Photographer Stephen Johnson was our guest on the evening of April 7, 2010. Stephen, considered one of the true pioneers of digital photography, spoke to a room of over 200 people about “The New Photography.” He laid out an impassioned and well-illustrated arguement about how technology is enabling photography to capture images of the the earth and light in new ways, and to edit these new captures with a degree of finesse and precision undreamed of in the darkroom.
Touching on issues both cerebral and technical, Johnson discussed ideas about how we are now able to present more realistic renditions of the real world. From cameras now liberated from blocked infrared, to hand-held stereo, wide-dynamic range, corrected perspective, panoramics, huge stitched-composite files for high resolution files, GPS enabled location, metadata and geo-views, and on the fly video from the same device, all of these new capabilities mean more power for the photographer to record and describe what they see.
Students and faculty alike were excited to hear Johnson’s presentation. He was also able to spend some time after his talk doing a question and answer session and also presented a small portfolio of his work to the crowd.
The College of DuPage Photography Program would like to thank Canon USA for their generous support of the program.
You can find more about Stephen Johnson at his website.
Silicon & Silver 
Film still has a wider dynamic range than digital right? Or is that no longer the case?
This is one of those “tough call” things… because it really depends on what you’re comparing. If it’s film, is it negative (high dynamic range) or transparency (low dynamic range)? If it’s digital, is it a JPEG (low) or a RAW file (high)? With digital, we also have the option of generating an “HDR” (High Dynamic Range) image, which takes advantage of software to combine the “best” parts of several bracketed exposures to make an image with much higher dynamic range than is possible with one shot alone.