The View From Here - December 2011

Pad 39B, Space Shuttle Columbia. Kennedy Space Center, FL. 1996. Betterlight Scanning Back.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Some Precious Photographic Experiences

As the holidays approach, I am filling some print orders, preparing some 2012 Calendars, and exploring the next installment of my Exquisite Earth Series. Working on these, and many other projects all at the same time makes me revisit the full and frequently too full career I've lived.

The journeys, the photographs made, and the many people I've met, all amount to treasures in their own unique ways. I've been deeply fortunate to have fulfilled many of my life's dreams, two healthy and beautiful children who are now young adults, a world explored already more than I might have dreamed as a young man, a level of recognition for my life's work that is very gratifying.

Thinking back through iconic photographic life experience moments, the 12 year old boy in me is not well hidden, nor do I want him to be. I remember so clearly standing atop the launch tower at Pad 39B of the Kennedy Space Center the night before launch, looking across at the massive rocket  and spacecraft that was Columbia, or watching the sun rise within the stone circle at Stonehenge, being inside the inner chamber at the 5000 year old Newgrange, sitting in the House anteroom looking over blueprints of the new Mono Lake Visitors Center to be built by legislation we had just helped pass, or floating in front of an absolute wonderland of Gaia earthwork in an Antarctic berg. It is these moments that I treasure, even more than the photographs I made at the time.

Dawn, Stonehenge. 1996. Betterlight Scanning Back.
Newgrange. Ireland. 1996. Betterlight Scanning Back.

As these challenging economic times continue to stress so many of us, such gratitude is good to remember. At 56 years old, I can't help but look forward in time too, as I'm young enough to dream of many new adventures, and yet have so much work already accumulated as to not ever have to create any more raw material. That edge of always being driven to create anew, even amidst more work that can possibly be taken in, is an ongoing challenge. As we mature, supposedly, our ability to balance life's opportunities and challenges grows. Or so I've heard. Perhaps I'm avoiding maturing, or perhaps this fascination with natures wonders continue to such a deep degree that I'm still pulled to see so much.

Mono Basin Visitor's Center. Home of the At Mono Lake Exhibition

It is a challenge to hold onto the few critical opportunities and dreams while keeping the myriad of others minimally distracting. I do have so many projects underway, that as any one of them is completed it is sometimes hard to know exactly where to focus. Keeping income coming in certainly directs focus on the workshops and Newsletters, but there remains much unseen work and new more powerful manifestations of existing projects. Consulting on new product development remains a consistent interest and often stretches my mind and concepts of the possible in very good ways. Juggling too many balls, but never bored.

The idea of new manifestations of older work is deeply fascinating and are avenues I am actively exploring. This is particularly true where older projects are still vital but need a kick in the butt to be experienced. The new Mono Lake Folio is one of them. As some of these become available, I'll talk about them here.

Iceberg Grotto. Antarctica. 2009. Canon 1Ds III

The age old lament comes to mind that if there were only 2 of me I could get so much more done. The Holiday Season often heightens such feelings of being overwhelmed. Perhaps part of that elusive maturing I mentioned earlier is to have more realistic expectation of what I can accomplish. There is within me a perfectionist of unlimited aspirations that has to co-exist with the realist who finishes work, gets things out the door and makes real things. These two Steves do have some lively and spirited debates, but ultimately avoiding schizophrenia and concentrating on my loves usually works out.

An essay like this makes me dig out work people may have never seen. And that is thoroughly good. It is so easy to just keep making photographs and let them pile up in the archive unseen. We have to fight that instinct to just put them away and move onto the new. Challenging our means of making the work seen is one of the more important exercises we go through as artists and never really stops. It can be one of the hardest things we need to do.

Yosemite Falls and Cliffs. 2010. See our next Yosemite workshop, Yosemite in Winter February 4-6, 2012

So here's a few images from old archives, some current work and some thoughts wandering through my mind as we near the end of the year.  We are looking forward to what we have planned for 2012 and starting it off in Death Valley with some of you.  Happy Holidays.