A cataloging I will go, a cataloging I will go. . .

I think someone needs to sit down and write a county song about cataloging digital photographs. I’m about half way through the images I have captures in 2007. But from time to time I must go back and catalog last year’s work. What was I doing in Nebraska in June of 2006?

digital IR

Digital IR

Digital for color and straight B&W is great, but what if you have a hankering for some good ol’ fashioned HIE (Kodak High Speed Infrared Film)? I tried to keep the B&W film processing going just for HIE, but I was less and less pleased with my results.

With the help of lifepixel.com, the age of digital IR is here. The adventure begins again.

Digital Photo Classes at CoCOA!

Beginner's Class: The Nuts and Bolts of Digital Photography
Dates and class schedule:
• Sept 4 Class Intro, the beginnings of digital vocabulary, and connecting your camera to your computer to upload photos, getting familiar with your camera.
• Sept 18 Working with image files, e-mailing photos, resolution, backing up your photos, long term storage, software and operating systems
• Oct 2 Organizing your photos and printing
• Oct 16 Digital Editing
• Oct 30 More digital editing
• Nov 13 Making postcards and Business cards
• Nov 27 Presenting you photos to the world!
Class Description This is a beginning class for those who would like to get more from their digital camera. We will start at the beginning and work as a group to learn the basics of photography in our digital age. Hopefully by the end of the class, you will be able to find your photos on your computer, know the basics of making them look a whole lot better, and have ideas on unique ways you can show your photos. We will move together as a group, spending more time where needed, and less where it's not. The above class schedule shows the approximate dates we will get to each subject.
Requirements: All demos assignments and so on will be presented in Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. You will probably be okay with Elements 4.0. But all image editing software is different, and the instructor most probably will not be able to help with other software such a photo-paint, and so on. You will need access to your own computer. A laptop computer that will run Elements that you can bring to class will be a big benefit.
Intermediate Class: Creative Digital Photography
Date and schedule:
Sept 11 Class Intro and Digital Exposure and sensor cleaning
Sept 25 RAW
Oct 9 White Balance
Oct 23 Digital Workflow
Nov 6 DAM! Digital Asset Management
Dec 4 Presenting Photography in the digital age
Dec 18 Color management
Class Description There was a time, not to long ago, when Digital made for simpler lives for us photographers. That period was short lived, and now gone. There is so much to know these days. And some things you think you can ignore... you might want to think again. Each of these classes is meant to be a quick but through introduction to a broad topic. Hopefully each class will raise a lot of questions about the subject, and make you want to learn more.
Class requirements: You will need your digital slr and a laptop computer with Adobe Photoshop CS2 (or later) that you can bring to class.
Special Class: Photography for people who paint
Date: Tuesday December 11, 6 to 9 pm
This is a special class for people who paint...and own a digital camera. I will be covering photography techniques you can use to improve your painting, such as: making digital submissions, perspective correction, moving and deleting objects, cleaning up skin tones, and much more!
Class Information
Pricing: I am keeping the costs of these classes as low as possible. One of the main reason they are lower than other like classes as you will have to bring your own equipment. You may pay by the month, or for the entire class and receive a small discount. Payment is due at class, before the class begins. The fee for either class is: $200, or $30 per session ($35 for drop ins).


Call Steve at 970.221.0363 or email steve.sjaphoto@gmail.com to register. There is a maximum of 10 and a minimum for 4 for each class.

Question of the Day

What do you do about a two-headed snow space alien?

An Old Photographer’s Joke

“Hey, how was your trip?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t got my pictures back from the lab!”

I’ve been back from Death Valley National Park for several weeks now, but am only beginning to look at my photographs. Yes, 90% of what I shot was digital. But I shot 11 Giggle bytes of digital. I have been implementing my DAM system, so that these new photos will be calalogable and findable. If you don’t know DAM, I suggest visiting the web site:

Http://theDAMbook.com

There was a time, a short time, where it seemed digital was making the photographer’s life easier. I think that’s over. So many photos coming in. Same few prints going out. And, we have to make them perfect now, because we can.

Anyway, here is my first Death Valley photograph. I like this one, and hope it goes places.

Tahiti Dreamin’

One of the big disadvantages of shooting digital instead of slides is. . .you don’t have those slides to work with. When I was shooting mostly 35 mm slide film (which was not that long ago), I found it nice and easy to make Polaroid transfers. I’ve always enjoyed the texture and mood the Polaroids gave me. Tahiti Dreamin’ is one of the last transfers I did about a year ago. I look at this image and hope Polaroid 669 is still available, and want to go out and shoot some slides! This image was just accepted at the Alternatives show at the FLASH/Working With Artists Gallery in Lakewood. The show opens April 6th.

Botanical Illumination

There was a time before photography. Really! I know it’s hard to imagine, but there was. What do you do, then, if you are a botanist, and have found a new plant to tell the world about? You need an illustrator. Thus, the amazing world of Botanical Illustration was born, and it is still flourishing today. In fact, one of the very few educational programs in the world is located here in Colorado at the Denver Botanic Gardens (botanicgardens.org).

Why is the art of Botanical Illustration still flourishing today? A drawing can sometimes (if I were not a photographer I would have said oftentimes) do a better job than a photo in representing a plant. The plant is reproduced in it’s entirety without random effects of light and potential damage from obtaining the specimen. And, the drawings are always beautiful!

Currently, I am taking a class at the Botanic Gardens on Botanical Illumination. This technique, first perfected by the folks who would copy manuscripts by hand, adds metallic ink (mostly gold) to illustrations. The result is beautiful art with bright effects.

The above drawing is far from complete—I still need to add the color and gold lettering. But art is not made in a day. I hope to post the finished work soon.

I’m just back from Death Valley National Park will loads of new photos. It’s only mid-March, and the daily high temperatures are already breaking the 100 degree mark. Does this foretell what will happen to this summer’s temperatures here at the eastern edge of the Rockies?

A Visit to the Santa Fe Workshops

I had the good fortune to spend last week at the Santa Fe Workshops in the magical city of Santa Fe. The class I tackled was entitled: Digital Photography: From RAW Files to Archive. And, it was a DAM useful class!!

With digital photography, I find it easy to take to many photographs. I took about 5000 last year. But how do you organize these 5000 files in such a way in such a way I can find the image I need? How can I find a file for an image I took 5 years ago? This is a DAM problem!

DAM stands for Digital Asset Management, and with a nifty program called iView Media Pro, one can learn how to catalog files into useful sets, have the files ready for immediate use, and make them easy to backup and archive. The workshop instructor was Peter Krough, and he is the guru of DAM. His book, The DAM Book, is essential reading for the serious photographer. We, as photographers, have no excuse not to be organized anymore. All I need now is time to implement Peter’s DAM principles into my own digital workflow!

Nice to be in the NCAA national show again!

My pastel, Gauguin’s bamboo, has been accepted into the Northern Colorado Artist’s Association (NCAA) national show! The show runs from April 7 to through May 11th, 2007, at the Lincoln Center in Fort Collins. This is usually a very nice show, and overly hard to get into (for me it’s the 2nd time in 5 years). Now, I need to get busy building a nice frame!

Trying to keep those shadows clean in pastel

Currently I am working on this painting in pastel. I do very much enjoy working with old adobe walls, and have several well regarded black and white prints of such walls in my portfolio. This one is a bit of a challenge I am finding, as the shadows are very important, and I am not sure how to do this with this medium. I do not want the walls to begin to look dirty (if they are not doing so already). I guess I need to work with sharper edges. Best get back to work!

The photography classes I had scheduled starting this month have been canceled. I did not get enough folks to sign up. I plan to try again in the fall, and will hope to get after promoting the classes sooner. . . .

Wildflower Hearts Photography Show is up and looks great!

My friend Tom Frederick (www.tomasrobertfrederick.com) and I have our photography show up. It’s like a breath of spring in this long cold winter we’re having. Please come by and see the show and get a preview of spring!

Wow! A chance to finally work on a photograph!

Amongst the madness of getting ready The Wild Flower Hearts Photography show (please see an earlier post), filling out applications for juried shows, starting to plan for classes, and all the other stuff you have to do to keep on truckin’ in this crazy world, I finally had a chance to work on a photo.

This photo is almost done. It was taken at the Mission San Diego last June. I am primarily working in black-and-white these days, and the final print is toned while printed with the quadtone rip (quadtonerip.com). I need to figure out how to reproduce the beautiful tones the rip produces for viewing on the screen.

How Photography and the Internet can Help Tell a Story

Our big media outlets these days are constantly full of stories and pictures from the mess in Iraq. I still can’t get out of my mind the photos of the people of New Orleans after Katrina, wondering when and where “their” government was. These were big stories, but there are plenty of smaller stories as well, many deserving to be brought forth before the general public’s eyes.

One big story, much closer to my home is the struggle of members of the Navajo Nation in North East Arizona and North West New Mexico against their tribal government and the big coal companies. With the blessings of the tribal government, “big coal” wants to strip mine a seam of coal from Ship Rock to Gallup. Yes, the big companies say the new coal plant will be the cleanest ever. But does that statement cover not only CO2 pollution and heavy metal pollution which comes from burning coal as well? And, what right do we, as electricity consumers, to demand this large segment of the Navajo reservation be dug up, sacred sites be sacrificed, the Dine continuing their traditional lifestyles loose their homes, just so we can burn electricity?

I urge you to visit the website http://www.questionofpower.org to meet the people who have been devastated by the existing power plants, and learn what may happen if a third is built. My friend Carlan Tapp is using his photographic artistry to bring the lives and voices of the affected people to you. The photographs are beautiful, but the story is not. I hope we can turn this story around!

There is more information at the Living on Earth website, at: http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00002&segmentID=6

Wildflower Hearts Photography Show in February.

Back in late September, Tom Frederick (www.thomasrobertfrederick.com) and I had the idea of doing a show together. February sounded good, a long way off. I thought it wouldn’t be that much work for me, as most of what I’d put in the show I’d already printed and framed. But there is always work to do, plans to make. Do the invitations. Reprint the one I sold. And decided if I want to get one of those hip new stretched canvas glitches—I mean zheee---clays that might be a hot seller. And, we’ll have to hand the show to, do our demos, and sit the gallery for a month. Guess I better get to work, as I need to get files ready for the canvas thingies. Hope they’re not just a gimmick!

New Digital Photo Classes coming February!

I’ve started a new web site called fortcollinsphotoclasses.org where I have listed my class offering this winter and spring. More classes may be offered if requested, so please check the web site periodically. Your comments on what classes you would like to see are always welcome.

Well, it’s been snowy around Fort Collins. We’re having a winter like the ones we used to have when I first came here back in the 1970s. Nice to see snow (I used my snow shovel once last year) again, but the upcoming below zero weather is, well, something I no long look forward to. The price of getting old, I guess.

I got to get the promotion done for the classes, and my upcoming joint show, Wild Flower Hearts done, so I can get back to doing some art!