The PhotoPlus Exposition in New York made for a busy few weeks, with two talks and a gallery of 40 inch prints in the Canon booth. The Gallery was a little last minute, but a bunch of people came together and pulled it off.

— Steve

This month's View From Here column chronilces my recent PhotoPlus Exposition Canon Gallery development. We hope you find the column interesting and will consider sending us some comments.

Total Solar Eclipse with Prominence. 2017.
Canon EOS-1Dx II

11x11 Pigment Inkjet Print on Cotton paper
$195 each.

My combo of a few frames of the Total Solar Eclipse last August. I was particularly interested in holding the prominences and the extended corona.

Custom Workshop Scheduling: We have set up polls for recently requested workshops to see who might be interested and able to make some dates:

Image Editing
Fine Art Printing
Photography Critique Session

The Studio, Scholarships and Mentoring

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

For discounted time studying with Steve, keep in mind our Mentoring Program.

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. We want to remind you of our Virtual Online Consulting Program. This service allows all of you out there around the globe to consult online live with Steve on technical, aesthetic and workflow issues using Skype and your webcam.

Our Essays and Tutorials from the past couple of years can now be found on our Newsletter Archive and some on Google Blogger.

We hope you can come by the gallery and see the new Panoramic Prints we've added to the National Parks Gallery, and the Exquisite Earth exhibition with its accompanying very special Exquisite Earth Portfolio 1. We invite you to join us on a workshop, rent lab space, or just say hello and let us know what you are up to photographically and what you might like to see us offer. We value your input.

Workshop Testimonials

Rocks and Surf. Pacifica. 2017.
DJI Phantom 4 Drone.

PhotoPlus New York 2017

As has been my privilege for many years, I was invited back to speak at the Photo Plus Exposition in New York this year. My 12 Steps to Improve Your Digital Photography lecturewas again requested and Canon asked me to do another booth presentation. This year we decided to create a new variant on my talks, The Craft of Fine Art Photography.

In mid-October I started reviewing these talks and was making good progress. Suddenly that pace of prep changed dramatically. Canon called on October 12 and offered me a 30 foot gallery wall for my new Life Form work. The problem was, in order to have time to frame the work, the prints had to ship by the following afternoon. So I swung into full speed prep.

The first task was to mock-up the space using Photoshop and curate my little gallery on screen. I created a file 30 inches long for the 30 foot wall, and consequently everything could be brought in and quickly scaled framed prints to size. I photographed a framed print with my iPhone, re-proportioned it for the image and started pasting the files in to just see how many would fit and the spacing they needed on the wall. Six fifty inch frames seemed to work, with at least one vertical.

I then pasted my actual photographs into the frames and started playing with which images to use, looking at leading eye-direction, color and overall intuitive considerations. It was not practical to ship framed prints, so I wanted to choose from the unmatted prints waiting to be framed for upcoming exhibits. This worked for half the show. Two of the finished chosen photographs were already framed and not easily shippable. One had been mounted to form core for temporary display and therefore could not be shipped easily either, and with the mounting, was not up to my archival standards. That left at least three 40 inch prints to make in a day.

I plunged into the printing and began discussions with the framer Canon had chosen. It was a very full day. One of the new prints had to be redone because I noticed some flaws in the print. All printed with the color right on the first print. They should have, as I had printed tham all before. The profiles I had made were good.

Because of time consideration, the framer had to start the frame building before the prints arrived, so very precise measurements had to be made. I re-checked the numbers three times. I also had to describe the moulding I wanted so as to most nearly match the frames with my building exhibit. I took a number of iPhone photos of my frames with tape measurer included, then photographed the photo corners I use, and made a close-up of the print-to-matt reveal space. They then understood what I wanted.

After emailing the wall mock-up to Canon, I realized that the scale was not clear. I asked my partner Fiona if she would come down to the gallery to pose in front of the existing foam-core mounted print on the wall. That created an easy image of a person and the orange orchid which I could strip into my mock up.

I had already designed a poster for the project, so we quickly modified the text, then started exploring a print-on-demand edition of poster for the show. That search quickly became a cost and speed of shipping challenge at poster size. Canon offered to print a small version on one of their color laser printers and made a handsome 12x19 piece. Thanks to DJ Montalto at Canon.

We needed an exhibit wall panel to explain the work, me, and the focus-stacking process. So I set about creating this as well. I knew that something along these lines would be needed for future displays anyway.

I also wanted to do a small brochure that documented this project and highlighted the exhibited prints. I took an existing gallery brochure on my Exquisite Earth installation and modified it. 

All of these associated materials took some real time to prepare and cut deeply into my prep time for my talks at the conference itself. But I managed it and got all of the materials to Canon.

Arriving in New York the day the show was to hang, I was a little nervous about how the frames and matts would look, having done all of the communication remotely. When I first arrived at the Javitts Center, the prints had just been unpacked and were sitting on plastic, leaning against a table in the Canon booth being constructed all around them. With great relief, I saw that they were extremely well done by Laumont Studios in Queens, NY. 

Then, of course, I had concerns about the lighting which Canon had already taken care of rather spectacularly. Bright daylight lamps with good coverage were already in place. I was very pleased.

A Concurrent Prep Crisis

With all of the exhibit work, preparation of my talks got pushed to the end of the weekend before I flew out. As I was getting deep into the process, my laptop started crashing, just plain shuting down with what seemed to be a Kernel error. What ever the problem was, I thought I could get through the weekend prep work, but there was no way I could rely on the machine for public talks.

I made an appointment at the Apple Store at Hillsdale to have the MacBook looked at. It was not a software problem as I had hoped, but the motherboard itself. By then it was Saturday afternoon. Frank, the Apple employee who helped me, said they didn't have the part in stock, but determined there was one in their Palo Alto Store. He said his manager would pick it up on Sunday morning. I said I would bring the machine back the next day, thinking it's intermittent working would still give me time to refine my talks. I brought the machine back on Sunday morning, and my laptop was repaired and ready to pick up the following morning. I was amazed and impressed, even if about two days behind on my work. Thank you Apple Hillsdale.

I did a booth talk on the PhotoPlus' opening day and signed posters afterward. Canon then held a catered invitation only reception in the booth Friday evening after hours and I signed more posters.

Great thanks are due to many Canon employees who went to some trouble to make this happen, Chris Campione, Rich Reamer, Rob Altman and Dan Neri, from the Printer and Camera Divisions. 

Don't forget to Check out our next workshop:

Point Lobos, Carmel and Big Sur. December 2-4, 2017

Interesting Links

Preservation Guidelines for Matting and Framing from the Library of Congress 

The Exquisite Earth Exhibition Catalog

As I've been on a roll on fixing bodies of work into POD books, I decided before the Exquisite Earth show could come down for new upcoming show, I wanted to create a printed record. So, now available is the 56 page 11x17 wire bound book, 5 years of work from 2005 to 2010 traveling this wondrous planet.

• Photographs from 2005-2010
• 56 pages 
• 11x17 wire-bound book
• $50

• 74 pages 
• 11x17 wire-bound book
• Pacifica Trail Map 
• 32 years in Pacifica 
• 10 years of calendars
• $75

Pacifica Trail Map by Pease Maps special to the Pacifica Land Trust.

11" x 17" folded
$10 (free shipping) proceeds go the Pacifica Land Trust a non-profit 501c3.

2017 Pacifica Calendar

20 scenes in and around Pacifica, California where Stephen Johnson Photography is located. Full page trail map included. Printed on a color laser digital press.

11" x 17" $25.00