to share and problem-solve. I’ve now built a webpage on the chats. Let me know if you would like to join us.

Come Visit the Exhibitions (masked visits by appointment)

Life Form Exhibition

Life Form opened in the Main Gallery at Stephen Johnson Photography in July 2018. I’ve had many visitors come by the gallery since the opening. Many have then joined workshops and certainly helped build community. Come see the show by appointment.

Seeking Good Venues for Life Form

I’m seeking good venues to show the Life Form Series. The series is now available for museum and gallery exhibition.

The Studio, Scholarships, Mentoring and Tutorials

Many of my mentoring students have wanted help with their printing, often to make sure they can produce a specific print. Consequently, my Print Mentoring Program sets up a 2-hour time slot and the production of a finished print, all with the tutorial video of how we did it together. Prints can be up to 16x20 and on either Hahnemühle Museum Etching or Photo Rag Pearl paper. Fee is $500. Email for more information and to set up times. 

Gift Certificates Available for Prints and Workshops!

Water: A Photographic Portrait

My new book Water: A Photographic Portrait, now available to order.

• 88 pages of color and black and white photographs

• 11x17 inches

• Wire bound for completely flat enjoyment

A collection of photographs in and around Pacifica, California. Includes a trail map.

• 74 pages

• 11x17-inch, wire-bound book for full lay-flat opening and enjoyment

• Pacifica Trail Map

• 32 years in Pacifica

• 10 years of calendars

• $50