Stephen Johnson Photography News

August 2026

Hello to my subscribers and guest readers. Thanks for visiting this August 2026 newsletter.

This month's View From Here column gives voice to some thoughts about photographs, their human value, and memory. I’ve also included some photographs that turned up during my slide copying and scans assessment.

My photographs are featured in a new show now at the Pacifica Center for the Arts Sanchez Galleries “Balancing Act, at the waters edge” running through August 9.. This exhibition furthers the goal of a study to engage the community to identify opportunities to implement Nature-Based Solutions that would restore natural habitats in order to protect elements of the built environment while enhancing wildlife resources.

There is still equipment and supplies to give away from my studio downsizing including some older iMacs, and color management equipment. See below.

My next Fine Art Digital Printing class is September 17-20, 2026 and has one spot left in it. The August 8-11 session is now full. Another session has been added for November 7-10. I am reducing the class size to three and If you want to join me, register soon

— Steve

These newsletters can cover many subjects, let me know what you would like to see addressed.

Scholarships

As part of my ongoing commitment to photographic education, there is one student scholarship spot in many of my classes. Please pass the word along.

For discounted time studying with me, keep in mind my Mentoring Program.

Blue Horizon, Last Light. Mussel Rock. Pacifica. CA. 2023.

My frequent evening walks on the north cliffs of Pacifica often yields dramatic light and color.

I’m offering an un-matted 14-inch-wide print of this photograph for $195. Larger prints can be ordered. This print at this price is offered through August 31. I'll be taking orders until then, and shipping them out by September 15, 2026. The image reverts to its normal price after that, $800 for an 11x14, $1500 for a 16x20 print.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

July Thoughts

July brought another trip, this one a short one to the San Joaquin Valley, to see the place, friends and family. The landscape is familiar there, but I’m no longer used to the summer heat. The man-made things mostly remain, with some notable exceptions–gone is the little boulder and concrete pond with footbridge in the local park that my parents were photographed next to in about 1948. I photographed my mom there again with my wife and kids in the 1990s. It has vanished.

The focus of my attention these last few weeks has been on teaching and exhibit prep, an open house, fulfilling some print orders, slide copying, and now this newsletter.

I am slowly settling into the new 500 sq. ft. studio, and continuing the struggle to find things among the stacked boxes from the move. I am perplexed, that in my careful effort to label everything as it was moved out of the big studio, there remains so many unlabeled boxes and missing contents. It is frustrating, but not surprising. I am grateful that I just found my copy stand tools boxes. I can again digitize slides and negatives at will.

A major move understandably leaves many things in flux. I have been using the digital archives as refuge. They are reminders of previous ground I’ve stood on, scenes I’ve witnessed. They are accessible, and for the most part, ordered.

I’ve often said I have enough material to explore that I need never photograph again. Although that’s true, it misses the point. My photography has always been about exploring the world. As much as I expend time and energy on the resulting photographs, the in-field experience remains primary, the photographs are evidence of being there, what I witnessed.

That is not to say that the photographs are unimportant to me, my life’s work argues against that. But the photographs are a separate world, the record, not the light through my eyes, the air on my skin, the scent of the real world. I treasure all of this, but looking back through images is far different than being in the world.

When I’m out in this Earth, moving around, looking, and making photographs, I do drift into contemplation of what those photographs might be, a kind of pre-visualization. But my attention returns to the real world in front of me, rather than the record I might make, and that is always primary. The choices I make in recording what seemed visually important, or photographable, are not necessarily the most important. The experience is primary and ultimately give the photographs their meaning.

In this last year or so, it happens that I have lost many friends. It can’t help but make me wonder about the value of the “records” I am making. Without even going down the path of whether my photographs will matter or not when I’m gone, it does strike me, that my words and these photographs will be the only thing left. This is both obvious and minimizing. The most real thing for me will be gone, my memory. These photographic evidences left behind will only be hints of those real experiences. My conscious memory rides somewhere in between those two axes, the real, the photographed, and yes my living memory held in my very organic, temporal brain. I can’t help but feel the loss of my friends even more profoundly when I think of all of their memories now gone, with our scant evidence of what those memories held.

Photography is an act of holding onto light-evidence of life having been lived. It can become a sacred sharing. A life’s work is a portal into that life. Write about your work, about the places and experiences. It will deepen the meaning of the photographs and give us all a better window into your mind and heart.

Time, Projects and Overwhelm

As I’ve lost some dear friends this last year and a half, I’ve talked about the impact beyond their loss. I am 70, and it has become ever more clear that the time we have ahead is critical for our work..

There are too many ideas in my head, too many projects, and not enough time. Not nearly enough energy. But no one else will do this work, this is my life’s work to share and bring into perspective. And that is no small task.

Although I hope (I think) that I have a few decades left, there is a growing sense of that as limitation. There is the new work I hope to make, which has ever more now has to be balanced with the time/energy needed for all of the existing projects that need to get done including replacement of fading exhibition C prints with new pigment prints. There are so many.

Books that need to get out: With a New Eye: the Digital National Parks Project,

Books that need to be finished and get out: Urban Eden: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park

Books that need to be created: A Collected Works of My Photographs So Far

Great Central Valley Exhibit faded color print replacement. Show is currently in the care of the University of California Merced.

At Mono Lake faded print replacement for 1980 routes at the US Forest Service Visitor’s Center in Lee Vining, CA. A multi-year projects which is underway.

Financial support for these projects would be deeply appreciated. More details coming.

Nearby

I do enjoy where I live, both with sea and mountains, parks and proximity to one of the great cities of the world. The nearby sea and park trails most frequently catch my eye.

Animals Among Us Series Continues

I continue to look for opportunities to photograph animals we raise and farm. A few new situations presented themselves in the last few weeks.

Archive Finds

I am constantly going through files, usually on a specific search, and many images turn up along the way. Here’s a few recent rediscoveries, that I was not looking for. Some are film scans, some digital, all a bit under featured in my public forums.

Aerial photography can be so rewarding, and so frustrating. The views are unique and the perspective revealing, but unless at very low altitude, the color is often so distorted from our ground-based vision as to almost be useless. My surplus aerial 5 inch roll film camera, the K20, often provided the best results. I only used black and white film in it.

A Bit More about My Friend Jeff Schewe

As I mentioned in my June Newsletter tribute to Jeff, we taught three Antarctica Photo Workshops together in 2005, 2007 and 2009. This photograph was made of Jeff on the ship as was he was photographing me near the Shag Rocks in middle of the South Atlantic.

In September 2006 our dear freind Bruce Fraser was diagnosed with terminal cancer. At our fall “Pixel Mafia” dinner in New York City during PhotoPlus, Bruce (back in California) and I had arranged to extract a telephone promise out of Jeff Schewe to stop smoking, hoping for Jeff to avoid a similar fate to Bruce. This was that toast after Jeff made the promise to Bruce on a phone call. Jeff stopped smoking. We lost Bruce about a month and a half later. Jeff lived for almost another 20 years and his widow Becky attributes part pf that to his stopping smoking.

Thanks to Andrew Rodney for digging this out for me.

The new studio walls carry forward the display of larger prints from from the previous studio/gallery drawn from various projects in my career.

Currently my up on the walls are my Trees, Firtzgerald Reserve, Last Light on Half Dome Yosemite, Wildflowers Carrizo Plain, Carrizo Flowers and Storm, the Hale Telescope Palomar Observatory, the Life Form featured print Staghorn Fern, prints from the new and forming Organic Landscapes work and Point Reyes Aurora. I seem to always find a place for my 20 inch print of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. Four print bins remain browsable through subjects ranging from Rock and Roll, Ireland, Iceland, parks, and local photographs as well as my library of books I’ve created over the last 44 years..

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 Classes

My virtual classes program, launched in 2020, has allowed me to reach students around the world. I remain committed to offering great courses whether in person or virtually. See what satisfying experiences students have had on my workshops by exploring Workshop Testimonials. 

Virtual Mentoring

Set up time for me to help with your photographic work, remote or in-person. Mentoring Program.

Virtual Consulting

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. I want to remind you of my Virtual Online Consulting Program. This service allows all of you out there around the globe to consult online, live, on technical, aesthetic and workflow issues.

Virtual Mentoring/Consulting

Existing Online Tutorials

My Essays and Tutorials from the past couple of years can now be found on my Newsletter Archive.

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.

Most every Tuesday morning since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been doing weekly virtual Photo Chats on Zoom with groups of photo friends. They are casual, virtual get-togethers, and have created a little community with regular sharing, guest presentations, demos, and photo feedback. Let me know if you would like to join us.

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 produced the print 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. 

Print On Demand Book Projects over the last few years

Click on the book covers above to learn more and purchase.

I finished three new books in 2023. Water: A Photographic Portrait launched the winter, and the new Cliffside Peregrines and Fauna books were finished at the end of the year.

I sold out of the first run of the Fauna book and have reordered all three of the new books for the studio stock.

The links here go to my printer Magcloud, where you can order them directly.