Next Step Alumni Exhibit – Indianapolis – 5/20 – 6/24

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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.
 

How to Layout and Design Your Book Like a Pro

How to Sequence and Design Your Next Book Like a Pro from Blurb Books on Vimeo.

“Pro photographer and book designer Mat Thorne presents an introduction to book design principals. This webinar covers an overview of typography, essentials of cover design, and laying out front & back matter. Mat also shares examples and offers inspiration from published photography books.”
Find more bookmaking resources here.
Learn more in my digital printing and digital photography workshops here.

New Book – Landscapes Within

 

Landscapes Within presents selected images highlighting John Paul Caponigro’s many collaborations with nature.
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The artist’s life’s work is a call to connection. It’s a call to connection with nature – the matrix from which we are born, which sustains us while we are alive, and to which we return when we die. It’s a call to incite conscientious creative interaction with our environment. It’s a call to connection with us – with ourselves, with each other, and with the larger world surrounding us.
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These images function simultaneously as windows onto exterior landscapes and mirrors into interior landscapes. Pointing beyond objectivity and subjectivity towards intersubjectivity, it reveals how deeply involved we are in our experiences of the world. This work presents a series of invitations to look, to look again, and to look at looking.”
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Landscapes Within is a catalog for a traveling exhibit.
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How to Sequence and Design Your Book Like a Pro

How to Sequence and Design Your Next Book Like a Pro from Blurb Books on Vimeo.

“Mat Thorne, pro photographer and design whiz, shares his secrets for great book design. Mat was the Art Director at the prestigious Maine Media Workshops and has designed books for some notable figures in contemporary photography. In this webinar, he walks you through book design and layout essentials and touches upon tips and tricks to help you with every aspect of bookmaking, from workflow to typography to final layout.”
Find more bookmaking resources here.
Learn more in my digital printing and digital photography workshops here.

Blurb's Bookify Plug-In For Lightroom


Now you can seamlessly flow the photos you edit in Lightroom 3 straight into your Blurb Bookify™ books with our new Lightroom plug-in.
Here’s how simple it is.
– Flow edited Lightroom images into Bookify™ (online).
– Choose your book’s layout and style from within Lightroom.
– Stream photo captions automatically into your book’s text boxes.
– Automatically capture file data for the images in your book.
Blurb’s BookSmart is also coming soon to Lightroom.
Find out more about Bookify.
Read more with my Bookmaking online resources.

Developing Personal Projects


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.

Kathy Beal – Desert Inspirations

Desert Inspirations: Journeys Without and Within
The Desert at Death Valley

For me, the desert has always been sacred. It’s an environment so stripped down that I can’t help but feel closer to spirit. All distractions fall away and I’m left to observe my surroundings and myself, from without to within.

Upon first glance the desert is, well, deserted, and many people never get past that concept. But the more time spent, the more I notice, and upon closer inspection, that the desert is a complex, beautiful, timeless, spiritual place.
For the images in this book, I’ve taken source material directly from the desert; from the stones underfoot at Death Valley Canyon, to the salt crystals at Badwater Basin, the colored rocks of Artist’s Palette, to the brush on the edges of the road at Stovepipe Wells.
In the images themselves, you may see remnants of the undulating Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, the craggy peaks of the Panamint Range, or the shadows of Zabriskie Point, but most of all, I hope that you’ll also be able to see and feel the spirit of the desert come alive in these images.
Kathy Beal
2010

The View Project – Tenneson Lecture Tonight in Naples

Joyce Tenneson lectures tonight at the Naples Museum of Art for The View Project exhibit on display Dec 18 – March 13.
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The View Project, conceived and organized by Joyce Tenneson, is an exploration of why certain places or photographs that have such a powerful effect on us as individuals. What is it – beyond surface beauty – that makes specific visual moments so indelible in our memory?
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The View Project is about photographs that mirror something in the photographer’s inner life – images that are personal and powerful, yet perhaps not clearly understood, even to the viewer/photographer” – Joyce Tenneson
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Photographs and comments by a wide array of photographers are included – John Paul Caponigro, Sean Kernan, Douglas Kirkland, George Lepp, Jack Resnicki, Rick Sammon, Joyce Tenneson, Jerry Uelsmann, and many more.
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Two of my alumni Kathy Beal and Stephen Starkman are included in the book and exhibit.
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Alumni Participate in The View Project


Alumni Kathy Beal and Stephen Starkman are included in Joyce Tenneson’s book and exhibit The View Project.
Photographs and comments by a wide array of  photographers are included – John Paul Caponigro, Sean Kernan, Douglas  Kirkland, George Lepp, Jack Resnicki, Rick Sammon, Joyce Tenneson, Jerry  Uelsmann, and many more.
The View Project, conceived and organized  by Joyce Tenneson, is an exploration of why certain places or  photographs that have such a powerful effect on us as individuals. What  is it – beyond surface beauty – that makes specific visual moments so  indelible in our memory?
“The View Project is about photographs that  mirror something in the  photographer’s inner life – images that are  personal and powerful, yet  perhaps not clearly understood, even to the  viewer/photographer” –  Joyce Tenneson