David Crosby. 2005.

David Crosby. Bridge School Benefit Concert with CSNY. October 30, 2005.

We lost David Crosby last month. He was an outstanding and passionate singer/songwriter. It happened to be the same day my brother passed away. Crosby’s death left me sad, with many memories of performances I had seen, the last was solo at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. I intended to dig out a few photographs I had made over the years. Ironically, it was while looking for pictures of my brother that I stumbled into some from the Bridge School Benefit Concert in 2005. I like this one very much, as he seemed inside his head and the song. He was onstage with some of his great friends, they were making great music and I felt so lucky to be there.

I think it was at this show, as my good friend Jim Rubino and I were walking out from the backstage toward the exit, Crosby and what I believed to be his son were walking toward a bus on the pathway below. I couldn’t help but shout out to him how great he sounded. He called back, “No, it was Nash.” I called back saying it was him, how beautiful his voice was. He said thanks and then said to his son something like, “that nice man said I sang real good.” I was very touched by the interaction. 

Purchase David Crosby Print and Help Bridge School.

CSNY. Bridge School Benefit Concert. 2005. October 30, 2005. Shioreline Ampitheater. Mountian View, CA

In cooperation with the Bridge School in 2005 we sent around prints of CSNY on stage together from that show to all four musicians to sign as fundraisers for the school. They were each given a copy, The Bridge School used the signed print for their Parent’s Raffle. There is still one signed print left but there can be no more with David gone. Proceeds from this special 5 signature print go to the Bridge School. Email to make offer.

Purchase a print signed by Steve alone.

A few words about music and my photography from November 2005

The View from Here: Mono Lake, Art and Conservation

Dusk, Mono Lake, 1979.

In the mid-1970s I visited Mono Lake for the first time and found it to be a deeply beautiful and strange place. Over the years it was becoming clear the lake was falling. Eventually I learned about water diversions of its feeder streams to Los Angeles 350 miles to the south.

In 1979 I decided to organize a big photographic exhibition to draw attention to the unique beauty of the place. My friends and photographic mentor Al Weber and Don Worth helped curate the show, with Ansel Adams and Brett Weston contributing prints. Letters of support from Ansel, non-profit sponsorship by David Brower and Friends of the Earth helped get the project underway.

At Mono Lake Exhibition at the California Academy of Sciences Installation. San Francisco, CA 1983.

The exhibition At Mono Lake gathered work from over a hundred years of photography and nearly 50 photographers, toured the country from 1980 to 1983, was seen by over 4 million people and now resides in a permanent gallery at the Mono Basin National Scenic Area Visitor’s Center in Lee Vining. A catalog drawn from the show was published in 1983 including 63 photographs from the exhibit.

At Mono Lake Exhibition Catalog. Cover photograph by Clinton Smith. 1983.

A public relations campaign and lawsuit was waged against the water diversions  and was successful in mandating a minimum lake level being restored before water diversion could resume.

An Aging Exhibition and New Opportunities
The At Mono Lake exhibition is now 30 years old and needs some tender loving care. It also needs some modernization with some electronic interpretation and a exhibition catalog that represents all of the work in the show.

I have devoted some time to this project this last month or so, recreating the book in InDesign with the hope of publishing a full electronic version, illustrating the Exhibition Inventory page on the website, designing some new graphics for the Visitor’s Center and some new posters that might serve as fundraiser’s for the short and long-term maintenance of the show.

The Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association is the current non-profit managing affairs relating the Mono Lake Visitors Center and therefore will likely be the conduit for the work we are now doing.

Pastel Sunrise. Mono Lake 1981.

A Photography Style
My Mono Lake work is where my own photographic style emerged and matured into an aesthetic that deeply appreciates the nature of light-filled color and real world experience of the human perceived color of a place.

The whole At Mono Lake experience so influenced my thinking, artwork, and sense of the possible that it became the subject of my graduate thesis and gave me real confidence to go on to my next big photographic project on my homeland of the Great Central Valley which I did with my friend Robert Dawson from 1982-1986.

Next Mono Lake Class
One of my favorite locations to do a field workshop is at Mono Lake. The stark and beautiful scenery of this legendary lake is unlike any other landscape in the world and I enjoy seeing the work produced from the four days we spend photographing and discussing technical and aesthetic considerations.

Our 2011 Mono Lake Workshop is October 8-11, 2011. Perhaps you can join us.

Much of this convergence of attention to the decades-old Mono Lake project came about as I was preparing for a talk about my good friend and co-curator of At Mono Lake, Al Weber, at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel last Saturday.

A Tribute to Al Weber: A Panel at the Center for Photographic Art, Carmel
I first met Al in October of 1975 on one of his and Ralph Putzker’s Mono Lake Eastern Sierra workshops run through the University of California Santa Cruz Extension. He and Ralph both became good friends and mentors to me, helping my career and photography in countless ways, not the least of which was the encouragement that my photographic work was of value.

Video of Steve’s Talk at Al Weber Tribute. Click to open, and video may take awhile to load.

It was an honor to speak at Al’s opening of his Aerial Photographs show at CPA. It was also wonderful to see so many old friends including some of the contributing photographers to At Mono Lake, Ted Orland, Richard Garrod, Marion Patterson and others.

STUFF
At the Opening Reception for Al Weber’s show, I saw many old friends and met some interesting new friends as well. Wynn Bullock’s daughter Barbara Bullock was there and we talked about her posing for her Dad, and about her mother Edna whom I was very fond of. She mentioned that there was now a section on her father Wynn’s website devoted to her mother’s work.

Steve Johnson and Marsh Pitman. 2011. Michelle Maddox.

My old friend environmentalist Marsh Pitman came by the opening. I met Marsh in 1968 working against the election of Richard Nixon, and then later as co-chairs of the McGovern campaign where I grew up in central California. I was 15 and running the campaign, Marsh served as the adult in the room that let my management of the campaign go forward.

I made the acquaintance of another photographer, Michelle Maddox, who made an impression on me in talking with her, but even more of an impression when I looked at her webpage later. Michelle made a nice photograph of Marsh Pitman and me together.

I also ran into William Giles who I hadn’t seen in 20 years or more and thought it would be nice to remind people of his very substantial work. Take a look a his website.

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And now for something completely different, below is my pause to look up at the marquis of the newly restored Fox Theater in Oakland as we went in to see the Buffalo Springfield reunited after 40 years. Below is just two iPhone snapshots stitched on site in AutoStitch and emailed to a few friends before the show began. I loved the light, the curvature, the magic of rock and roll. It was a great show.

Fox Theater Marquis. Buffalo Springfield. 2011.

The View From Here: Alive in a Photograph and Al Weber’s Mission San Antonio Workshop

Dad. 1996.

THE VIEW FROM HERE: From May Newsletter 2011

Alive in a Photograph: Warren Johnson 1929-2011

My Dad died this week. He was 82. I didn’t know him well, and so much of how he will live on for me is in the few photographs I have.

Photographs are remarkable artifacts of what once was, sometimes implying more, sometimes a palette for our own memories to gather, perhaps unintentionally even fictionalize.

This week, as I gather photographs for a memorial service for my Dad, they offer their own kind of comfort, they were, after all, all moments where we were together, he was looking right at me, with whatever thoughts may have been present in his mind.

He was a curious man, loved a good story, had a hearty laugh, found much absurdity in life, and saw evidence of mysteries beyond our ability to sense or prove.

Shortly after the news, I thought I was working through an acceptance of his death. As I found more photographs, many of which I had forgotten, my mood changed into a fairly heavy burden of loss. It seemed true that the photographs carried a weight of record, and now jogged memories that brought a greater truth home, that there were more precious times than were in the forefront of my mind, that the loss is even greater, that the reality of the photographs themselves had perhaps too much power to take in.

I know how to print, there is little labor beyond finding the files, many of which were made fairly early on in the digital age before I had many of my file protocol and filing procedures worked out. The effort is in standing up to the emotional loss, pressing on through the discoveries so that some precious images can be shared.

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Trentepohlia, Fitzgerald Reserve. 2011.

Going Out

A short but somewhat determined trip to our local Fitzgerald Marine Reserve brought back a photograph of the orange moss I’ve been fascinated by for years. On workshops, the subject is too demanding for me as an instructor to spend the time on, too much attention to depth of field, subtle waves of composition and backlight exposure issues.

At least on this one particular afternoon, even while hoping for a new friend to join me, I took a little time and moved my fascination for the subject a little closer to a satisfying photograph. This strange life form is a subject that will continue to draw me in I’m sure.

The Trentepohlia is a fascinating life form. It is essentially a tree clinging algae, drawing nourishment from the air and sea. It has no leaves as a moss would, but rather microscopic filaments heavy with carotenoid pigments, masking the green of the chlorophyll. According to Wikipedia, “Carotenoids in general absorb blue light. They serve two key roles in plants and algae: they absorb light energy for use in photosynthesis, and they protect chlorophyll from photo damage.” In fact, the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is ringed in orange by carotenoid molecules in algae, and similar forms seem to protect our eyes from ultraviolet radiation damage.*

*source: Wikipedia

Tower and Cross. Mission San Antonio, CA. 2011.

Al Weber’s Mission San Antonio Workshop

A community of photographers, coming together for a few days of looking, questions, exploring and camaraderie, time with old friends, steeped in the traditions of fine art landscape photography while getting a kick in the butt to loosen up and try new stuff. A good three days.

I had never been to this part of California before, nearby, but never this mission, this valley, nor this connection to the coast. The California missions are about the oldest manmade stuff around in California, largely rebuilt, but still occupying some special ground in history. They are both antiquity and old story, old for here, but also very much of European army/religion overtaking native peoples and cultures.

Mission San Antonio. 2011

But the rural nature of this place, the long arched corridors, the adobe, the sense of history and stories do draw one in.  Of course we have mission cliche’s: a kitschy gift shop and easy sense of visual been there/done that. But there is more here, particularly in the context of three days spent wandering, looking, and immersed in photography.

Mission San Antonio. 2011

It was also Easter, the Mission is still an active church, so ceremonies and visitation by parishioners and the public were part of the weekend. A fire was built in front of the Mission, which served as a gathering point and beginning for the evening ceremonies.

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Mission San Antonio. 2011

Kazu Okitumi. Mission San Antonio. 2011

A few of us spent one late evening around the campfire. It turns out that photographer Victor Landweber is also quite a good guitarist and has a wonderful Leon Redbone kinda of voice and style. I had a great time playing with him, doing of few of my own tunes, hanging out with Ted Orland, David Bayles and a few other new friends.

Around the Campfire. David Bayles and Steve Johnson. Mission San Antonio. 2011. Ted Orland.

On coming home, I was tempted onto the Nacimiento-Fergusson road toward Big Sur, even with some doubts as to whether a known road closure on Highway One would leave me blocked from going north and force a very long southward loop. The oaks and hills were beautiful.

As the road rose over the coastal mountains, I drove into mist, then outright clouds of fog. The bucolic road became mysterious, the vistas blind, everything wet. It was a good drive. After 26 winding miles, when I got down to Highway One, the road north to home was open, it was closed a few miles to the south.

The View From Here: Digital Archives and Archiving the Real World

Antarctica 2009.

THE VIEW FROM HERE- from the April Newsletter 2011

Digital Archives and Archiving the Real World

Two thoughts came to mind this month, as they were both issues which I had to sort through, some missing files and sunlit springtime images riding the edge of black and life.

A Missing Archive

As I was curating my exhibition Exquisite Earth last fall, I ran into a wall on a photograph I wanted to use for the exhibition, the full res edited version and the RAW file was missing. As I looked further, it became clear that my entire Antarctica trip from 2009 was missing. Few hard drive files, no DVDs, no index, other than some jpeg excerpts, no evidence that the archive ever existed.

For years my normal offload and back-up process was to offload to two hard drives on initial downloading of my photographs from the camera memory card, re-naming the files and imposing my normal metadata simultaneously. On return home one of those drives is then back-up to two gold DVDs.

In this instance, this procedure seems to have gone awry.

It soon became clear to me what must have happened. When I went to mount one of my terabyte hard drives, it wouldn’t mount, nor could Apple’s Disk Repair Utility fix the drive and mount it. As it happened, it was a drive I had carried with me on the Antarctica trip which I had also been using for Apple’s Time Machine back-ups. The 500gb portable drive I had used simultaneously for offloading the photographs in the field had long since been cleared and overwritten with new data.  It didn’t make sense to me that the only copy could possibly be the files that must be on that now problematic Time Machine drive.

As I investigated the matter, it did seem that some people were reporting errors with Time Machine leading to directories getting corrupted and drives not mounting. I knew at the time that putting precious data and back-ups on the same drive was problematic, but as they were my secondary back up, I didn’t worry too much about it.

On my return from Antarctica, with catching up from weeks away, inattention to detail of file management and archiving led me to end up with only one copy, on what now seemed to be a corrupted drive. I was devastated, but had to move on and print the show, keeping faith in the back of my mind that the data was there, and I would manage to get it off. It wasn’t until March that I had a window of time to try a disk recover.

A good friend recommended Alsoft’s Disk Warrior as the software to try for disk recovery, and as I had used it successfully in the past, I ordered an update.  Disk Warrior rebuilt the directory and the files suddenly appeared in a temporary “preview” directory that I could mount and copy from, but could not repair as the drive was now also reporting a hardware error, which may have been the problem all along.

I now have two duplicate hard drives of the trip, that are indexed with a little disk indexing utility I’ve been using for years, Disk Tracker, and I will start writing the Blu-ray disks tomorrow. Even at the standard 25 gigabytes, it will take 9 disks for the 2009 Antarctica trip. The sheer volume of data it is now possible to produce is one of the challenges facing us. It can contribute to what happened to me here, where the task of good backup simply requires a lot of time and effort.

San Joaquin River. 2011.

Bright Sun, Deep Shadows, Light Everywhere

The rain of the last few months have swelled the rivers here. The sun is out and California seems draped in spring. I am itching to wander this month, and believe I will. Meanwhile, I use every chance I get knocking around to see what’s going on with the water and life bursting out.

In this abundance of light and life, the photographs can often seem contrasty, harsh and dead of that very life. I work hard on the RAW processing files and with careful edits in Photoshop to preserve the luminously and delicacy I see. It is not easy to do or to translate onto paper.

San Joaquin River. 2011.

I remember working so hard to get my beginning black and white students to print so that blacks were possible in their silver prints. Adequate exposure under the enlarger, long development time in the paper developer and appropriate contrast of paper–were all ingredients to a rich print result.

This very chasing of black has imposed a world view pervasive in photography.  And that very blackness and darkness at the bottom end of the tonal scale is exactly what I try to very carefully watch for in processing these light-filled spring flood photographs of the San Joaquin River.

It is also a challenging area as there were no blacks present, but there were very dark values. We tend to truncate those into blacks in most photography, and in these cases it is very easy for anything less than a black at the bottom end to make the image look flat.

San Joaquin River. 2011.

A combination of very restrained contrast in the RAW processor, being careful to keep detail in the shadows by not imposing black, using the shadow Fill slider, the curve editor, and then in Photoshop carefully editing the curve again to keep shadows open and contrast sill not noticeably flat and dull. It is a difficult edge to ride. An additional tool now in our palette of options is the HDR Toning Editor in Photoshop CS5 Adjustments menu. Careful use of HDR Toning was explained in our September 2010 Newsletter Tutorial.

Of course this all fits in nicely with my general contention that most photographs unduly truncate the delicate nuance of the real world into over-simplified exaggerations that result in contrasty saturated hyperbole. And now that you know what I really think…. It is also riding an edge where it is not at all clear what do, even with plenty of attitude and a subtle agenda. It is new tonal territory, and every image has its own potential and challenges, which I will somtimes rise to, often struggle with, and occasionally move on as I won’t know what to do. Sometimes it just needs to be black and white.

The View From Here: Lectures, Truth and the Eastman House Photography Wonderland

THE VIEW FROM HERE from March 2011 Newsletter

Lectures, Truth and the Eastman House Photography Wonderland

I seem to frequently be writing as I am returning from trips. This time some Canon-sponsored lectures at the University of Buffalo, the Niagara Frontier Regional Camera Club’s 50th Convention (NFRCC), and an amazing long-overdue visit to Niagara Falls and the George Eastman House in Rochester.

I have never been to this part of the country, and was not looking forward to possible storms that might complicate my trip. But no complications arose, and I was transported into a land of snow and ice, very unlike my home in California but much more like our idea of winter.

I was looking forward to seeing Niagara Falls, and anticipated a wonder in the ice and snow surrounding them. I was not let down. The mist from the falls iced the trees, built-up snow dunes below the falls and blanketed most everything in sight. The white of the snow and churning foam of the falling water seemed whiter still with the Niagara River’s green water flowing through it. For all of the monocolor associated with winter, the color that comes through can be quite remarkable.

Steve Showing Prints in his Printing Class at the University at Buffalo. 2011.
photo by Domenic J. Licata, University at Buffalo.

Hands-on
It was a pleasure to spend some time with the faculty and students at the University at Buffalo. Touring the Art Department with its sculpture lab, printmaking studios and foundry, pulled me back into the tactile world of making art with hands and hard work. Although photography was always different, the darkroom connected you back with the raw materials from which the magic came. It was fundamentally different than working on a computer and sending files to a printer. It’s peculiar that now, the most tactile operations of the photographic processes have more to do with presentation than fabrication, matting and framing.

At the heart of our work as photographers is still the fundamental interaction with a world of light, the cold, the sweat, the heat and sun, the weight of equipment and protection from rain and wind. All of those normal natural phenomena that moving about the world encounters, are all part of making images. That has always been the why for most of us, out there experiencing the real world, with its challenges and glories. But there was always also something else fundamental about the laborious and careful chemical aromatic experience of endless hours standing under safelights and in total darkness. There was an immersion in the materials. Probably to the detriment of our health, but it was an immersion. I don’t mean to wax romantic about it, I would never trade away the tools and precision of how I am now able to work, but there is a change.

It is quite understandable why so many photographers in this digital age work their materials with hand coloring, montage, mixed-media and multiple processes in conjunction with their inkjet prints. The hard working of idea into something touched, inevitably singular, and hand made is substantial.

Tree and Rapids, Niagara River. Whirlpool State Park. NY 2011.

The Camera Club Convention
I was greeted warmly and felt much appreciated at the Niagara Falls NFRCC Convention. It was wonderful to see so many lovers of photography in a single place. Their print competition had many very fine photographs. I gave a lecture on my National Parks project With a New Eye and on 12 Steps to Improve Your Digital Photography.

In a few of my remarks, it seemed I might also have been saying some uncomfortable words. In talking about my work on the national parks, and my earlier stylistic evolution, I couldn’t help but return to old themes of my frustration with the dark, saturated, contrasty world I see in so much color photography. I asked the audience if that’s the world they saw, if they had ever encountered a black shadow, which I equated to a light-sucking black hole? Is the real world, in all its magnificence, nuance and beauty, really in need of the “enhancement” we see attempted in most digital landscape photography?

Although I heard appreciation for my talk,  phrases like “you made me think about things I’ve never thought of before,” I also heard later  that some were vocally disagreeing with my views during my talk. All of this is for the good. Sometimes I feel like part of my mission in life is to stir up the pot, and ask questions that prompt debate and inquiry.

An Old Topic Revisited
For some reason the last few days have also stirred up some discussions of photographic truth, which also gave rise to some new ways of articulating my views.

Photographs are often said to be lies, so why worry about cloning real things in or out of a digital file. All photos lie anyway, supposedly. I strongly disagree with this contention, and will not go into it again deeply here as I’ve discussed it elsewhere. But something did come up this week that crystallized the ideas even more to me.

What we mean by truth after all, is as real in a photograph, as it is with the most reliable witness in their words in describing an event. The testimony is limited by the extent of the story told, as is the view of the photograph. Nothing has ever been a complete truth, but always limited to the subject at hand at best. It is from a particular point of view, like a person, or a lens. It is interpreted and understood by the norms of the time, as is a story and a photograph. What truth do we really have that is any truer than a photograph? Perhaps only our own experience and memory, our own truth.

A photograph is based on a physical phenomena, light through a lens, therefore I believe it is more of a truth than the best of what we can tell. That doesn’t mean, as Ansel Adams once said that, “photographs don’t lie, photographers do,” that an image can’t be photographed with intent to deceive, but trashing the veracity of a medium we cherish, partially because of its ability to be selective witness, is unwarranted.

This conversation deepened with the Eastman House Process Historian and well-known enthusiast for historical processes Mark Osterman as he was graciously showing us around their Conservation Lab. Mark pointed out that a photograph was also seen with certain processes yielding a particular look which contributed to the understanding of the time, as well the cultural prejudices of the days, so whatever truth it may contain would be relative to those considerations as well. No argument.

By the  way, Mark runs classes in historical processes. Check them out here.

Abraham Lincoln. late 1850s Alexander Hessler.

Lincoln Up Close
Mark also showed us a direct positive glass plate of a very well-known portrait of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Hessler which he graciously allowed us to inspect with a loupe. Peering into the magnified view of this second generation glass plate was one of the truly amazing photo history moments of my life. The reality of the man portrayed became more alive than any other historical photographic experience I can remember. Through that photographic view, my sense of Lincoln as a real live human being was dramatically deepened.

Wiki link

Frozen Mist on Trees. Niagara Falls. 2011.

The George Eastman House
I’ve always wanted to visit the George Eastman House, so I extended my trip to pay a visit to Rochester, to see the museum and my old and dear friend from Kodak of yesteryear, photographer Pete Sucy. Pete helped sketch out and define digital photography as we know it in its early days. The George Eastman House is just that, the home of Kodak founder George Eastman, built with his Kodak fortune, some called it the “house that Brownie built” and is now a world renowned photography museum.

Photographer and Digital Visionary Pete Sucy Kindly Holding my Gray Cap. Niagara Falls. 2011.

I wasn’t fully prepared for the treat I was about to encounter as Technology Curator Todd Gustavson gave us a backroom tour of the museum photography technology collection (check out his book, Camera: A History of Photography from Daguerrotype to Digital). I got to see so much neat stuff in a few hours that I am still coming down from the nerdy photo high I was floating on as we moved through the collection.

We saw the first of the Kodak cameras complete with original shipping/return for processing box, a Daguerreotype camera signed by Daguerre himself with original shipping documents, every imaginable camera design and concept, survey cameras from the early USGS, a stereo 4×5 Graphic View camera, the Lunar Orbiter camera with built-in darkroom and television scanner for film development and transmission from space, and gadgets galore. It is a photo nirvana place for the kid in me that fell in love with photography in my teens.

left top:Lunar Orbiter Camera. NASA. 1966.
right top: Steve with a 4×5 Stereo Graphflex view camera. 1902.
left bottom: 5 Cent 3D Movie/Still Player featuring the National Parks. circa 1930s.
right bottom: The Octopus. 1980s All in one Clock Radio Camera.
all from the George Eastman House Collection. 2011.

Rochester
To many of us, Rochester New York was once an icon of photography and Eastman Kodak. As a series of decisions and missed opportunities left Kodak less central to present day photography, that iconic association waned.

To those of us without any real knowledge about the town, it may have made us think Rochester is a city in deep decay. Of course, like any other impression without deep information, this is not a fair view. Although the city has suffered mightily from Kodak’s decline, it is still a huge and vital community. However, with so much industry now idled, there is also ample visual evidence of an industrial heyday now passed.

But industries remain, universities are present, and what appears to be an active and involved arts, music and creative community continues on.

High Falls, Genesse River. Rochester. NY 2011.

Fire Escape. High Falls. Rochester. NY 2011.

I’ve met so many people in the last few days that faces are a bit of a blur, but stories, voices and so much goodwill fills my mind. I was surrounded all weekend with a deep love of photography. I think I’ll plan on going back.