Thursday: April 6, 2023, 7–9pm (Virtual)
Friday: April 7, 2023, on-site Shelldance Orchid Nursery visit
Saturday: April 8, 2023, 9am–5pm in studio
Virtually from Stephen Johnson Studios & Gallery and Shelldance Orchid Gardens. Pacifica, California.
Covid Vaccination and masks required in Studio.
Cost: $495. Limited to 6 students. There is one scholarship spot in this class.
May 2013 Flora Class
Have you ever visited a nursery or greenhouse, and thought about how great it would be to capture the beauty, color, line, and form of an orchid or unusual succulent that inspires you and preserve it in a photograph? Access can be hard, and using a tripod can be impossible and not allowed. Perhaps you hesitated because you felt the need for instructional help with the technical, aesthetic, and compositional framework to make it happen.
This workshop is designed to enable careful photography exploring the wonder and beauty of orchids and other-worldly flora. The goal is to encourage slowing down, taking the time to make a well-crafted photograph built from these beautiful forms, your own emotional reactions, and studied composition.
We are lucky to have this exclusive and private-access workshop at the very special Shelldance Orchid Gardens, which was voted Best Specialty Nursery in Northern California by San Francisco Magazine.
Filling an evening and two full days, this workshop is designed to help you make stronger photographs by empowering your craft, vision, and compositional skills along with some specialized technique for flower imagery. Tripods are encouraged.
Topics Include:
Composition
Digital Exposure
Still Life Photography
Macro Lenses
Extension Tubes
Depth of Field Expansion (Focus Stacking)
White Balance
RAW Processing
Image Aesthetics
A Few Photographs from Shelldance Orchid Gardens
Workshop Details
Evening Pre-Meeting
We will begin virtually from my the studio/gallery, from 7–9pm the first night, with topics covering: macro and other appropriate lenses, camera settings, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, lighting, depth of field expansion techniques with tools like Helicon Focus, tripod usage, and the important steps in setting up interesting compositions.
Day 2
We will meet from 9am–5pm at Shelldance Orchid Gardens on Hwy 1 in Pacifica, CA. Shelldance is unique among nurseries, as it is modeled after a tropical rainforest and offers an impressive collection of orchid varietals, cacti, succulents and the largest private collection of bromeliads in the world! We will walk about the rooms, taking full advantage of the compositional opportunities found in the sensuous line and form of the colorful orchids, bromeliads, flowering cactus, otherworldly succulents, and architectural features of the greenhouse.
Specially issued discount coupons will be available at the nursery if you fall in love with your flora models while photographing and would like to provide a loving home.
Day 3
We will meet from 9am–5 pm virtually or in-studio to work on the previous day’s work. You will be guided through a workflow process from offloading your photos to working with RAW processing and image editing techniques.
These two days and an evening will be spent exploring the tools needed by photographers for fundamental image control in the camera and finishing. Color correction, careful tonal control, and preserving options into archive versions of your files will be our primary concerns. Software concentration will be mainly on Helicon Focus, Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop. A number of images with various challenges will be worked through to satisfaction during the course of the workshop. Full lab access is provided. Some previous exploration of Photoshop is useful.
Overnight Accommodations near Stephen Johnson Photography in Pacifica, California
“I recently took the Flora and Form: from Orchid Gardens to Digital Lab workshop. Stephen could not be a more present, patient, and clear instructor. His workshop is well thought out, and he cares that you to learn, fully understand, and be inspired; indeed, you are. The Orchid Garden is a unique and wondrous place, and Stephen is always available to demonstrate, guide and encourage. The small group, strict social distancing, and masks made the live session very safe. The virtual format for orientation, demonstration of technique, and critique of images worked very well.”
-Dr. Anthony Portale. October 2020.
Stephen Johnson
Photo by Fiona McDonnell
A photographer, teacher and designer, Stephen has been teaching and working in photography since 1977. His books include At Mono Lake, the critically acclaimed Great Central Valley: California's Heartland and Making a Digital Book. He runs his own photography, publishing and design company––scanning and designing his photographic books digitally and since 1994 photographing in the field with digital view cameras.
Projects have included With a New Eye, his groundbreaking and historic all digital national parks project, a new book Stephen Johnson On Digital Photography for O'Reilly, ongoing portfolio development and extensive lecturing. He is currently working on a new series, "Life Form" to be premiered in 2017.
Stephen's pioneering work in digital photography, desktop color separations and digital imaging has included software and product development for clients such as Apple, Adobe, Canon, Eastman Kodak, Foveon, Hewlett Packard, Leaf, Ricoh and SuperMac. His work with Adobe includes the creation of the duotone curves shipped with their Photoshop software.
His photographic clients have included the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Friends of Photography. Johnson's photographs have been widely published and collected internationally.
Apple Computer recognized Steve in 1997 with a ColorSync Profiling Excellence Award along with his good friend Bruce Fraser. In 1999, Folio Magazine declared the publication of Johnson's digital photographs in Life Magazine to be one of the Top 15 Critical Events in magazine publishing in the twentieth century. Stephen Johnson was named as a 2003 inductee into the Photoshop Hall of Fame, recognized for his achievements in Art. Canon named Steve as one of their Explorers of Light in 2006. In 2007 X-Rite named Stephen as a founding member of their exclusive Coloratti group of photographers and educators honored for their skills in color management.
In 1997, Life Magazine described Stephen Johnson as an artist that "...applies science to nature and creates art." His images create "...an intimacy that brings subject and viewer close in ways conventional photographs cannot."
The Photographer’s Gallery wrote in 1998: “Stephen Johnson's photography rides on the "bleeding edge" of photography's transition to a digital media. Schooled in the traditions of fine-art western landscape photography, Johnson has taken his understanding of traditional photographic processes and brought those skills to bear on the emerging technologies and aesthetics of digital photography. He has pushed technology companies to rise to the best of what image making can be, and pushed his own vision of how we see and record light in the natural world. This has led him to conclude that the way we have traditionally captured images with silver-based photography has been a poor and distortive view of the real and rich world before our eyes. His photographs look almost "unphotographic" in their clarity and purity of color. He shows us a world we know, but rarely see on paper. His is a truly remarkable vision.”
Stephen has received numerous awards and grants for his photographic work, including an NEA for At Mono Lake, awards from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, the Commonwealth Club of California and the Golden Light Award for the Great Central Valley. The New York Times named the Valley book as one of the eight best photography books of 1993.
Photoshop Hall of Fame Award