Jane Davenport – Alumni Success Story

Alumni, Workshop  Comment
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Australian artist Jane Davenport returned this week for a second workshop with me – The Fine Digital Print Expert. I love to hear success stories from my alumni. Jane’s is exceptional. “In 2001 I took my first workshop with John Paul and decided to follow my bliss. Since then I’ve published 4 books, had 30 solo exhibits, and over 4,000,000 people have attended my large scale outdoor art installations. I know how incredibly lucky I am to be doing this. I also know that you create your own luck.” Jane’s passionate, committed, works hard and smart. It’s a winning combination. She’s gone very far in a relatively short time.
“Workshops make me reassess what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. If you don’t stop and take the time to discover new tools you could miss out on something amazing, something that adds a new dimension to your work. Getting feedback from peers is extremely helpful, particularly people who don’t know you and your work.”
Jane’s created a unique niche focussing on insects. She works with zoos and environmental organization to raise awareness of and promote affection for her subjects. She also licenses her images in interesting merchandising opportunities giving here cause a broader reach.
This week she explored a new developing theme – kites.
Find out more about Jane Davenport here.
Find out about my workshops here.

Test Your Palette – Fine Digital Print Expert Workshop

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One of the exercises we do in my Fine Digital Print Expert workshop is to test our palettes. Take your signature image, or the strongest image in a body of work, and make many variations of it. Neutral, semi-neutral, low saturation, average saturation, high saturation, super saturation. Ideal color, ambient color, synthetic color. Etc. Compare the results side-by-side. By process of elimination choose the best solution. Then take your second strongest related image and see if the same palette is equally strong for it. If it is, you’ve found your zone for a body of work.
Many students are astonished at how much potential their images have. Consider John Myer’s image here. He’s torn between the fully saturated and semi-neutral versions. So he’s testing those two palettes on several other related images. With a just little more exploration, he’ll soon have his answers. Too often we commit to a solution before we explore our options. Sometimes we’re too timid with the kinds of explorations we allow ourselves. Take these steps at the beginning of every new body of work. The time you take to explore your options is well spent. It’s extremely rewarding.
Find out about my Fine Digital Print Workshop series here.
Find out about The Fine Digital Print Expert workshop here.

Appropriate Scale – Fine Digital Print Expert Workshop

Printing, Workshop  Comment
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One of the many things that it’s valuable to test is optimum scale. Images affect us differently at different scales. Small prints draw you close to them providing an intimate experience. Large prints envelope you in an immersive experience requiring a greater distance to see the entire image. One of the things my workshop students do is find optimum scales for their images. While there are many practical considerations that may modify their final choices (like final presentation space), determining an optimum scale reveals an artist’s intention and the nature of their work more clearly. How do you determine optimum scale? Test it! There’s no substitute for fully experiencing the effects of changing scale. Make different sized prints and compare them side by side. Alternately, projecting an image on a wall at different scales can be similarly revealing. Here, again, side by side comparison reveals more. Then, put your impressions into words – verbally or in writing.
Here veteran professional landscape and garden photographer Roger Foley shows two prints of the same image at different scales. While he feels a larger scale is ideal for his imagery, he’ll sometimes make smaller prints to accommodate smaller presentation spaces and client requests.
Find out more about Roger Foley here.
Look for my upcoming article on Scale in Photoshop User magazine. Find out about PSU here.
Find out about my Fine Digital Print Workshop series here.
Find out about The Fine Digital Print Expert workshop here.