Single-Serving Photo

It’s not too late to register for my one-day photowalk workshop in Cape Cod tomorrow (Saturday). My pal Chris Blake and I will be in Cape Cod all day long, from dawn till… Well, as late as there are still people with us!

Explore, learn, meet new people, what better way to spend a Saturday? Register right now on our website!

There is plenty of space available, but now that I’ve announced it to all 12 of you who still read my blog, all bets are off.

Some of you may be thinking that the weather doesn’t look too good. That depends on how you look at it. The last time Chris and I were in the Cape it was pretty gloomy, which led to some incredible light along the waterfront. Check out the smooth, diffuse glow on this one:

If the humidity level remains high, there could be some great opportunities for after-dark lighthouse photographs in the fog, either before dawn at Chatham Light where we’ll begin our journey, or after sunset at Race Point or Nauset lights.

I’m excited to get out there and meet some of you folks, I hope you can make it! Read more and register right here.

It’s been quite a hiatus for me and for Single-Serving Photo. My last post here was back in February, and so much has happened since then! First of all, if you’re reading this, thank you for not deleting me from your feed reader or taking me off of your bookmarks list. I know I haven’t been the chatterbox I once was, but I don’t like to post link wrap-ups and two-sentence thought fragments just for the sake of putting something online.

Anyway, on with the show!

First things first, JPG Magazine is back! After being effectively shut down due to budget and business problems, JPG has resuscitated itself mostly thanks to the outpouring of support from its community and highly visible demonstrations such as savejpg.com which presumably gave investors the confidence they needed to pump more necessary capital into the parent company of JPG Magazine, 8020 Media.

Now that JPG has risen from the dead, maybe I’ll actually contribute something! You should, too.

Second, my little hands-on instruction business, ArtPhotoWorkshops.com is going to be doing a series of low-cost, short “photo-walk” workshops in the New England area. Starting with Cape Cod in a week and then Boston after that, I plan to take us out to Newport, Rhode Island, possibly Northampton, Massachusetts, maybe even out to the Quabbin Reservoir for the nature lovers.

If there are places you’d like to explore and learn technique, composition, and mechanics of photography, leave a comment and I’ll see if we can visit them!

I just returned from Las Vegas and Death Valley on a workshop, no photos to show yet, but I think it was an extremely successful trip. Death Valley is by far one of America’s most impressive sights, I recommend seeing it once in your life (or if you’re crazy like me, twice). Las Vegas is a very challenging location to photograph, but I think I was able to snag at least a small number of cool images in between games of craps and tall beers!

There are a few other cool things I want to share, so stay tuned for kite photography, painting with a car, and my opinions on both.

Perhaps I sound a little bit like a shady salesman with a headline like that, but it would be incorrect to think that I perform the services I do with only myself in mind. Nay, this blog and my photography workshops exist only to serve you, my gentle readers, which is why I come to you today with this update.

First, something I’ve been thinking about lately, which I had designs to write an entire post about but that now strikes me as somewhat too unfinished a thought to deserve such treatment. It has to do with a growing trend among digital photographers that the quality of your work and of your prints can be judged if not exclusively at least primarily by some group of statistics.

First of all art has never been judged based on numbers. The moment that art is judged not for its certain craft, its inspiration, content, execution, and the ways in which it moves you is when it ceases to be art and takes on a new life as the subject of technical research. I grant that technical research has made possible many of the great innovations in the craft of photography that have opened doors for artists and made possible wonderful works. Those works, however, were to be judged on their own merits, divorced from the particulars of their creation.

I see this jaded math-lust happen the most in the process of printing digital images. Not only do you have to be a board-certified chemist to understand what inks are actually made out of these days, but debates rage among the upper echelons of fine art print makers regarding whether 9^12 bits per million in 17.2 square decileters of molar protein creates a quantization effect of 9.8383-repeating magnitude using 4-picoliter ink spots on granite tile. Or some such nonsense.

As important as some measurements, such as resolution, may be in print making, the fact remains that very well printed photographs can still suck, and very poorly printed photographs can change your life. The trick is to understand all of this mumbo-jumbo only to the degree necessary to achieve the results that make you happy, that satisfy your needs as an artist.

That may have sounded like a bit of a rant…

Edit: Perhaps it wasn’t as much of a rant as I thought at first. Here is a really cool article by Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer about over-reliance on measurements when evaluating the performance (specifically) of equipment. He also goes on to criticize people who use charts and graphs to make meaningless, subjective data appear meaningful and objective. If only it wasn’t true! Good stuff, Mike.

Ranting notwithstanding, it’s still true that I’m teaching a digital printing workshop in February. If you want to learn how to soft-proof, color manage, and output your own images at a high-end digital lab, this is your big chance. I’ll be teaching alongside Chris Blake, back at Calypso Imaging in Santa Cruz, CA; read about the workshop and sign up here. You will get to print proof images and then make final prints during the workshop, so everyone gets stuff to take home with them. It’s only $599; you won’t find a better deal than that anywhere.

There are some other exciting learning opportunities right around the corner, too, including our workshop in Cape Cod in September, a fall foliage workshop in cooperation with Dan Heller in Vermont in October, and then later on that same month, our City on the Hill Boston workshop. That should be enough to keep you busy before the holidays, right? It’s sure going to keep me busy, I can tell you that much.

Of course if you have any ideas for workshops, questions, comments, rude gestures… Leave a comment!

Here are some ideas for New Year’s resolutions to refresh and enliven your photography.

Try something NEW

Experiment with unfamiliar genres. If you normally shoot fine art landscapes, try still life. If you are a sports shooter who is interested in making artistic images, try landscapes. Get outside of your “comfort zone” and attempt something fresh.

Upgrade to a digital SLR

I know, this isn’t really a philosophical “turn over a new leaf” resolution, but maybe this year is the year to step up to a digital SLR camera and really take your photography to the next level. Here are my digital SLR recommendations for first-time owners in 2008:

• Canon Digital Rebel XTi (about $530 from B&H, camera body only)
• Nikon D40 (about $475 from B&H, with 18-55mm lens)
• Nikon D80 (about $780 from B&H, camera body only)

(In in the interest of full disclosure, I do get a small kickback from B&H if you order any of those products through the links on this page. So, please do!)

The Nikon D40 is a solid 6.1 megapixel SLR that B&H sells in three different kits, one with the 18-55mm lens, one with the 18-135mm lens, and one with both the 18-55mm lens as well as 55-200mm lens. The D40 is a solidly built camera with all the features one would need to start learning about the fundamentals of photography and is no slouch in image quality, either. The D40 comes in your choice of a black or silver plastic body (internals and lens mounts are, of course, made of metal).

A step up in price from the Nikon D40 is the Canon Digital Rebel XTi (or 400D for those not in the States). Aside from the bonus of being able to choose from any of Canon’s world-class EF lenses, you get a solid 10.1 megapixel sensor and essentially the same software features (save for a few) that Canon’s higher-end cameras have. The Rebel XTi comes in your choice of a silver or black plastic body (internals and lens mounts are, as above, made of metal).

Yet more expensive is the Nikon D80, a true workhorse in this price range, and a camera that will carry you years into the future with its exceptional array of features and its high image quality. Also 10 megapixels, what the D80 brings to the table is not higher resolution, but simply better features.

I encourage anyone interested in getting into the SLR marketplace to carefully scrutinize Digital Photography Review, the award-winning camera review site for feature comparisons and informed opinions.

Take a class

PC World suggests, in an article titled New Year’s Resolutions, that taking a class is a fun and exciting way to turn over a new leaf with your digital camera.

Photojojo also suggested taking a class in their recent post 19 New Year’s Photo Resolutions — Goodbye 2007, Hello Two Thousand and Awesome!.

Coincidentally I will be an instructor on several art photography workshops this coming year, first in Death Valley National Park (California), then Chicago, of course the Great Smoky Mountains (Tennessee/North Carolina), and finally Acadia National Park in Maine. I’m also teaching a beginning-level three-day course on digital workflow out in Santa Cruz, California (a great place to be no matter what the season) in July.

There are plenty of spots available in all workshops at the moment, so don’t hesitate to reserve yours now!

Read all about the workshops and register on our website, Art Photo Workshops.

Take more photographs

The best and fastest way to get better at photography is to take more photographs. I have personally resolved to make 2008 a very productive year of photography and to be more diligent in my experimentation (which was the purpose for creating this blog in the first place those years ago).

So from me to you, my wonderful readers, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Not that it wasn’t official before, but now there is a real website for the workshops I’m doing with my colleague in the coming months.

A photography workshop, for anyone not “in the know,” is basically where you can meet other photographers, either hobbyists or working professionals, and together learn about photography techniques in a hands-on and very one-on-one environment. The workshop format is widely used and very popular for exactly those reasons. It’s great for learning, great for networking, and is usually a very good time besides.

Right now, Death Valley in April 2008 is the only workshop up on the site, but we are thinking about doing some of these (I’d love it if anyone has thoughts about these or their own suggestions):

• Cape Cod, early winter (for late November, ’07)
• Boston or New York City urban/street (probably not till spring ’08 when the weather gets nicer)
• Acadia National Park in Maine, either winter ’07 or summer ’08… Or both!

Those locations are more local to us, so we’d be able to do them at a much lower cost, maybe $199 per person for a day or two, depending (not all-inclusive, though, of course).

Leave a comment if you have ideas for workshops you’d like to see or any other thoughts, and please do keep an eye on the website for upcoming sessions!