Publication Date: Friday Feb 6, 1998

New frontiers

It's early one April morning in 1995, and still quite cold, as Stephen Johnson sets up his equipment at the breathtakingly beautiful Arches National Park in Utah. Although it's no longer completely dark, the sun has yet to rise and the land is still bathed in shadow.

It's a difficult time for photographing scenery, especially for capturing nature's real colors and finding definition in the image. Once this regular film stock is processed, this predawn lighting often translates to a blur of blue surrounding the objects.

Johnson flips on his computer and lines up his shot with his digital camera. The result is impressive. The color contrasts are sharp and the definition of the bushes, trees and rocks, both in the forefront and toward the back of the image, is startlingly clear. There is absolutely no indication that the picture was taken while the image was covered in shade.

As a digital photographer, Johnson doesn't have to worry about the pitfalls of shooting in the predawn light. Nor does he have to sweat such common photographic troubles as shooting into shadows or battling contrasting lighting in his images.

"I don't have to live with those limitations anymore because I can see beyond what film can record," said Johnson, 42.

That statement may horrify traditionalists, but it's one that this Pacifica-based photographer stands firmly behind. A trip to the Photographer's Gallery in Palo Alto, backs up his claim even further. Now through Feb. 20, Johnson is displaying 17 of his uncommonly clear and crisp images at that downtown gallery.

Many of the images at the Photographer's Gallery are from Johnson's major new endeavor, "With A New Eye," an all-digital photographic series on our national parks. And, if you see one you like--maybe the black and white Half Dome shot from Yosemite Valley, for example--you can take the picture home. The digital works are in the $1,200 to $1,500 range.

Johnson is one of the better-known digital photographers, having been prominently featured in Life magazine and on the Discovery Channel, but, as one would suspect, he began his career using regular film stock.

The Merced-grown Johnson received his bachelor's and master's of arts degrees from San Francisco State University, where he focused his studies on photography. He has been doing large-format photography since the mid-70s but it was in the mid-80s that his interest changed somewhat. During this time, he became involved in a project called "Great Central Valley: California's Heartland," which integrated computer graphics and video. Already intrigued with the possibilities technology presented to his art form, it didn't take long for him to get hooked once he discovered the digital camera. Since then, he has risen to the forefront as a pioneer in the realm of digital landscape photography.

In fashioning his art work, Johnson uses a regular film camera, only he does not put film in it. Instead, he attaches a digital sensor, which reads the light coming in through the lens and translates this image into electric signals, which are then transferred to a laptop computer.

The laptop computer works essentially as a darkroom, allowing Johnson the huge advantage of being able to quickly see the image on the screen. Usually, photographers have to wait until the film is processed before they know how the pictures came out. Not Johnson. By looking at his computer screen, he can immediately tell whether the aperture needs changing, the color balance needs adjusting or, simply, a stick is in the way of the shot. And--this is a very important aspect for a landscape photographer--Johnson can make the needed corrections on site, long before he has returned to the world of darkrooms.

"It's the way we always wished it could be, but never dreamed it would be," he said with noticeable enthusiasm. "That's great. It feels great."

The images are then stored on CD ROM and can be accessed easily back at his workshop, which, as ABC newsman Morton Dean described, "resembles an outpost in cyberspace more than a photographer's studio."

In the Discovery Channel feature on Johnson, Dean accentuated a number of the positives associated with digital photography. For one, the digital sensor is more susceptible to light than any film available and has a wider variety of colors. Also, the digital camera allows the photographer to capture panoramic shots, such as Johnson has done with the Grand Canyon and the Golden Gate Bridge area.

Furthermore, with the computer, you can zoom in on any point in the picture and gain close-ups of incredible detail.

"The world according to Johnson has exquisite subtleties and nuances that film rarely captures," Dean reported.

Along the same line, entire images can be made quite large and still retain their same high clarity. The largest photo in the Photographer's Gallery exhibit is 55 inches, but Johnson has gone as far as 27 feet. And, Johnson says, the possibility exists to go further.

"The limitation right now is the length of the roll of paper" and the strain on the printer, he said. "It's just a huge amount of data to pass through (a printer)."

Now the down side: Digital photography makes for a pricey hobby. If you are starting from scratch, with no photography equipment or appropriate computer technology, it will cost you at least $30,000 to buy all the proper tools. If you have the right camera and computer, the price will obviously be less. Still, the camera's digital insert, alone, runs about $18,000.

Another negative is that the necessary exposure time is much longer than that needed for regular film stock. Johnson needs 2 1/2 minutes for his scanner to properly record an entire image. One scanner camera has reduced that window to 66 seconds. Still, this long exposure time makes this art form--at least with current technological standards--inappropriate in situations where movement is a factor. The digital camera isn't something to be used in a hand-held environment (the body moves too much), for portraits (same problem) or, especially, in shooting wildlife (for obvious reasons).

But for landscapes, digital photography works like a charm.

Johnson's photograph "Half Dome and Yosemite Valley" is impressive for its clarity and definition both in the enormous shadows and in the well-lit peaks. The sheer amount of different colors and shades present in "Alluvial Sweep," taken at the Haleakala National Park in Maui, is mind boggling. The rocks, short greenery, dirt and flowing water shown in "Ash Cliff and River, Valley of 10,000 Smokes," shot in the Katmai National Park in Alaska, is amazing for how it presents the distinctions in contrast, color and tone as they really happen in nature.

Johnson is literally so thrilled with the freedom this digital technology gives him, that he says he almost gets "giddy."

"I now have a power to record what I see (that is) unprecedented in the history of photography."

What: "Stephen Johnson: Digital Landscapes" photography exhibit

When: Through Feb. 20. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; Thursday evenings also from 7 to 9 p.m.; and by appointment

Where: The Photographer's Gallery, 536 Ramona St., Palo Alto

Information: Call 328-0662 

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