The opening of Life Form last month, promo visits, some marketing and print fulfillment, have made for some very full days. The loss of my beautiful dog Sandy has been a real and deep challenge. Remembering our wonderful friendship is life-giving. The photographs help.
                                                                        — Steve

This month's View From Here column features recent happenings, photographs and new workshops. We hope you find the column interesting and will consider sending us some comments.

Trentepohlia and Cypress. 2018.
Canon EOS 5DSr.

9.5x14 Pigment Inkjet Print on Cotton paper
$195 each.

The green and orange created a surreal scene that  I was pleased to see and record as a photograph.

We're offering a 9.5x14 inch print of the photograph, matted to 20 inch wide board and ready to frame for $195, framed in silver for an additional $100, wood for $250. This print at this price is offered through August 31. We'll be taking orders until then, and shipping them out by October 15.

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 original prints in the new Life Form 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

Knocking Around in August

With the Life Form Exhibition opening follow-up and needing to keep regular gallery hours, I've had to stay close to home this month. It is also true that my beautiful 14 year old Golden Retriever Sandy seemed on her last days and I needed to stay very close to her.

Living next to the Pacific Ocean always provides opportunity to connect with nature. With the occasional whale visits the photographic possibilities keep pulling me in.

The whales have not been as numerous this year, but we have spent hours watching in fascination with their movement and amazement at their presence. At one point a few weeks ago, three Humpback Whales were lunge feeding at sunset. Sometimes a too slow shutter makes for magic. What a great coastline.

A Great Blue Heron was hanging out in the Pacifica Center for the Arts fields hunting gophers. I love it when they take off or land, with wings spread out in reaching grace. But this one was happy to be watching carefully. I was unwilling to approach the Heron too close and cause this beautiful bird to fly, so I was also cointent just to watch for a little while and enjoy its feathered wonder.

The Highway One Coastal Journey Workshop

We had a good weekend in the studio and on the road in the Highway One Coastal Journey Workshop. Extra time was spent in the studio customizing the class to the student's needs on depth of field, exposure, histograms and composition. 

Exploring the meeting of land and sea is often a wonder. Our coastal stops on this workshop were filled with form, texture, salt air and varying light.

On the coastal workshop, I conducted a number of demonstrations on depth of field, abstraction and black and white renditions. One demo included previewing black and white renditions by changing the Canon Picture Style Menu to Monochrome. I pointed out, that as I was photographing in Raw, a color image would supplant the BW thumbnail when later viewed in a Raw Processor such as Camera Raw or Lightroom. Canon Digital Photo Professional would preserve the BW preview. A workaround to preserve the BW view I experienced in the field, was to change the camera settings from Raw alone, to Raw plus JPEG. This allowed me to hold onto the BW rendering I experienced in the field regardless of the Raw interpreter. My process is to then convert the file to BW in Photoshop with the Black and White Adjustment Layer.

There was a great photography exhibit on display at the Academy from their annual photo contest BigPicture: Natural World Photography. One particular photograph of a Humpback Whale by Renee Capozzola, Playtime In Mom's Bubbles caught my eye.

Next Studio Workshop

Next Field Workshop

Equipment for Sale

Canon Lens for sale. EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM

The EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM is a lightweight, compact L Series telephoto zoom lens with Image Stabilizer. The optical Image Stabilization in the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens provides up to an incredible four stops of shake correction-a first for Canon IS lenses. The use of fluorite UD lens elements provides excellent optical performance in terms of resolution and contrast. These features, together with its water-and dust-proof construction, provide both the performance and portability to meet user demands.

EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM. $600. I am selling this pristine 1 year old lens as I have replaced it with the new version II.

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.