Stephen Johnson Photography News
September 2024
Wind Generators, Hills and Clouds. Altamont Pass. 1986.
Welcome to the September 2024 Edition of the Stephen Johnson Photography Newsletter
Hello to my guests and subscribers. Thanks for visiting my September 2024 newsletter.
This month's View From Here column celebrates photography new and old, classical photographs, and images taking stock of our current epoch.
My second Guest Photographer Exhibition is now up in my gallery featuring David Gardner’s Into the Anthropocene through September 31.
The Gallery will be open every Saturday through September from 11am to 4pm!
My next class is the Point Lobos, Big Sur and Carmel class on September 21-23 follows, and the Masterful Fine Art Printing class coming up September 28-October 1.
I am starting a print showing/sharing event 2pm on September 28. Email to RSVP and reserve a spot to share. More info below.
— 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 September 2024
Beginning a Dive. Peregrine Falcon. Pacifica, CA. 2022.
Watching the nesting falcons here on the coastal cliffs is fascinating, and very challenging photographically. Following a dive seems impossible, and with this turn downward, the bird sped up and disappeared from anything I could track.
I’m offering a 14-inch-wide print of this photograph for $195. Larger prints can be ordered. This print at this price is offered through September 30, 2024. I'll be taking orders until then, and shipping them out by October 15, 2024. The image reverts to its normal price after that, $800 for an 11x14, $1500 for a 16x20.
ARCHIVE PHOTOGRAPH September 2024
Setting Sun and Green Flash. Pacifica, CA. 2022.
Setting Sun and Green Flash. Pacifica, CA 2022.
My evening meditation seems to have become watching the Earth turn and Sol sink into the immense Pacific. It’s been a privilege to see and photograph these daily wonders in what seems like endless permutations. I’ve been particularly found of this one with the double sun and the green flash.
Pool and Rocks. Point Lobos. 2016. Point Lobos, Big Sur and Carmel class on September 21-23.
THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson
Photography Old and New
This month’s column celebrates photography new and old, classical photographs and images taking stock of our current epoch. I’ve been drawn in by David Gardner’s Into the Anthropocene photographs now in my gallery (see more below), by a book by Charis Wilson leading me to revisit the work of Edward Weston and my own photo history cycling back to a very early image. I did also take note of photography’s 185th. anniversary with some contemporary photo musings.
Dawn Session at Pacific Grove. Point Lobos Workshop. 2016.
Don’t miss these opportunities to work together on my Point Lobos, Big Sur and Carmel class on September 21-23, and the Masterful Fine Art Printing class coming up September 28-October 1.
David Gardner’s Into the Anthropocene, my current Guest Photographer exhibition. 2024.
Into the Anthropocene opening August 24, 2024.
New Event: Print Showing Days
From the perspective of loving to see the beauty of original prints, I am starting a print showing/sharing event 4-6pm on Saturday September 28.
Email to RSVP and reserve a spot to share or merely enjoy viewing. Space is limited. This is an opportunity to bring prints to share your recent work and show your prints. It is not a review or critique unless you want that, it is a chance to show and see the special quality of original prints. I am starting this with no charge connected to it.
Guest Photographer Exhibition Series Continues
In line with the adage “do maximum good,” my gallery space is expanding its roster of exhibiting artists. I have inaugurat a Guest Photographer Exhibition Series for six-week runs of photographers whose work I admire and want the public to see.
Into the Anthropocene by David Gardner
New work from photographer David Gardner is currently on display in the guest artists series. Into the Anthropocene runs August 17 through September 28, 2024. Opening Reception was Saturday, August 24, 2024 1 -4pm. Gallery open Saturdays 11am-4pm during September.
From the introduction to Dave’s Folio from the project:
On Into the Anthropocene
I’ve had the privilege of seeing a vision develop in my friend David Gardner. When he first came to a class of mine at Skyline College in about 1980, I could tell he was friendly and willing to work hard. He stayed with it.
His love of craft and sensitivity became ever more clear over the years. Dave came to embody what dedication, time and sensitivity can bring to photography, well seen and well crafted photographs.
When Dave first shared some of his latest work of our impact on the land, I was impressed and sure that he was really onto something. I recognized his impulse to care, and to record, and to do it with high aesthetics and willingness to work hard.
Dave put in the work, location research, so many trips, looking to fuse his instinct for the subject matter with his internal sense of beauty and order. It is great to walk the gallery and take in these beautiful prints.
Dave’s Into the Anthropocene Folio
Cholla Power Plant. Joseph, AZ. Study #1. 2015. David Gardner.
After Dave, my old friend Ted Orland has agreed to mount a show in the gallery for October into November.
Plain and Clouds. Sierra Foothills. Highway 59, CA. 1973
On Photography’s Birthday: August 19, 2024
Photography was birthed to the world 185 years ago today. Decades of imagination, dedication and work led to the announcement on this date. Nicéphore Niépce, William Henry Fox-Talbot and William Herschel all made unique contributions to photography’s development. Daguerre came to the process toward the end of decades of evolution.
I fell in love with photography at the end of high school, reacting to the countryside around me in the Sierran foothills of the Great Central Valley–vast stretches of golden hills, big skies, puffy clouds...
These scenes I knew, but I began rendering them for the first time. The places were already real, but the photographic rendering changed them for me. The scenes also became symbols of the place, of the space. The connection became almost circular, places I understood in my heart, now fixed into a moment of light from a particular place, a particular time, a particular day. A view from August of 1973 became not just a marker of a place, but also a marker in time, a marker in my life. I can picture myself, barely more than a boy, too rapidly becoming a man, seeking a direction. I had no idea how deep the seduction of photography would be, nor how it would become my life’s work.
I had already learned the hard lesson of how love can hurt, I was learning the lesson of how light can love. My life’s work was taking shape.
This early photograph was later used as a Wallace Stegner book cover which made me very proud.
Thinking About Photography
Much of modern photography seems almost desperate for uniqueness. Art-speak laden references with lofty sounding assertions of relevance abound. Narratives get written explaining the relevance of work that otherwise seems to mean very little.
In my view, the search for uniqueness can often override aesthetics and soul. I frequently find it difficult to find beauty amid what seems more likely motivated to obscure rather than reveal. Beauty and revelation are value judgements I am brining to the table. I know they are not god’s words from on high.
I have noted prominent displays of overexposed, out of focus, funky color or imposed old processes. Degrading the photographic image becomes an aesthetic all its own, which I understand but rarely embrace. Additionally, assertions of conceptual or political relevance to some particular cause or group is often claimed despite no discernible association of the work to the cause or any clarity of concept.
Along another line, documenting the ordinary has clearly always had value, but sometimes modern photography can be obsessed with a kind of human narcissism. Yet we landscape photographers have been accused of “photographing rocks and trees when the world is falling apart.” A reply might be there are large truths to be revealed by understanding the natural world we have emerged from and are made of. Studying our darkest hearts can create awareness, but exploring the heart of what made us is also of great value. That is what I have made my life’s work.
I also understand my own prejudice toward photography being a powerful tool to record the light that was on what was there at the moment. I don’t want to limit photography to just that reality, it would be to impose an almost religious constriction on the creative soul.
None of this musing would ever be intended to stomp down on play, as that is at the heart of the creative process. I’ve always said, follow your heart and passion, just let your audience know if your photograph appears real but is not. To me that does not kill the joy of wild ideas and visualization, it just recognizes photography’s unique ability to record a momentary light-based reality. And with the rise of AI synthesized images, it is ever more important.
Letter from Ansel Adams to Edward Weston. February 1936
I can't tell you how swell it was to return to the freshness, simplicity and natural strength of your photography after such a dose of intellectualism, cynicism, and dialectism received by me in the east. I am convinced that the only real security lies in the certain communion with the things of the natural world.
I’ve often thought of my love of Jerry’s Uelsmann’s work in this context. It is photographically beautiful, and it is mostly composited. It is ironic, playful, so real looking that people often asked him where some of his fantastic locations were. Jerry’s sense of humor runs through his work, as it did spending any time with him. For me, Uelsmnan’s work rides that line between extraordinary craft, play, irony and a wonderful imagination. Jerry’s work never seemed about deception, it always seemed about wonder and curiosity. His work did not present itself to be real, but was so well done as to seduce into another realm.
Continuing Work
East Span. San Francisco Bay Bridge at Dusk .7:43pm. 2024.
Two views, the irresistible black & white, and the night color.
East Span. San Francisco Bay Bridge at Night. 8:28pm. 2024.
Back to Yerba Buena
I’ve been wanting to get back out to Yerba Buena Island, but this time at night. I was very pleased with what I saw and was able to photograph until about 8pm.
The top of the island truly does offer inspirational views.
I couldn’t resist a video of the strobe-like appearance of the eastbound car headlights passing behind support beams of the lower bridge deck.
Golden Gate Last Light Pano. 2024.
Sunset over Alcatraz. San Francisco Bay. 2024.
More Animals
Goats. Death Valley? 1982.
I came across an old transparency which seems perfect for my growing collection of animal photographs. This one is familiar as I’ve run across it many times, but it is numbered in a sequence of Death Valley photographs and I cannot remember or imagine why there would have been goats in Death Valley.
Personal Histories
I love to fly. I love to photograph from the air. During our project on the Great Central Valley, my photo partner in crime, Robert Dawson and I flew when we could. At least twice, my friend lawyer/student/pilot Bill Johnston, flew us around to see the valley from above.
I had acquired a surplus K20 aerial camera 5.25 inch roll film camera and made many images with it. Much of my valley aerial work was done on 35mm slide film, and I have many 120mm film negatives from my Mamaya RB67.
Wind Generators. Altamont Pass. 1986. Kodak Vericolor 120mm color negative.
Me and Robert Dawson. Merced Airport. 1986. Photo by Bill Johnston
Pacific Discovery Magazine. California Academy of Sciences. Fall 1988.
The photograph at the top of this newsletter is a 35mm transparency I stumbled into recently which came to life in this digital incarnation. Finding the slides led me to digging out the 120mm Vericolor negatives and re-digitize the negative I used for the Great Central Valley Project.
Page 24-25 The Great Central Valley: California’s Heartland. UC Press 1993.
The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland by Stephen Johnson, Gerald Haslam and Robert Dawson. 1993.
$45 softbound
Special Limited Edition in boxed linen-bound set with two original photographs. 100 copies, signed and numbered $1,000
Charis Wilson and Edward Weston
After visiting my friend Marion Patterson in June and reading her “memoir in progress,” her friendship with Charis Wilson led me to ordering Charis’ autobiogralphy, Through Another Lens: My Years With Edward Weston. The read has been a wonderfully revealing glimpse into photographs and circumstances surrounding the evolution of a love and a photographic style. It is fascinating.
There are many passages discussing Weston’s work and goals that rang deeply true, aligning with many of my photographic attitudes. I wonder how many of my own thoughts were influenced by Weston, whether reading some of these words before or coming to similar conclusions and attitudes. I think I have been deeply influenced by Weston’s vision, as have so many of us.
I met Charis briefly many years ago at a University of California Santa Cruz reception celebrating the addition of her papers to their Weston Archive. She was graceful, friendly, and radiant, then in her 90s.
Of course I started digging out books on Weston that I’ve collected over the years. My copies of The Daybooks are missing, but I found others (supplemented by library loans) and have been reveling in a little Westonfest.
Charis’ book brought up many themes and ideas very close to my own heart. I folded over many page corners as I was reading through.
The stories felt very real for me, partially because I’ve met many of the characters in the book, David Brower, Ansel and Virginia Adams, Brett Weston, Cole Weston, Ron Partridge, and others. I know many of the places in the book, visited by me so many years later, often inspired by the fact that Weston had been there and photographed 40 years ealier. Pt. Lobos, and Death Valley are primary among them, even the little hamlet of Hornitos, not far from where I was born and raised.
As Weston moved from gauzy pictorials in 1918 into the mid-1920s, to the precise and evocative form studies later that decade (1926-27), he also started talking about photography as a tool of revelation. A kind of forthrightness crept into his thinking, and certainly his photographs. As I read Charis’ book, I found myself hearing my voice from the last 30 years. I couldn’t help but ask myself if I had come to these ideas on my own, partially through Weston’s photographs, or through earlier reading. I know I have not read Charis’ book before, and only scattered passages of The Daybooks.
Through Another Lens. My Years with Edward Weston. Charis Wilson and Wendy Madar. North Point Press. 1998
Many quotes and letters from Edward and Ansel stood out for me:
Weston’s words are in italics.
Light vs lighting
There is no time of day or year when sunlight is better, photographically speaking, than another. It may be better for a certain subject, that is all. The light of high noon is just as important as morning or evening light…In fact partly because of the lessening of shadow intrusion, the simpler light between the forbidden hours of 10 and 2 is more often useful than morning or evening light in revealing the thing itself rather than the mood evoked by the play of shadow on it. I would guess that at least as much as my work is done around noon as before and after. page 198
Steve: I’ve often said there is no right time of day to photograph, rebutting a common affection for the Golden Hour at sunrise and sunset. I’ve even developed lecture slides belittling the idea of “Bad light." Here it is 40 years earlier…
_________
In the article “What is photographic beauty?” the most important point is the ability of the camera to register more than the eye. Guided by the photographer’s selective understanding, the penetrating power of the camera-eye can be used to produce a heightened sense of reality – a kind of super realism that reveals the vital essences of things. page 198
Steve- this gets right at my notions of truth in photography, a limited truth for sure, but one that may be the most essential of all, our connection to this planet.
Through Another Lens: My Years With Edward Weston. Charis Wilson.
EW 100. Untitled 41. Friends of Photography. 1986.
Pepper No. 30. 1930. Edward Weston.
from the Center for Creative Photography Collections. Tucson, AZ.
A Weston Gallery link: Center for Creative Photography Collections.
At Stephen Johnson Photography
News from the Studio and Galleries is the Opening Reception for David Gardner’s Into the Anthropocene exhibition. The reception was well attended and there was much praise for David’s photographs and the theme. This showing is part of my Guest Photographers Exhibition Series.
Into the Anthropocene by David Gardner. August 16-September 30.
From the Archives
Going through slides looking for some work turned up snapshots I made in 1979 of Ansel Adams checking his light meter at Olmstead Point in the high country of Yosemite. As Ansel was talking the students through his thinking and measurements, my friend and workshop director Al Weber was teasing him a bit and calling out the needed exposure off the top of his head.
I was a guest speaker at Ansel's Yosemite Workshop that year, talking about my plans for the At Mono Lake exhibition.
Ansel Adams checking his light meter at Olmstead Point. Yosemite, CA. 1979.
Saturday Hours for September!
The gallery will be open every Saturday in September from 11am to 4pm.
Current Exhibitions
Life Form and With a New Eye selections are currently on view. Stephen Johnson Photography.
Recent Prints in the Gallery
There are always new prints available to see in the gallery, from the Hale Telescope, 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.
Current Exhibitions
The current exhibitions in the gallery include my new Guest Exhibitors Gallery with David Gardner’s Into the Anthropocene series and the continuing Life Form and With a New Eye selections are currently on view.
Visiting the Gallery
The Gallery is open every Saturday through September 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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