Stephen Johnson Photography News
July 2024
The Wall. US/Mexico Border, California. 2024.
Welcome to the July 2024 Edition of the Stephen Johnson Photography Newsletter
Hello to my guests and subscribers. Thanks for visiting my July 2024 newsletter.
This month's View From Here column explores recent travel, views, and experiences, from a rocket launch to a 200-inch telescope!
Also this month, I am inaugurating a new Guest Photographer Exhibition Program in my Gallery Two, starting with Larry Shapiro’s California Train Stations series on view from July 6 to August 15.
The Gallery will be open every Saturday in July from 11am to 4pm!
My next class is the From Your Film to Camera Seminar July 27, 2024, and the Mendocino and the North Coast class August 17–19, 2024.
— Steve
As these newsletters can cover many subjects, let me know of topics you would like to see addressed.
Upcoming Events & Workshops
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.
FEATURED PRINT July 2024
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket in Flight. Del Mar, CA. 2024.
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket in Flight. 2024.
I was sitting on the balcony of a beach restaurant in Del Mar north of San Diego when the sky was suddenly lit-up with a rocket streaming through the sky. Everyone got up and stared at the amazing show of a speeding point of light and a huge, complex, evolving plume.
Fortunately my camera was right next to me. I had received an email earlier in the day about the launch, but it had kind of slipped my mind. I had to scramble for a moment to adjust settings to a fast ISO, knowing that the consequent noise is much easier to handle with Adobe Raw Noise Reduction.
It was breathtaking to witness.
I’m offering a 14-inch-wide print of this photograph for $195, matted to approximately 16”x20”. Larger prints can be ordered. This print at this price is offered through July 31, 2024. I'll be taking orders until then, and shipping them out by August 15, 2024. The image reverts to its normal price after that, $800 for an 11x14, $1500 for a 16x20.
NEW PHOTOGRAPH July 2024
Two Hundred Inch Hale Telescope. Palomar Observatory. California. 2024.
The huge and impressive Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain northeast of San Diego. This photograph is made from four stitched Fuji GFX100s 23mm photographs. (story below)
Morning Sunbow. Ramona, CA. 2024.
THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson
Two Weeks on the Road
I’ve been wanting to visit friends and family as far south as San Diego, and so I’ve been pondering a road trip since last winter. I was finally able to hit the road in early June, and ended up on a very nice adventure.
My drive took me down the length of California, hugging the coast, stopping to photograph and visit along the way. It brought some very unexpected experiences. I felt the blessing of having so many friends along the way, with long overdue in-person sharing.
There were a few photographic agendas that developed over the months—wandering the desert, Palomar Observatory, and the Disney Concert Hall in LA. With its often empty blue skies and the very real heat, the summer dropped the desert out of my agenda this time, which makes a winter trip still very much in my plans.
Railroad Tracks currently running the Surfliner and Amtrak Coast Daylight trains. La Jolla, CA. 2024.
These tracks were built as part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, with the San Diegan line running from Los Angeles to San Diego starting in 1937.
The Border Fence. US/Mexico Boundary. 2024.
Curiosities Along the Way
Guest Photographer Exhibition Series
In line with the adage “do maximum good,” my gallery space is expanding its roster of exhibiting artists. I am inaugurating a Guest Photographer Exhibition Series in July for six-week runs of photographers whose work I admire and want the public to see.
The program is starting with Larry Shapiro’s California Train Stations series. I’ve been watching and encouraging Larry’s new train station work over the last few years, and I’m proud to present it in my Gallery Two. The exhibition will be up from July 6 to August 15, 2024, with an opening reception on Sunday, July 21, 2024 from 1–4 pm.
New work from photographer David Gardner will follow in the guest artists series. Into the Anthropocene will run August 17 through September 28, 2024.
California Train Stations
Larry Shapiro
I have always found downtown San Jose an interesting place to photograph. One day wandering downtown with my Noblex panoramic film camera, I found myself at the Diridon Train Station. Walking inside, I realized I had found a subject for my panoramas and set about to make some serious photographs. My photographic technique of using a swing lens panoramic camera seemed like a good fit with the station’s pace and architecture.
After I developed, scanned, and printed the Diridon Train Station pictures, I knew I needed more. Through Internet research I found a list of passenger stations in California, and set about the work of building a photographic project. Over the next six months I photographed 18 stations: Barstow, Corcoran, San Jose, Emeryville, Richmond, Fresno, Fullerton, Glendale, Hanford, Oakland, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Salinas, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, and Victorville. I still have at least eight more to photograph.
This project offered me the opportunity to talk to train station staff—many of whom were interested in, even enthusiastic about, my project. A station guard in San Diego wanted to make sure I photographed the original tile work. The staff at Union Station permitted me to use a tripod in the building and waived the $800 fee they charge for “professional” photography. (On the other hand, a staff member in Salinas threatened to call the police if I did not leave the waiting room immediately.) I’ve also had engaging conversations with many passengers waiting for trains. A passenger in the Corcoran waiting room told me that his father was a panoramic photographer of the Central Valley.
This exhibition is in a diptych format. The top image is the exterior of the station and the bottom image is the interior.
In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad linked California to the rest of the country. By 1900, the railroads had expanded up and down the state until almost everyone in California lived near a train station, but passenger automobiles quickly surpassed train travel. What remained were the train stations, classic works of modern architecture frequently of the Mission Revival style. Compared to airport terminals filled with bustling crowds, stations are not very busy places these days.
San Diego Train Station 17x22 inch diptych.
The Border Wall
The Wall. US/Mexico Border, California. 2024.
Borders are usually interesting, some even compelling. The US/Mexico border is fraught with great controversy and charged emotion. It is both extraordinarily important, as a reality and a concept.
I wanted to visit and discover what I might see where the United States meets Mexico. I knew it would be hot, and stark. I had pictured in my mind the line of wall cutting through very different landscapes on either side. I found less of that than I hoped for, but found design, structure, and a strange sense of place. I think I will revisit in the winter.
The Wall, Hill and Towers. US/Mexico Border. Tecate, California. 2024.
Steve at the Wall. 2024. Photo by David Johnson.
The Wall and Towers. US/Mexico Border. Tecate, California. 2024.
Visiting Palomar Observatory
The Hale Telescope Dome. Palomar Mountain. 2024.
Steve at Palomar Observatory. 2024. Photo by David Johnson.
Visiting Palomar Observatory
I’ve been wanting to see the 200-inch Hale telescope since I was a boy. I remember trying to follow maps at night when I was 12 years old to guide a family outing to the summit. It was great to make the concrete plan this time.
The Hale telescope sits atop the 5,600-foot Palomar Mountain northeast of San Diego. Constructed over a period from 1936 to 1948, it was a massive engineering, transportation, and construction project. It was the largest telescope in the world from beginning its operation in 1949 until the larger Soviet BTA-6 238-inch telescope was built in 1976, followed by the 394-inch Keck Telescope built in 1993 on Mauna Kea Hawaii.
Visitor’s Center 18-inch Schmidt telescope. It was the first instrument at Palomar Observatory beginning in 1936, and was Palomar's only operational telescope until 1949.
George Ellery Hale, astronomer and a founder of Caltech, secured a grant of $6 million from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928 to build the telescope. This began a long, 20-year design and construction process he would not live to see completed. Hale had been central to the creation of the previously “largest telescopes in the world” starting in 1897. The Palomar 200-inch mirror proved very difficult to build, eventually being cast from a new material, Pyrex by the Corning Glass Works in New York, and shipped to Caltech in 1936. Interrupted by the needs of World War II, work continued and the mirror was installed in 1947. Other technical issues were solved over the next few years, with the first image being made by astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1949.
Hale Observatory Dome. 2024.
My brother and I began our visit with the beautiful Visitor’s Center, and then went to the Hale dome. Visitors can see the massive telescope through the glass of an enclosed visitor’s area. I had to try to photograph through the glass and internal reflections. My brother Dave went after his windshield reflectors, that we then held above the camera in an attempt to minimize reflections and see the machine. After about 45 minutes, we thought we had done the best we could with the reflections, and we moved onto the exterior of the dome.
Walking around the gleaming white building soon led us to the back side where a very kind and generous Observatory engineer was just leaving work. I said hello, we talked for a moment, and she asked what we were up to. My story of struggling with the internal viewing room reflections led her to checking her watch, and saying she had a few minutes, inviting us onto the Observatory floor for an unobstructed view of the massive, magnificent telescope. Her act of kindness gave us a great view and made our day.
SpaceX Falcon 9 Swirled Rocket Trail over Del Mar, California. June 18, 2024.
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket in Flight.
As I described above in the Featured Print caption, I was sitting with an old friend on the balcony of a beach restaurant in Del Mar north of San Diego when the sky was suddenly lit-up with a rocket streaming through the sky. Going through the 40 or so photographs I made brought this swirling vapor trail to my close attention. Some of the formations look almost like the clouds of Jupiter. Thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, atmospheric dynamics, and just plain rocket-tail wonder.
A crop/zoom of the frame above.
SpaceX Falcon 9 Swirled Rocket Trail over Del Mar, California. June 18, 2024.
It was breathtaking to witness.
Abstraction in Place
The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles is a self-abstracted structure of grace and strangeness. With a structure so wild in its design, I simply had to see it myself, and make photographs. With something so photographed, it felt a bit like photographing Yosemite’s Half Dome, it has already been done before.
In the case of this modern Frank Gehry building, it was so imaginatively designed that trying to abstract the abstraction became a strong exercise.
I found myself more intrigued photographically by the iPhone photo I made from the street, showing the strange beauty of the structure in the common context of street, cars, pedestrians, and traffic lights.
Under the Santa Monica Pier. From Tides in Time. Douglas Busch. 1994.
Photographer Douglas Busch
On my way southward, I stopped to visit my old friend, photographer Doug Busch at his home/Studio near Los Angeles. It had been way too many years since we had spent time together, and I was very happy to catch up. Doug’s website is superlarge.com, and gets at a lot of what his photographs have been known to be—big cameras, big negatives, big contact prints.
His cityscape and landscape prints are impressive. But his work is far more varied than that, and even more sensitive. It was wonderful to be reminded of the diversity of world views we can get from someone like Doug who has spent his life working to record what he sees.
Doug with his large-format book Silent Waves.
The California Forest Project
In 2016, Stefan Thilot, a landscape architect working in the San Francisco East Bay, reached out to me to consult on a forest photography project he was beginning. I’m proud to see his work now very far along and showing to the public.
The California Forest Project seeks to raise public awareness of California's distinct and abundant forest biodiversity through large-format, high-resolution photography. The project is a series of tens of thousands of photographs I have taken from 2017 to the present, highlighting all 25 California forest ecosystems.
Brower Center California Forest Project Exhibit. May 30–August 22, 2024.
At Stephen Johnson Photography
The biggest news from the Studio and Galleries is the start of the Guest Photographers Exhibition Series described above. And as always is the case, I am out making photographs all of the time.
Star Warp above Sea. 2024.
Star Warp
Another of my series of our star near the horizon just before disappearing into the sea.
A humpback whale popped up a few nights later.
Lunging Humpback Whale. Mussel Rock, CA. 2024.
Saturday Hours for July!
The gallery will be open for regular hours in July. Every Saturday in July, the 6th through the 27th, the gallery will be open from 11am to 4pm.
Current Exhibitions
California Train Stations, east wall Gallery 2 Stephen Johnson Photography. On view through August 15, 2024.
Recent Prints in the Gallery
There are always new prints available to see in the gallery, from the Aurora, to the Golden Gate Park Project, to the evolving Animal Series and new selections in the discounted print bins. Selections from With a New Eye remain up from the From the Archives 2024 exhibition.
Current Exhibitions
The current exhibitions in the gallery include my new Guest Exhibitors Gallery premiering with Larry Shapiro’s California Train Stations series and the continuing Life Form exhibition in the Main Gallery.
Visiting the Gallery
The Gallery is open every Saturday in July 2024, 11am to 4pm. My galleries and studio are generally open by appointment, but I am often there 10am–5pm on weekdays. Write to inquire or call 650 355-7507 to schedule an appointment.
I hope you can come by the gallery and see the original prints in the new Life Form Gallery and its new Life Form Portfolio. I invite you to join me on a workshop, rent lab space, or just say hello and let me know what you are up to photographically and what you might like to see me offer. I value your input.
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.
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.
Print Mentor Program
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.
2023 Print On Demand Book Projects
Click on the book covers above to learn more and purchase.
I finished three new books in 2023. Water: A Photographic Portrait launched last 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.
Life Form Folio
The Life Form Folio
When I premiered the Life Form Exhibition, I wanted to have a collectible item and record of the show prior to the full book I plan to make. So, now available is the 36-page, 11x17-inch, wire-bound book, featuring five years of work from 2013 to 2018 exploring these magnificent lives.
Photographs from 2013–2018
36 pages
11x17-inch wire-bound book
$40
Pacifica: A Photographic Portrait of Land and Sea
Page 7
Page 27
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
drawn from 10 years of calendars
$50
Gift Certificates for Prints and Workshops!
Emailed or shipped with beautiful gift note card.
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