Stephen Johnson Photography News

January 2024

Hello to my guests and subscribers. Thanks for visiting my January 2024 newsletter.

This month's View From Here column looks back at 2023 and tells the story of gathering and sorting prints for my open house and revisiting an overlooked project.

My next workshop is the January 20–23, 2024 Masterful Fine Art Printing four-day, in-studio workshop. There is one spot left in the class.

Death Valley in Winter is scheduled for January 27–30, 2024. Sunday, January 7 is the deadline to register.

The Yosemite in Winter class runs from February 2–4, 2024.

— Steve

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

Yosemite Falls and Ice Hill. 2022.

Over the years, I been watching the various forms this ice dune take under Middle Yosemite Falls. It is always fascinating to see it, always a little different under the misty falls and ice-clad cliffs.

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

River, Dunes and Mountains. Great Sand Dunes National Park. Colorado. 2015.

This photograph of Great Sand Dunes National Park keeps getting my attention. The river braiding toward reflecting the setting sun was very special to me at the time and has stayed in my mind.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Looking Back at 2023

Gathering work together from the past year always brings me to appreciating all that I’ve had the privilege of seeing. I get reminded of the photographic challenges and successes, but most importantly of the richness of visual life on this magical planet.

Although 2023 was marked by the loss of my older brother and other challenges, looking back at these many photographs renews my appreciation of this precious life, the beautiful light and land I live amidst next to this sacred sea. While this past year may have featured fewer trips than years past, some of them were pursuing the glorious life of flowered hills in glorious bloom and some trips were just wandering. The wandering ones are the best.

Assembling this newsletter led me to making a big gallery of everything from the year that interested me. It soon became apparent that was overwhelming, and that sorting the photographs made more sense, so here are a few in smaller galleries from 2023.

These Galleries are in evolution as the idea turned out to be such a big task.

Click on the images below to go to its Gallery.

On the Cliffs

Rich in Prints for Open House Prep

I make prints to truly see the photograph. For me, there is no real photograph until there is a print in my hands. Because my printing set-up is completely in place, printing is a natural evolution of finishing a photograph for me. Consequently, there are tons of prints. I print to satiate my curiously. I print to render beauty into tangible form. I print for my personal deiight. Consequently, there are tons of prints.

The prints are allowed to dry over night in open air, then sleeved in polyethylene. They build up. They are stacked, sorted in the middle of a project, binned, and, too easily fade into the flow of work, stacks, and the passing of time.

For the December Open House, I unearthed scores of prints to get a selection ready to sell. Specifically that meant sorting the prints that been properly labeled at the time of printing, identifying those that needed labeling, pulling out others that reflect local landscape or my classic images, and leaving most behind in new stacks on tables. The next step was to print colophon labels on the back of the most important prints to have ready. Those labels were sometimes a challenge, in that I want to be sure of location and year, ideally have the exact file name in hand, and that was not always clear just from memory. This process set up the post-Open House project, to sort all of the recent prints and label them all. In many ways, the physical reality of negatives and proof sheets had me much more organized than I am now, even with image databases. Loose prints are always needing attention to be cared for.

I brought all of those prints into my Main Gallery and started to devise categories. Most were easy as I simply grouped them into obvious sets for me, National Parks, Central Valley, Mono Lake, Life Form, Animals, Space, etc. There were and new descriptors needed, Atmospherics, Constructions, etc.

The next challenge was how to store these prints so they would not be lost in their shear volume, and tend to fade from memory again. I was not anxious to go back to the traditional method of archival print storage boxes that I have been using for years. The print boxes have left too much work out of mind for too long, even with all of the digital references. My original plan, going back decades, was to create and use a database of my photographs, tracing prints, storage location, and sales. That project broke down years ago with FileMaker Pro’s evolution. That challenge remains now in limbo, even after exploring various other software solutions, many of which are soon gone.

The Western Artifacts Project

In the 1980s I began to notice strange and telling constructions scattered along the roadsides as I traveled around western landscapes. Many of these objects suggested iconic symbols of “the west.” As I made a few photographs, as often happens, I began to notice more of the same genre and a series started to emerge. In some cases objects I had long seen began to be seen in a different way. The casual passing by became a concerted effort to consider the scene as a photograph. The Western Artifacts project was born.

As the 80s drew to close, I had a number of prints, even a few 16x20s that I would often show. Stylistically they reflected my appreciation for real-world color which only made them more powerful to me. They were not adorned, and were photographed in whatever light I found.

I always thought of the idea as a work in progress, and it has remained so well into the digital age when my 4x5 and 6x7 cameras got replaced with ever higher resolution digital cameras. The film scans I made were very high res, from my Leafscan 45, and the pleasures were palpable of editing the files into a better state than I ever could have interpreted them onto Type C color paper. I made a few really nice pigment prints in the last few years as I wandered through various projects in my life’s work.

It was my visitor more recently noticing the work, her attention to the relationships between the photographs, and further conversations about others she had noticed, that inspired me to update the webpage on the project. That was easy at first, with those few I had recently printed. But then I started to long for other scans buried deeper in the archives and my digital search began, as I was simultaneously pulling out more recent photographs that were clearly part of the same idea. It remains a work in progress but I am about ready to assemble the project into a prototype print on demand Folio.

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