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Mary Virginia Swanson – Business of Fine Art Workshops / Seminars


Mary Virginia Swanson is simply the best in her field – educating photographers about the business of art. Her knowledge of the diverse markets available (gallery, stock, publishing, etc) to artists is exceptionally broad and deep. Most importantly, she’s a passionate advocate for artists; she cares deeply about their success.
Mary Virginia Swanson just announced a new workshop in her hometown Tucson, Arizona.
“This workshop, led by Mary Virginia Swanson, will provide participants with an overview of the fine art photography market and how one can effectively target galleries, collections and publishers most likely to respond to their work. An understanding of presenting work to industry professionals via competitions and portfolio review events, as well as the value of attending Gallery Expos will be discussed. Examples of successful promotional tools with be shared. Ms. Swanson will bring an extensive library of reference materials and examples of successful self-promotion examples to the Workshop to share with participants.”
How good is she? Alec soth said, “Taking a marketing workshop with Ms. Swanson was a life changing experience.” That’s high praise from a fast rising art star.
Find out about the workshop here.
Find out about Mary Virginia Swanson’s seminars here.
Find out about Mary Virginia Swanson here.
Check Mary Virginia Swanson’s blog often for a a wealth of useful information.
If you’ve attended an MVS event? Comment here!

Paul Caponigro – HMCP


“The Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography is privileged to exhibit a special group of Paul Caponigro’s photographs chosen by HMCP’s Director, Paul Turnbull, from Mr. Caponigro’s voluminous archives. Entitled, “Select Photographs: 1956 thru 2005″, the seventy-five silver gelatin prints can be seen in the museum’s Gallery 52 and Gallery 56 facilities, on the corner of 2nd Street and Avenue A, downtown Turners Falls, Massachusetts. The exhibition will hang from September 25 through December 14, 2008. The opening reception is on Saturday, October 11, 2008, from 1-5 pm with lecture at 7 pm.” Read More

Julieanne Kost – New ACR5 and Photoshop CS4 Resources


Check out Julieanne Kost’s web site for new ACR5 and Photoshop CS4 video and PDFs.

ADOBE TV The Complete Picture – Episode 08

Let Julieanne show you the power behind the new features in Camera Raw 5. Discover how to make non-destructive localized corrections as well as create special effects using the Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, Post Cropping Vignettes and more!

ADOBE TV The Complete Picture – Episode 07

Discover the new features in Adobe Bridge CS4 as Julieanne walks through the new features, tools, refined interface and integration with Photoshop.

PSCS4 What’s new in Bridge CS4 (PDF)

Learn everything there is to get you up to speed quickly in Bridge CS4.

PSCS4 What’s New in Camera Raw 5 (PDF)

Discover the unlimited possibilities with Camera Raw 5.

PSCS4 Photoshop CS4 – But Wait, There’s More! (PDF)

Master the important but often overlooked refinements and adjustments in Photoshop CS4.
Julianne’s been one of Adobe’s top evangelists for years and one of the industry’s best resources. Find out more about her, see her work, find (all previously published resources), her book, and her dvds here.
Read my conversation with Julianne here.

The Epson R1900 Prints My Workshop DVDs


The Epson R1900 really excels at high gloss printing, but it also does a great job printing CD and DVD labels. We print my workshop DVDs on an Epson R1900. Good color. Good resolution. Permanent. And it’s easy! Just load in the disc and print.
(Don’t confuse these DVDs with my Acme Educational DVDs. These DVDs are for my workshop alumni only and contain hundreds of digital files, exercises, actions, and discounts.)

Find out about the Epson R1900 here.

Read more about my workshop DVD/Downloads here.
Check out my workshops here.
Get my Acme Educational DVDs here.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II


The Canon EOS 5D Mark II heralds a new era in DSLRs.
Simply.
$2,699
21.1 mp
HD and SD video – up to 1920 x 1080 pixels at 30 fps
Full frame live preview
High ISO – 25,600
Low noise
Lightweight
“The highest level of image quality of any EOS Digital SLR released to date.”
Amazing!
Check out the specs on Canon’s website.
Check out PyxSylated here.
Check out Rob Galbraith here.
Check out DPReview here.
Canon’s press release follows.
Read More

Kevin Ames – Perfectly Imperfect


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.

Justin Hartford – Distinctive Printing Style


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.

Charlotte Rush Bailey – Appropriate Scale


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.

Don Ross – Little Things Can Make a Big Difference


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.