My free monthly desktop calendar for April features an image from Iceland.

Download it here.

Category: Calendar
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These images came together quickly – after a lot of gestation. I sketched the idea several years ago during a workshop with Focus On Nature. I made the shots last summer, scouting for another workshop with Ragnar th Sigurdsson and Arthur Meyerson. The first time I visited this location, (Skogafoss, Iceland) I took a few shots in less than half an hour, looking for major compositional variations. After looked at those shots and identified this idea, I shot very differently the next time, standing still for the better part of an hour and watching the water for significant variations within just a few compositions.

I wasn’t certain, but I suspected I’d want to add an accent to the abstract composition, deciding on smoke during processing. While I processed the files, I also sketched out a number of significant variations to test location of symmetry/assymetry, positive/negative space, light/dark, and location/angle/value of smoke. Doing this revealed more options than I had initially pre-visualized. And that means there are more related images to make. It also clarified a few outstanding ideas and connections to other images, some made and some still in development. That means I have some ideas about how they’ll can be integrated into existing projects and new things that will come out of them. I find the seeds of future work are usually planted in current work and if tended will yield more fruit.

I think about and plan series of images, often for quite some time before and over an extended period of time during their development. While I’m focussed, I look for surprises and modify my plans based on the new insights they introduce at every creative stage – planning, exposure, development, reflection, redevelopment, metamorphosis.

Find more images here.

Find out about my Iceland workshops here.

Category: iceland, Images
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Colorless black-and-white images are beautiful, but sometimes it’s nice to add a little bit of tone. By adding color to your b&w photos, you can enhance their expressive qualities.

These days, you can add color to your black-and-white digital images in virtually unlimited ways. Sure, the choices before you can be dizzying. Fortunately the techniques are simple, and the experimentation process for determining which tone qualities work with specific images is easy and fun. Here are five go-to ways for bringing color back into monochrome images in Adobe Photoshop.

1 Colorize With Hue/Saturation
2 Split Tone With Curves
3 Restore A Percentage Of Original Color
4 Add Color By Hand
5 Selectively Tone With Masks

For all the details visit PopPhoto.com.

Learn more with my black and white digital photography ebooks.

Category: Photoshop
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While guiding me on my Iceland photography workshop, Ragnar Th Sigurdsson rediscovered iPhone photography. He got obsessed with the App Hipstamatic, which produces photographs with terrific lo-mo effects. He started seeing differently. In addition to making many images with higher end photography equipment, he produced over 1000 new iPhone images in a few days.

We discussed the differences. Here are some of our thoughts.

The iPhone is smaller than most cameras. This makes it easier to position it in places you couldn’t place a DSLR. (Plus, the iPhone’s depth of field is very large and it can be focussed at very close range.)The iPhone’s small scale also changes interpersonal dynamics between the photographer and human subjects; people feel more at ease with what’s perceived as a more casual act, you can make contact with both eyes, and allowing the subject to see the picture while it’s being made (instead of after) provides a dynamic feedback loop of action and reaction or pose and repose.

The iPhone’s screen offers a large sharp preview and allows simultaneous comparison between an unaided view and the view as rendered by the device, in low light. In bright light, it’s often difficult to see image details on screen, producing a change in perception; broad structural relationships are seen without embellishment. (Low fidelity or distressed images emphasize this quality. When done well, they become perfectly imperfect. And the novel look generated elicits viewer responses which are markedly different than high fidelity renderings.)

Results are almost instantaneous. Images are processed in seconds or minutes, often on the spot, allowing a direct comparison and contrast between the scene and the image produced.

The practice of cell phone photography is significantly different enough that it encourages a great deal of experimentation. I recommend it to anyone who’s passionate about photography.

Cell phone photographs and the process of making them can be delightfully spontaneous.

Here’s a selection of Ragnar th Sigurdsson’s iPhone photographs made with the App Hipstamatic.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, iPhone
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We have a lot of fun in my workshops. Often, we use our iPhones to stimulate creativity. We try all sorts of creative experiments. This trip, one of the experiments I tried was creating cartoons of participants as superheroes or supervillains. It all started when our guide Ragnar Th. Sigurdsson put a luggage label on his chest with a fragile icon. I made a not sign on it with a Sharpee pen and he became Captain Unbreakable. Then I made an ironic cartoon of him with my iPhone. (Apps used are Toon Paint, Pic Grunger, and Label Box.) Everyone was laughing. Everyone wanted to play. We laughed our way through Iceland.

Because we were playing this game, we thought frequently about what text could/would accompany our images – titles, captions, essays and more. Frequently, a little levity can lead to useful creative insights.

Here are some of the images from these ongoing hijinks.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, iPhone, Workshops
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Frequently, old ideas and feelings surface in the midst of our creative process. Tracking our own fixations and chains of association can be both revealing and rewarding.

The paintings of Morris Graves made a big impression on me at an early age. Ever since, I been interested in photographs of dead animals, particularly birds. I even made some of my own.

I stumbled into this territory, once again, by chance, while photographing on the side of the road in Iceland. I quickly made this sketch with my iPhone. I knew what was happening while I was doing it, because I’d already done a lot of observation of my creative process and soul searching. I recommend you do the same for yourself. You’ll be richly rewarded with highly personal insights.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, Workshops
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We do lightning fast reviews of participant’s images in my digital photography workshops. We discuss what works and why and what doesn’t and why not. It’s wonderful to see how different the images are, made by individuals in the same situations using the same tools. A lot of learning happens by simply sharing images and spontaneous responses to them.

Here’s a sampling from participants in my 2011 Iceland workshop.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, Images, Workshops
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I often like to use props to make photographs. One of my favorite props to use is images. Photographing other images, in many cases, photographing other photographs, adds layers of complexity and offers many poetic opportunities. Images ask you to look and to look in certain ways. Two images ask you to look and look again and to look in multiple ways. I find this extremely stimulating. Making images with other images in them can be a fantastic creative wellspring.

Here’s a selection of images with postcards in them that I made during my 2011 Iceland workshop.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, Postcards, Workshops
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For a time, I swore off making photographs that were like postcards. I was looking for something else then. I was looking for my own unique approach to making images. My thinking was that if I took a vow of abstinence from what I knew I wasn’t looking for, I’d eventually find what I was looking for. Eventually, I did.

After some time, I reconsidered this aversion to making postcard-like images. I started making them, again. Making postcards is excellent practice. You have to be fairly competent to make good postcards. Postcards survey a subject, tell a story, offer human interest, present strong color, and are composed of relatively strong graphic structures. Sometimes, postcards make strong emotional appeals. When you think about it, that’s a pretty tall order.

Postcards try to do it all – and do it all competently. It’s interesting to note that to transcend postcards, all you need to do is emphasize one of these qualities over the others and do that one thing excellently. Making postcards is great practice. To make good postcards you have to understand them clearly. To transcend them, you have to know the difference between them and what you’re really looking for.

Below is a selection of iPhone postcards from my 2011 Iceland workshop.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, Postcards, Workshops
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One of the first things I do when I arrive at a new location is look at postcards made in the area. Postcards give me a quick survey of the highlights of the region and the classic visual approaches that many other photographers have used to make images there. Postcards help me decide where to go and what to look for. Postcards also present me with a great challenge – transcend this.  Postcards help me up my game.

Here’s a selection of postcards I collected during my 2011 Iceland workshop.

3 out of 6 of them are by Ragnar Th Sigurdsson.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland digital photography workshop here.

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Category: iceland, Postcards, Workshops
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Iceland. Seljalandsfoss. A waterfall you can walk behind. Sunset.

I’m getting lost in Iceland with a great group of Focus On Nature workshop participants this week.

Stay tuned for updates.

Find out about my 2012 Iceland workshop with Seth Resnick here.

Category: iceland
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The patterns found in a majority of my images were created by nature. Yet the surfaces in these pictures are not untouched by me. I have influenced them all: by selection of moment; by choice of perspective; by use of tool; by inclusion and exclusion with the picture frame; by further eliminations from and additions to what remains within the picture frame; by changing proportion; by orchestrating color; by creating symmetries; etc. I consider all of these opportunities to collaborate with the hand of nature.

With growing frequency, traces of my physical presence are displayed in my images. Sometimes I set things on fire. Sometimes, I push and pull smoke with my breath. Sometimes, I toss ash in the air. At other times, I create ripples in water. In this case, the circles and trails in the receding foam were created by placing my feet in the pulsing surf.

I prefer that the marks I make in nature remain ephemeral. In this way, the next person who experiences the same location I was in, is free to experience it in their own ways. If we’re lucky, we may even be able to compare our experiences. The only durable mark I leave in my process is the photograph itself.

The impulse to acknowledge my involvement in every moment and create something beautiful from it, has been growing stronger and stronger within me.

View / read more here.

Category: Images, Statements
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The vast majority of photographic images benefit from sharpening. Before you decide how and when to sharpen images, you need to decide why you’re sharpening them. The goal is to enhance detail rendition without producing distracting visual artifacts. You’ll find many conflicting philosophies and their accompanying strategies for sharpening images. The seemingly conflicting advice can be hard to reconcile.

Should you sharpen once or multiple times? Should you sharpen differently for different subjects? Should you sharpen differently for different sizes? Should you sharpen differently for different presentation materials or supplies? Should you view your files at 100% or 50% screen magnification?

Capture source, output device, substrate or presentation device, presentation size, subject and artistic intention all play a role in sharpening. The characteristics and solutions for many of these factors can be objectively defined for everyone; at least one of these factors—perhaps the most important, your artisti vision—only can be decided individually.

So, if sharpening is a complex subject, how do you simplify your sharpening workflow to one that’s practical without compromising quality?

Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe offer the best advice in their definitive volume on sharpening, Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw and Lightroom, which is highly recommended reading for every photographer. Instead of sharpening your images for you, they teach you how to sharpen.

Their philosophy of sharpening is the soundest in the industry. They recommend that images be sharpened in a progression of three stages: once for capture sharpening, a second time for creative sharpening, and a third and final time for output sharpening. The objectives and methods of each of these stages vary considerably. When mastered, the whole process can be streamlined to achieve sophisticated results in minimum time …

Read more on Digital Photo Pro.

Learn more in my digital printing and digital photography workshops here.

See more in my Iceland digital photography workshop.

Category: Sharpening
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As a fine artist, I advance my career with personal projects. Personal projects also create a clearer direction for and develop greater meaning in my life. My life would be unfulfilled without them

You don’t need to have a fine art career to benefit from personal projects. Many commercial photographers find personal projects reenergize them, add purpose to their lives and quite often lead to new assignments or whole new streams of income. Many amateurs, making images purely for the love of doing it, find greater satisfaction and personal growth through personal projects.

As an artist who mentors other artists in workshops and seminars, I’ve often been called to speak about the importance of personal projects; how to find them, start them, develop them, complete them, present them, and promote them.

Here’s an overview of what I share.

Personal Projects

Defining a project is one of the single best ways to develop your body of work. When you define a project you focus, set goals, set quotas, set timelines, create a useful structure for your images, collect accompanying materials, and polish the presentation of your efforts so that they will be well received.

Focusing your efforts into a project will help you produce a useful product. A project gives your work a definite, presentable structure. A finished project makes work more useful and accessible. Once your project is done, your work will have a significantly greater likelihood of seeing the light of day. Who knows, public acclaim may follow. Come what may, your satisfaction is guaranteed …

Read the rest on scottkelby.com.

Learn more in these related digital photography ebooks.

Develop your personal project in my digital photography workshops.


Category: Creativity
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I issue quantum editions of select images from my series Refraction; the viewer can choose how many and which versions they would like created for them.

To date most of these editions offer variations in the number and position of the lights within them. In this image, variations in states of the background are presented.

Changing states and different rates of change are important themes in all of my work.

I find reversal to be the most rewarding creative strategy. Whether it succeeds or fails, I always learn something valuable from trying it.

Read my ebooks Reversal and Breaking the Rules.

See more new 2011 images here, here, here, and here.

The exposures for this image were made in Iceland.
Learn about my Iceland digital photography workshops here.

Category: iceland, Images
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My series Refraction has challenged the way I think in so many ways from the moment the first image appeared.

The series is informed by modern physics and the nature of light. An observer influences what’s observed. The questions they ask and the way they ask them influences the answers they get. The universe is similar to a holograph in that information in one location can be found in another simultaneously. Two people in different positions can see the same rainbow as existing in different locations. Perception is relative, to some degree.

In this series, I found that multiple compositions that worked were possible and that it seemed appropriate for the first time to present them simultaneously. So I produce ‘quantum editions’ for this series. People purchasing a given print can choose both which and how many variations they want produced for them.

I’ve never seen this done before -  but that’s doesn’t dissuade me.

I like to innovate!

See more new 2011 images here, here, and here.
The exposures for this image were made in Iceland.
Learn about my Iceland digital photography workshops here.

Category: iceland, Images
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I often find the same compositional strategies, patterns, subjects and themes resurface in our work. Sometimes the ideas from two different images merge into a new one. I pay close attention to these visual bridges as they help me understand the both the similarities and differences between individual images and series.

In Inhalation 29 two series (Inhalation and Suffusion) cross-pollinate.
For more on this read my ebook Combination.

The exposures for this image were made in Iceland.
Learn about my Iceland digital photography workshops here.

Category: Images
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James Balog leads an historic photographic project the Extreme Ice Survey.
As a result surprising new data comes to light every year.
It’s a brilliant use of photography and contribution to our global community.

Find out about my Greenland workshop / cruise here.

Find out about my Antarctica workshop / project here.

Category: Photographers, TED, Video
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Seth Resnick and I are organizing a new Arctic (Iceland, Greenland, and Spitsbergen) digital photography workshop/cruise during the end of August or early September 2012. Our itinerary will be similar to this voyage but customized to maximize photographic opportunities. Geothermals, glaciers, fjiords, icebergs, whales, walrus, and polar bear are only a few of the trip’s highlights. Creativity, exposure, workflow, and post-processing are only a few of the topics presented.

Our Antarctica 2011 digital photography workshop sold out fast!

You can be among the first to reserve a space and get your choice of cabins by requesting to be placed on our pre-announce list.

Simply email info@johnpaulcaponigro.com.

Your contact information will remain confidential.

We’ll alert you with more information as soon as details become firm.

Stay tuned here for more.

Category: Greenland, Workshops
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I recently produced these two images Inhalation VA & B while completing the long-standing series.

I only use the same source materials in composites when I want there to be a strong connection between the separate images. I like to produce serial images, where a change in state is displayed between the separate frames. I like the sense of disappearance between these two frames. And I like that even though an empty space is left by the absence of the ice, the space left behind is still very full.

More than one picture is required to produce a body of work. The separate images within it reinforce each other. I sometimes find the same is true of individual images within a series.

When does a situation benefit from multiple images and serial images? It’s a guiding question I hold with me wherever I go.

The source images for this image were exposed at Jokulsarlon during my annual Iceland workshop.

Find out about my Iceland digital photography workshops here.

Find more images here.

Find my books here.

Category: Images
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