The View From Here - October 2011

Sun Setting into Pacific with Green Flash. 2011.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Work

I love my work. The careful crafting of an image, from out in the world on the edge of experience, to the methodical but empowering printing of a finely crafted print. I love my work.

The satisfaction is partially tied up in the act of creation itself. In photography, where there was the passage of time and light, ephemeral and fleeting, we create an impression of a moment fixed, rendered by light, captured as photons to electrons, and held as electrical charges. Complex without a doubt, but the sheer elegance of holding the light of a moment remains.

I'm working these last few weeks on finishing the first set of portfolios from my Exquisite Earth series. With every new image explored, honing down the magic ten photographs for this first abstract set of recent work, there is something mind clearing in the resolve to select carefully, print with dedication and be satisfied with nothing less than reaching further than I thought possible.

Being Out There

Being out there in the real world, the natural world, is what working as a photographer is fundamentally about for me. Being in a state of mind where a flowing river is a miraculous entity, almost organism, seeming to flow endlessly and keep building. Being in a state of mind where every time you see the sun set into the ocean it is a wonder of celestial mechanics, weird refraction, and mind blowing scale and distance. Much less seeing a green flash. I never want to cease to being fascinated by the time machine that a starry night simply is. Photography out in the natural world is about all of this for me.

Being Back

The excitement of seeing my photographs as they offload, starting to examine my witness, enduring disappointments, but being amazed at those extraordinary few, that is the high of the post photographic experience for me.

Image processing, although critical is less exciting. It is where a scene held can be made really seen, understood, and balanced where needed. It is where tonal vision and memory can collide, idealized vision often stomp on magic, and where magic itself can be revealed.

For me image processing is a direct connection back to the scene. It is a processes of analyzing what can I do to decode and make visible what I saw with my eyes. The witnessed scene is the cherished starting point and for me the wonder of photography. After all, you have to appreciate the view for what it is, to want to render it for what is was. I find magic in that appreciation and rendering.

The Sacred Print

Laying the image onto paper can sometimes seem almost like a religious experience. Although imbued with somewhat less esoterica than a darkroom, the methodology of color management and print drivers hold no romance for me. But the subdued lighting of my print space, having the proper tools and paper, knowing the process from so many angles, I feel like I'm tracking solid ground, where I know how to make beauty, and hold it with grace and subtlety. I feel at home in such a place. Deeply at home.

My studio lab is such a physical place for me. And I believe it has been for scores of printing students over the last six years. It ia a place of refuge and craft, learning and aspirations fulfilled.

Of course, printing can't help but be frustrating too, and so as to not paint too rosy or romantic of a picture, it is also a place where challenged knowledge and aspiration can meet head-on––where sorting out understanding, technical glitches and evolving senses of problems and possibilities have to be resolved. And that is good.

 

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An Arts and Education Economy in Decline

Workshop enrollments are down for so many people and organizations I talk to. They tell similar stories of running small classes or cancellations. Print sales have collapsed for many. Many are giving up on the arts as careers. Many are trying to find any work they can as the challenges of this long recession mount.

I have no great insights here in this Autumn of 2011 and we are not an exception to those challenges. Of course, as self-employed artists we can't lay ourselves off, as has happened to so many. I know I have to stay true to why I started down this path, this vision of life, art and work all bound together, be willing to work even harder and keep restructuring diversified income streams in this shattered economy. We have basically adopted an internal "no cancellation" policy on workshops, even if it means running some smaller classes.

We are all in this together in the arts. We need to be imaginative, share resources, be very open to helping one and other, and stay focused on the rich lives we are able to live with art in our hearts.

It might be a good time to re-read Ted Orland and David Bayles Art and Fear.

I remain in love with my work.

If you've been thinking about a workshop, an original print or portfolio, give us a call. The gift of a workshop or the treasure of a beautiful print can be a great idea for the holidays coming up. We'll be doing gift card discounts, a holiday Open House, and perhaps even a new exhibition before the end of the year.

The View From Here - November 2011

Autumn Snow on Trees. Central Park. New York City. 2011

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Some discussions at a Ted Orland/David Bayles lecture this past weekend at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel got me thinking about printing and editing. Combined with our upcoming Image Editing class next weekend, it seemed a good point of departure for this months essay...

Images, Prints, Process and Craft

We've been writing with light onto our retina since vision evolved in our species. Memory is our storage media. Some of these images in our minds are precious, some necessary, some we would rather forget.

The impulse to make photographic images comes from those same instincts of valued memory. Photography is the conscious act of selectively committing images to external mechanical memory, imbued with a real desire to react and remember. Expressive or record, the ability to hold an image is as old as we are as a species and as instinctive. It just that for the last 170 years, we've had photography as a means.

Making and holding the external physical manifestation of those images, the print, is something else entirely. As photographers, we deal with the ephemeral, the changing light, the shutter tripped, the notion of the latent image, even the photographic negative to some degree. In so many ways, it has been the print that satisfies our notion of the image fixed in time and space.

Although these notions of a print as the final manifestation may change with new technology, and may have even already generationally changed, most of us still think of the print in our hands as the final version of the photographic image.

It is no wonder that the changing nature of making prints is simultaneously causing consternation and liberation. The labor and craft of a darkroom experience seems to have been supplanted by the mere pushing of a few buttons on a computer keyboard. Of course, if that were really the case, an explosion of unparalleled photographic beauty and inspiration would be overwhelming us all. And although outstanding work is being done, sadly no such explosion seems to be taking place.

Just as many of us know that exposing a piece of paper and timing it through a series of chemical-filled trays did not in and of itself make for a beautiful print, pushing Command P on the keyboard does not either. There is so much more to it than that.

The Command P Fallacy

Pushing the print button is a purely mechanical act commencing a sequence of actions between the software, the computer, and the printer. Carefully managed, this can produce consistent and predictable results. Much the same as feeding film into a processing machine with automatic prints coming out the other end.

More often than not however, the process is not carefully managed. That process and workflow can be taught and brought under control. But there is more to it than that. Just as pushing the saturation slider to the right does not result in automatic beauty, producing a piece of paper with ink on it does not make for automatic beauty. Judgment and skill is critical way before a print is executed and in examining and refining initial results.

Changing Metaphors and Control Points

The careful print was once an interaction between a photographer, a negative, an enlarger, a certain waving of hands, a timer, fresh chemical solutions, consistent tray rocking and lots of water. The pivot point of where the image is realized has now evolved.

The fixing of the moment in a camera onto a holding material, silver or silicon, remains the primary act. The development is now an interaction of a number of processes starting with a RAW interpreter, then is handed off to a pixel editor like Photoshop where the act of developing is now actually completed with careful tone, color and design balancing into a finely tuned light-based rendition of the original scene.

The printing process has largely become a set of software steps with a real mechanical/electrical device at the end, the printer. As has always been the case, the first prints in hand are further steps in a process that now doubles back into the editing software for the evaluation of the real print that then becomes a plan for fine tuning it further into a work of art. This iterative process has always been present in photographic printmaking and it still should be considered core to the process. Anything less accepts the initial result as final, even though rote, and translated into an entirely different form.

Image editing is now a combination of what was once film development and the front end of printmaking under the enlarger. The evaluation of the success of the print and the modification of the file now replaces different dodge and burn patterns and perhaps altered chemistry of development. There is much that is the same even though the tools have evolved considerably.

Learning How Beautiful a Print Can Be

The pity of it is that many people new to the photographic printmaking process do not have experience with traditional processes and often fail to recognize this iterative and evolutionary process as a natural part of the printing process. Furthermore, it seems few have real first-hand experience seeing absolutely gorgeous prints.

The seduction of the viewer is not just the image, it is the delivery. As a print on the wall, the sheer beauty of the print itself is no small part of the wonderful evocative reaction a truly beautiful print can illicit.

Go to galleries, see work. Find work you truly admire, learn from the image maker if you can, or someone who clearly has the craft and sensitivity to know what a print can be. Seek out mentors and educators who can truly communicate, not just the steps, but the passion. Ralph Putzker was one such person for me. Be satisfied with nothing less than the most beautiful print that you can imagine.

Perfectionism has its place in printmaking.

Our Professional Image Editing class this next weekend November 12-15 could be of real help, as would the next Fine Art Printing Hands-on class January 21-25, 2012. We also offer a Mentoring program to work with people individually in person or virtually.

email any essay comments

Steve Lecturing in the Canon Booth at PhotoPlus New York. 2011. (screen images stripped-in)

New Workshop Program

We are initiating a Friends and Couples workshop discount where two enrollments coming in at the same time get a 10% discount on the second enrollment and a referral discount on a future class. That combined with shared expenses can cut the cost of a workshop significantly. Email for discount

Information on the addiitonall Referral Credit on future workshops.

Occupy Wall Street Camp in the Snow. New York City. 2011.

Photo Journeys

While in New York last week, I wanted to visit the Occupy Wall Street camp and the Ground Zero Memorial across the street. The weather didn't cooperate, so the photographs I had in mind chatting with people didn't work out. However, the camp itself in the unseasonably early snow carried its own sense of determination.

The Ground Zero Memorial was also effected by bad weather and was closed due to falling ice by the time we got down there. Although disappointing, the cold wet weather had a way of punctuating both the plans and real experiences.

Warming up in a nearby cafe, many of the people from the camp were doing the same. The conversations, normal human interactions and controversies, sense of purpose and common frustration I hear most everywhere I go, made its own small sense of America at work, working things through, even on my very brief visit. This was deepened by my visit the next day to the National Archives in Washington DC and the chills I get looking at the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Man with Sign. Occupy Wall Street Camp. New York City. 2011.

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.

The View From Here - February 2012

Ubehebe Crater in Morning Shade. Death Valley. 2012.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

RAW Processors plus Photoshop

Much has been said in the last few years about the wonders of Adobe Lightroom and the obsolescence of Photoshop. Lightroom is remarkable and powerful. In many forums however, I remind people that for all of their power and conveniences, Adobe's Camera RAW, and Lightroom, Apple's Aperture, and PhaseOne's Capture One are after all RAW processors, not image editors in the same sense of Photoshop's flexibility and pixel by pixel precision. I believe that Photoshop remains an absolutely critical ingredient in image editing.

Many photographers are simply put off by the complexity of Photoshop, the seemingly endless array of options and elaborate workflows abounding on the internet. Others simply want the flexibility of RAW without all of the work and time that finishing the image in Photoshop implies. The cost differential is also real. I can understand all of these notions, but want to discuss a few of them here.

Photoshop need not be too much more complex than what your needs and knowledge desire. There certainly is no imperative that you do as much stuff to your photograph as possible just because you can. I teach a fairly straightforward path through Photoshop that needs little more in most cases than a few Adjustment Layers for some tone and color needs, some so called "sharpening" and some image tone-balance work for prints. I go through much of this in the Selections, Adjustment Layers, Tone and Color Workshop coming up next weekend February 11-12, 2012.

One thing I've always liked about Lightroom and RAW processors in general is that there is no encouragement of composited faking of photographs inherent in the software. I think this encourages a straight forward workflow which is where in my interest in photography primarily lies. The image database is also useful, but not for me as I use other approaches and simply have way too many photographs over too many decades for it to be as useful to me as it is for some. The Lightroom Virtual Copy is great, as well as some of the stylistic and annotation automation.

As I am not a regular Lightroom or Aperture user, there are no doubt other features that I haven't yet noticed. But even in a program I know well, like Photoshop, I am constantly noticing, or having things pointed out to me that I had not seen, either in development or post-release.

But for me, Photoshop's shipping companion Camera RAW is just simpler to use. I find the tabs in CameraRaw very direct and I work well with the interface. The tight integration between Adobe's browser Bridge, CameraRAW and Photoshop is a relationship I find very convenient and empowering.

When it comes to precision editing, the RAW processors are great for basic interpretation of the RAW data, but I would feel deeply limited if I didn't have Photoshop at my disposal for precise editing, even pixel by pixel for some picky issues. I would also feel very constrained in my ability to fine tune the image for printing. That is why I discourage people from printing through Lightroom or Aperture as that decision bypasses many of the finishing and balance options I have and need in Photoshop.

The non-destructive editing metaphor which many have picked up on from Lightroom, and is inherent in RAW processing, has been in place in Photoshop for a very long time. Photoshop's Layers feature was dramatically empowered with the introduction of Adjustment Layer editors a long time ago.

It is only with Photoshop's precision and iterative editing that I feel that I can really work an image into a fine print. Critical to my printmaking capabilities is the careful balancing of tone, density, nuances of color imbalance and careful attention to the optical illusions of "sharpening" and texture. Without these controls, I feel like I would be left in a more crude position than I was in a conventional darkroom in terms of careful interpretation of the image.

Many of the needed capabilities of image editing continue to grow in the RAW processors, as a new preview of Adobe's Camera RAW by product manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes demonstrates. Check it out.
Dune Shadows and Brush. Death Valley. 2012

Tidbits

A few things I would like you to keep in mind...

Virtual Education: Our Virtual Consulting and Mentoring Program is working well. Readers of this Newsletter can still get a 20% discount by mentioning this reference when you enroll.

Catch Steve Live: Steve will be speaking here and there around the country over the next few months, April in MA, June in NY, late June in Maine, early August in MI.

• The Fine Art of Photography Event
  Plymouth, MA (early April 2012)
• With a New Eye
  George Eastman House. Rochester, NY
  Thursday June 14, 2012. 6pm
• Maine Media Workshops Artists Lecture
  Rockport, ME
  June 26, 2012
  
• Summer Weekend of Photography and Digital Imaging
  Southwestern Michigan Council of Camera Clubs
  Hope College, Holland, MI
  Saturday August 4, 2012
  Workshop: 9-11am
  Aritist's Lecture: 7pm

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Three Recent Photographs

Aerial, Confluence of Missouri and Mississippi Rivers near St. Louis. 2011.

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The Enola Gay. Air and Space Museum Annex. 2011.

Gulls on Beach. 2011.

Here are A few little tweaks to an existing video using Photoshop CS6 Video Editing in conjunction with the power of Photoshop Adjustment Layers, Straightening, and Titles.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpuFLv83iuM&feature=plcp&context=C437bcffVDvjVQa1PpcFN2Mu0NpEKhynmW9qTScZgfZrZ3ZQRkjBE%3D

Printing Workshop This Weekend

Intermediate Fine Art Printing Workshop this weekend!  March 24th-25th. The class features one on one time with you transforming your images into beautiful prints. Still openings...so spread the word!  http://www.sjphoto.com/print_wkspHO-int_frameset.html

THE VIEW FROM HERE Staying With Making Art

Farallon Islands Mirage. Pacifica, California. 2012.

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson
Staying With Making Art

I've been immersed in printing for weeks now, first filling an important print order, then teaching a four day printing workshop helping my students shape their photographs onto paper. It feels tangible, substantial, real, like prints in hand always do. It felt like a good winter indoor activity as the calendar turns to plans for for spring outings.

Years ago we started the Featured Print Program to make one of my photographs available every month at a very reasonable price. But there were some other internal reasons for the program. To put it simply, it forced finished work out of me. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the day to day, in these days of economic stress even more so. It is easy to loose our ways as artists, to forget the making of artworks at our core. I've found it important to construct internal imperatives that force the work, so that the making of art with all of its passion, does not get routinely buried in the must do tasks of business maintenance. Having to make a new, finished print every month has helped force the issue.

Some who work in the arts can simply follow their art making as a daily routine. Some live very simply, some start off well to do, some retire into a life in the arts, some make a good living from their art. But we all need push sometimes, and most have plenty that can get in the way.

Many of us involved in the love of landscape end up in a very different daily routine. It takes time and effort to go out and make work. Keeping up with the offloading and sampling, much like developing and proofing of days now gone, is a very separate process. It doesn't feel like making art. It feels like a task. It can be joyful if the work is breaking exotic ground, but good solid seeing with workman-like dedication is harder sometimes to push through entropy.

New projects, new ideas, new territories, all contribute, but the hard core discipline to go at it everyday is rare, and important. On the days when it comes easy it is precious. On those days when it seems there are a thousand things in the way, the tasks get exaggerated and the work enticement of the art gets romanced, then easily tarnished by the fact that it may be merely good, without necessarily being monumental. Not to mention the fact that making art is hard work.

A finished print in hand can help serving as a sense of accomplishment. Much like a potter's finished firing, a print is the thing, the tangible manifestation that allows us to move to the next piece, whether a print or a journey. Sometimes just the getting out is enough to stir up the pot, break the routine, and entice more to be done. The weight of the unfinished is the killer of the yet to be imagined. Somehow a balance must be struck, so that the enticement of seduction keeps producing more, and that realization of the finished image as print becomes the path to moving on to the next.

Culvert and Grass. Pacifica, California. 2012.

Dancing Flyers. Pacifica. 2012.

Fundamentally, it is simply important to continue to work, to make art, seek the experience, persevere through the doldrums. Just do it, even if its just effort and not necessarily inspiration. It can come to you.

In the middle of writing this column, I forced myself out into a chilly afternoon, brought my dog along for a walk, and was then unexpectedly rewarded with a sky full of paragliders. I would not have guessed they would have been out in the cold air. They were magical.

 

New Photograph: Seal and Rocks. Pt. Lobos State Reserve. California. 2011.

Process, Craft and Media Informing an Audience
Our viewers come to understand what they are seeing in our artwork in many ways. One of the traditional vehicles of some comprehension was to understand the media and materials used in constructing the art work, oil on wood, pastels on board, cast bronze, collage, silk-screen, etc.

In this digital photographic age, we seemed to have moved away from this tradition. There seems to be a reluctance to call an inkjet print what it is, coining words like "giclee." Many hold desires to continue to call an artwork a photograph long after it has been changed into something quite different than the word photograph implies.

This comes up again and again,as it just did in my Fine Art Printing class last weekend, and it likely will continue to as long as people show images that appear to be photographic, that are in fact heavily "altered realities" and seem to want to engage their viewers with a wink and a nod.

There is a long tradition of deriving all sorts of artwork from photographs, making absolutely wild and wonderful new media. That continues to be the case, where all sort of possibilities can flow from a photograph in this digital age. What has changed is the implied deception now possible with digital technology, allowing drastic changes to what could be captured with light and lens. Even with heavy fabrication, some image makers still want to imply that the construct is what they saw and recorded. There would be no objection to informing their audience of the nature of what they are seeing if it were not for enjoying the reality shift and taking credit for the image as though it was seen rather than constructed. I'd rather they took credit for their Photoshop skills and helped their audience understand. 

This is all a little confusing, making remarkable scenes captured be suspected of fakery, and creating a world of unreal expectation that the lesser of us must just not be as talented because we aren't getting or seeing these remarkable scenes to photograph that never existed in the first place. It also creates a false expectation of what reality is, making the beautiful sunset before you somehow less, as it is not as wild as the one just seen on the "enhanced" postcards in the gift shop.

I believe this also breaks down a commitment to craft up front, in the camera. The old "fix it in post" adage comes to mind where an assumption is made that you'll make it good later. Instead of concentrating on holding a magical image, this line of thought encourages a view that the image can be cleaned-up and made magic in Photoshop. In lectures across the country, and various parts of the world, I continue to emphasize my conviction that the photograph is made in the camera, everything else is just trying to process it into revealing that magic.

Indulge yourself with any direction you please, but give the viewer a fair chance at understanding the context of what they are seeing. Photography does occupy a special place in our visual world in terms of its ability to hold a light scene. Inspiration runs deep, deception can be disturbing. Of course, part of art is, as Picasso once said "a lie that helps you see the truth." I'm deeply aware of the gray areas that abound here, the rich history of images derived from photographs, and that artistic freedom demands just that: freedom.

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A Few Quotes

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask ‘how’, while others of a more curious nature will ask ‘why’. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

Man Ray

The days you work are the best days.

Georgia O’Keeffe

My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.

Diane Arbus

This benefit of seeing... can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image... the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.

Dorothea Lange

The weight of the unfinished is a killer of the yet to be imagined.

Stephen Johnson, from this Newsletter

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Tidbits

A few things I would like you to keep in mind...

Virtual Education: Our Virtual Consulting and Mentoring Program is working well. Readers of this Newsletter can still get a 20% discount by mentioning this reference when you enroll.

Catch Steve Live: Steve will be speaking here and there around the country over the next few months, April in MA, June in NY, late June in Maine, early August in MI.

• The Fine Art of Photography Event
  Plymouth, MA
  April 12, 7pm
• With a New Eye
  George Eastman House. Rochester, NY
  Thursday June 14, 2012. 6pm
• Maine Media Workshops Artists Lecture
  Rockport, ME
  June 26, 2012
  
• Summer Weekend of Photography and Digital Imaging
  Southwestern Michigan Council of Camera Clubs
  Hope College, Holland, MI
  Saturday August 4, 2012
  Workshop: 9-11am
  Artist's Lecture: 7pm
• Keynote at PSA International Conference of Photography
  South San Francisco. September 20, 2012.