Our Antarctic alumni have produced some pretty impressive images and done some very fine things with them!

Find out about their images, projects, and stories in this series of posts.

Category: Alumni, antarctica
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Next Step Alumni 2011 by Daspit, Gill, Bailey, Beal, Caponigro |

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Renaissance Fine Art & Design Gallery and John Paul Caponigro’s Next Step Alumni present a beautiful collection of their work May 20 – June 24, 2011. You are cordially invited to view this diverse work at the Renaissance Fine Art & Design Gallery, One South Range Line Road Carmel, IN. The opening for the exhibit will be Friday, May 20 at 5 pm. Many alumni will be on hand to discuss their work personally with you.

The exhibit and book contain the work of 22 artists, all from John Paul’s Next Step Alumni group, who met the rigorous criteria for the exhibition: each artist produced a cohesive body of work, an artist’s statement, a biography, a book, and a website.

The work, as diverse as the individuals, includes journalism, editorial, still life, floral, nude, landscape and abstraction, and is bound together by their community, their creativity, and the fearlessness in their search of their individual next steps.

View the exhibit catalog above.

Find out more about the exhibit here.

Find individual member’s books here.

Find out more about my Next Step Alumni here.

 

Category: Alumni, Blurb, Books, Exhibit
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KenCarl_DeeplyRooted

Preview workshop alumni Ken Carl’s new book Deeply Rooted here.

Category: Alumni, Blurb, Books
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Adam Merrifield made the most of our recent workshop in Joshua Tree. He came away with more than a few hero shots and a set of related images to support them.

Read about his experiences and see his images on my Alumni blog.

Visit his website for more.

Category: Alumni, Workshops
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What are Iceland’s Focus on Nature workshops like?

View alumni work and read their stories on my blog.

Find out about my 2010 Iceland workshop here.

Find out about my Illuminating Creativity field workshops here.

Category: iceland, Travel, Workshops
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For over 10 years I’ve been mentoring a select group of individuals. Their progress has been thrilling to watch. It’s been a true privilege to be a part of their growth. July 7 their first Group Exhibit will be unveiled at the Maine Media Workshops. (link)

The members have produced a Group Blurb book to accompany the exhibit. The book includes images and statements from all 24 artists currently featured in the Group Exhibit.

You can preview and purchase the book here.

See the Next Step Exhibit at the Maine Media Workshops July 7 – 30.

Find out more about my workshops here.

Find individual member’s websites and Blurb books by clicking More.

Read more

Category: Alumni, Books, Exhibit
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I started a Facebook Group for my workshop and seminar alumni.
If you’re one of my alumni you can use this group to …

Network – Connect and stay in touch.
Learn – Exchange information.
Promote – Grow an audience for your projects.

I use Facebook to stay in touch with people. I let them know what I’m doing. I find out what they’re doing.

My hope is that this group will be useful to you to … Read more

Category: Alumni, Seminar, Workshops
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Olaf Willoughby is one of my workshop alumns with an amazing success story. It’s a testament to how one man with focus can succeed personally and make a significant contribution in a short time.

“It all started with the mesmerising impact of a photographic expedition with Michael Reichmann and John Paul Caponigro. Antarctica was even more dramatic than I had expected. Glowing pink light at sunset. The vivid blue depths of the ice. Drifting sculpted icebergs. It was almost like a fairytale.

But the reality is different. Antarctica is under threat. Apart from the impact of climate change; the accords on land exploitation, whaling and tourism are all on a course of seemingly irreversible change for the worse.

This contrast between splendour and sadness led me beyond a photographic portfolio to produce a 48 page colour book, a work of environmental advocacy. “Antarctica, A Sense of Place”. The images and text contrast the natural beauty with the dark detail of the dangers facing Antarctica.

I produced the book within 6 months of the trip but I was still only halfway. John Cage said he didn’t consider his music complete until someone had heard it and similarly I needed marketing to create awareness and demand.

The World Wildlife Fund endorsed both the book and the images, using them in its web and print marketing activity. They also distributed over 5000 copies of the ebook on CD to help raise money for environmental causes. I have also blogged for the International Polar Year and their web site has featured the images. Additionally an article on the trip appeared in the UK’s most popular photographic magazine, Amateur Photographer, who also gave the book a very favourable review. A selection of images were exhibited at the ‘White Worlds’ exhibition at Nature In Art in the UK, Summer 2008. Prints have also been sold to support corporate environmental marketing programmes.

Through the WWF I have managed to create a good level of awareness, far higher than I might have managed on my own. I am going again in Jan 09 with John Paul and am currently planning the second edition.

JP’s workshops bring together a wonderful collection of like minded artists, rich with different talents. There are many benefits but, for me, the one outstanding lesson has been the expansion of the way I ‘see’ images, both provoking me to push harder and allowing me greater freedom to express my vision.”

Olaf Willoughby is a photographer, writer and researcher who lives with his wife Monique in London, UK. Creator: the WIT test of individualists and team players used in market research. Author: photography & travel books and articles. Values: the need to connect, environmental advocacy. Interests: the rhythms of data, images and words fuse into a long term fascination with creativity and pattern detection.

Check out a recent feature on Ag magazine here.
Find Olaf’s book here.

Learn more at olafwilloughby.com.

Stay tuned for stories from our upcoming January 2009 voyage to Antarctica.

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Enjoy my Antarctica galleries, book, and statements.

Learn more about my workshops here.

Early registrants get discounts at home.

Members get discounts abroad.

Category: Alumni, Books, Workshops
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My 2009 workshop schedule is live. My field workshops emphasize creative approaches to exposure. My lab workshops emphasize creative approaches to post-processing. All of the exercises are designed to help you find and refine your unique authentic voice. There are four international destinations – Antarctica, South America, Namibia, and Iceland. There are two field workshop in Maine. All lab workshops are held in my private studio / gallery. Early registrants get 15% off. Space is limited.

Check out the full schedule here.

Check out specific workshops here.

Check out what past alumns have said about their experiences here.

See alumni work on this blog. Click the Alumni under Categories.

Category: Workshops
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Cheryl Medow creates wildlife composites. She’s attending the Fine Art of Digital Printing workshop (Caponigro and Holbert at Brooks sponsored by Epson). Yesterday, some of them looked like photocomposites (surreal) and some looked like paintings (graphic). Today, after a long discussion about the most successful components in separate images and the intent she wants to communicate, they all look like they’re made by the same person who has a cohesive message. Some of the keys to unlocking her style included keeping shadow and highlight detail extremely full (none of them pure black or white, sometimes with significant color). In addition to keeping luminosity contrast low, she did the same with hue contrast, glazing the different colors in her images with a single color. Both create a more softly modulated color palette. Cheryl had to reconsider what she had learned about traditional photographs to find her own personal style. Her first step was to find the words to describe the new qualities she found through exploration (trial and error) and now wanted to repeat. The next step is to ask why. She’s got a lot of ideas, but she’s still working on it. That’s great. That’s when work starts to get really interesting.

Check out Cheryl Medow’s work here.
Check out the Fine Art of Digital Printing workshops here.
Check out my Fine Digital Print workshop series here.

Category: Alumni, Printing, Workshops
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Ken Carl has attended every one of my Fall Foliage workshops. Over the years, he’s turned pro. Just when I think he’s done, he keeps coming back for more. After a long day of shooting past sunset at Pemaquid Point, Ken walked up the streets of Damariscotta while the rest of the group was being seated for dinner – and got some great shots. After dark? Hand held? ISO 8000? Really? And it’s actually useful, with surprisingly little noise by traditional standards. You’ve got to try it to believe it. The LCD on the back of the camera actually shows you more than you can see at that moment. Add a tripod to the equation and you’ll see even more. Today’s cameras can capture more than you can see at any one moment in time. With a little experimentation, you’ll find hours of new possibilities at the beginning and ends of the day. This weekend we tested shooting in many extreme lighting situations. Participants are seeing in new ways. I’m seeing in new ways. I recommend frequently testing new techniques to expand your repetoire and your vision.

Check out Ken Carl’s work here.

Check out my workshops here.

Category: Alumni, photography, Workshops
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Kevin Ames found that perfect wasn’t and imperfect was, while he was a special guest during a special session of my Fine Digital Print workshops this week. After years of doing top notch commercial photography, to get the most expressive results from a developing body of work, he first had to follow the lead of a very happy accident. Replicating the look and feel of a color crossed, soft focus, grainy original from pristine originals challenged him to be clear about every move he made. Ultimately, he found that rather than going back to lesser tools to distress his images he had much more flexibility and freedom when simulating the look using high quality originals. The results became perfectly imperfect. In the end, given the subject matter and his treatment of it, a perfectly lit, perfectly processed original was just too perfect – and far less emotive. It wasn’t easy to go in the opposite direction years of good habits had taken him. He had to give himself permission to do so – and was encouraged unanimously by the other participants to pursue his unconventional results. Even then, it took repeating the results with several images to get the final confirmation he needed. The results were undeniably strong.

Here’s what Kevin shared about his experience. “Breaking rules is part of being artistic. This odalisk was made during the very early days of digital portraiture with a three chip camera the when given enough light was really quite good. I broke the flash sync socket at the beginning of the shoot forcing me to use the
modeling lights in the soft box as the sole and dim source of illumination. That camera shot at ISO 40 and the exposures were quite long adding a lot of noise to the image.  During portfolio reviews at
John Paul’s Digital Print II workshop last spring it was the pick of my work by the group. I added it to my print portfolio for last week’s workshop and again it was the unanimous favorite of my submissions.
Understand that at the beginning of the workshop it was not the direction that I thought I wanted to follow. The breakthrough came when it was printed out to a large scale–forty by forty inches. Up
close it looks impressionistic. From ten feet it becomes painterly. Using the odalisque as a touchstone I am adding grain, noise and color washes to current high resolution work that is very sharp and well
lit. Printed larger than life the figures take on a whole new aspect. I can control the size of the grain in the subsequent photographs as part of the visual vocabulary. When the body of work is finished this
touchstone image will be the one that doesn’t truly fit. Breaking the rule of “noise free is better” has led me to seeing my work in a whole new way–all due to collaborating with the participants of the
workshop and of course John Paul’s guidance.”

Tell him what you think! Comment here!

Check out Kevin’s website here.

Check out my Fine Digital Print workshops here.

Category: Alumni, Printing, Special Guest, Workshops
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Justin Hartford perfected his black and white palette during a special session of my Fine Digital Print workshops this week. He’s printing his high contrast landscapes right to the ragged edge. Deep blacks with very faint traces of detail and very bright highlights with only traces of detail. He’s using those in localized planes not in the same object. This makes extreme dynamic range a visual code for space (recession/progression). This distinctive palette combined with a larger than classic scale gives his work a very contemporary look to a classic subject (the American southwest).

Tell him what you think! Comment here!

Check out my Fine Digital Print workshops here.

Category: Alumni, Printing, Workshops
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Charlotte Rush Bailey printed her African portraits at a variety of scales in a special session of my Fine Digital Print workshops this week. It took physically experiencing them with her own body to find out how they were working. She held them up to her face. When the portraits are larger than life they take on a more graphic quality evoking mass media presentations. When they’re life size the representational quality of them is heightened. When they’re small the intimate quality of them is emphasized. Scale had a big impact on her subject. Only certain subjects function this way. Making life-size or larger than life-sized representations of vistas (landscape, cityscape, seascape) is often impractical if not impossible.

To a limited degree you can preview scale by projecting an image before printing. But nothing is a substitute for actually experiencing the final print. In addition to evaluating technical aspects of a print, it’s important to identify associative qualities as well. They can make a big difference.

Tell her what you think! Comment here!

Check out my Fine Digital Print workshops here.

Category: Alumni, Printing, Workshops
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Don Ross knows that little things can make a big difference.  He brought many beautiful prints to a special session of my Fine Digital Print workshops this week. He was looking for “that extra something”. We identified one of the strongest images/prints that would give us a lot of information relevant to the rest of his body of work. Further resolving this one image would unlock the keys to how most of the other images need to be handled. How much saturation? How much contrast? How much sharpening? What kind of sharpening? Applied selectively? What paper? How big? He spent the better part of two days fine-tuning the image. At the end of it, he turned a good print into a great print. It was time well spent. “It’s a strange thing. When it comes to making really good work. It’s almost as if, little things make all the difference.”

Now that he knows how to resolve this one image, he knows how to resolve similar images. I’ll bet the next great print comes in a matter of hours. It was time really well spent.

Tell him what you think! Comment here!

Check out my Fine Digital Print workshops here.

Category: Alumni, Printing, Workshops
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