2007

The Master of Professional Studies Digital Photography department at the School of Visual Arts is hosting its first open to the public lecture on December 4, 2007 with renowned photographer, author, and educator Stephen Johnson. The lecture begins at 7:00 PM at the SVA Amphitheater, 209 East 23 Street, 3rd floor. The talk is sponsored by Canon’s Explorer of Light Program and is free and open to the public.

Before the lecture, the winners of the 2007 Real World Color Management Equipment Scholarship will be announced, and their winning prints will be shown. The scholarship is available to students enrolled in the Master of Professional Studies (MPS) in Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). The scholarship is sponsored by Epson America and MPS faculty member and co-author of Real World Color Management, Chris Murphy. I’m also very honored to have been asked to judge the competition.

The lecture explores the state of digital photography today, from being a photographer in the 21st century, to cutting edge cameras and software techniques, to engaging discourse on the history and future of digital photography. Stephen Johnson has developed and spurred-on cutting-edge techniques for producing and reproducing images of the highest quality. This lecture is firmly based in his core belief that photography is fundamentally a light capture medium, rather than a pixel manipulation party.

Using his new book with O’Reilly Media: Stephen Johnson: On Digital Photography as his organizational structure for the talk, topics will include: making art, empowerment, ethics in the digital age, and some aspects of the digital darkroom. His lectures include very high quality digital image examples with which he can hone in on “uniquely digital” techniques and fundamental breakthroughs in photography that digital improvements have provided but which many have yet to realize. The talk includes a history of electronic imaging and details the transformation of the darkroom to the computer taking us all way up to the future trends in digital photography.

Stephen’s book and posters will also be available for sale and signing. I’ve had a number of opportunities to see Stephen Johnson’s pigment-based inkjet prints “up-close and personal” over the years and they are spectacular.

I look forward to seeing some of our readers there!

For more information about Stephen Johnson, visit his website here. For more information about this lecture, visit this page on SVA’s website, and for more information about the MPS in Digital Photography Program at SVA, visit this page.

Links to books mentioned in article on Amazon.com:

Stephen Johnson: On Digital Photography
Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy and Fred Bunting