New York–The “Epson Print Academy” rolled into New York City recently like a traveling circus with a team of accomplished experts in tow. While still a rather new offering from Epson, this event has been gaining steam and seems destined to become an annual happening. And much like other troupes that come to town every year to dazzle and entertain, this talented circus of photographers, printmakers and digital wizards bring a new incarnation to the show each time they visit.

The Print Academy of 2006 offered a not the usual one, but instead two distinct course offerings, or “Tracks” as they called them. TRACK ONE focused on “How to get great prints from the new digital SLR cameras” and was geared for the advanced hobbyist. TRACK TWO by comparison was targeted specifically for the working professional. Both Tracks ran concurrently in separate reception halls of the New York’s Pennsylvania Hotel (the former Statler Hotel).

Their prices reflected their level of seriousness with Track 2 costing twice that of Track 1. The entry fees were roughly $150 and $70 respectively, however Epson made it very easy to obtain discount coupon codes that brought the prices down to just $99 and $40. Whether it was this added incentive or not, the NYC shows were notable in being the first spot on the tour to fully sell out.

Since it is impossible for this one author to be in two places at once, I sat in on the advanced “Working Pro” Track 2 seminar, as this likely appeals to more of our readership. This course was very well attended and we were told the room was filled to capacity with something over 800 attendees. This is many times the number we saw attending in previous years. Are there more photographers now?

The general answer to that question is yes. The new digital tools have spiked general interest in photography, though this is probably more true in the amateur market than professional. The pro photog market has suffered since the dawn of digital tools and rise of the massive stock houses. However there are huge numbers of already existing pro photographers that suddenly feel the need to come to terms with these new digital tools.

This is especially true now: Just weeks before the Epson event in NY Nikon announced their plans to cease production of all analog film based cameras later this year. So while the writing may have been on the wall for some time, it is now chiseled in stone.

The Print Academy/Track 2 featured the following seminar topics:

Color Management
with Bruce Fraser

Master Printmaking Techniques
with Jeff Schewe
(Mac Holbert of Nash Editions was also scheduled by unable to attend)

A Photographer’s Perspective
With Greg Gorman

Fine Art Printmaking
With John Paul Caponigro

Let me start off by saying that all are well known and very respected practitioners and teachers in the graphics community. All are wonderful communicators and have a firm grasp of their topics and a polished way of communicating it to the students. Let me also tell you that the day started off with a wonderful continental breakfast (coffee and baked good). So far, so good.

The day began with Bruce Fraser’s dissertation on Color Management. Commencing at about 9am, it struck many of the folk near me as a bit of a harsh start. We all would have preferred a little warm up subject. I got painful flashbacks of my 7:45 am Chemistry class in high school.

Regardless, Mr. Fraser did a wonderful job of communicating some of the most hard-to-communicate information. There were dozens of shared insights and workflow tips offered up, all very helpful and some quite critical. Most of these things can probably be found in a book (likely one that Mr. Frazer authored), however an advantage of a seminar is the added “sense and feeling” you get from the in person communication. The nuance of expression that adds to a greater understanding of the material being covered. This is true of seminars, and is also likely why so many DVD video products are popular among students today.

While it is not our place to “give away his store”, a couple of prized Photoshop tidbits included:

What working space should we use?
Answer: The Pro Photo RGB offers the largest color gamut and is recommended.

Whenever possible use your camera’s raw setting for capture.

When converting between color space modes, the Adobe Color Engine (ACE) “seems the best”.

The next session belonged to Jeff Schewe, who was also the ringleader and host of the days events. He is a sharp-witted and tongued man that did a wonderful job of keeping what could be dry material from appearing so. Mr. Schewe took the broadest approach to his seminar and discussed a wide range of Photoshop techniques. This included working in 16-bit mode, compositing, sharpening tips, and ultimately printing. This was an excellent mix of process overview, peppered with technical pit stops along the way.

The day’s seminars were also peppered with a number of short subject pieces. This included video interviews with Mark Radogna, the Product Manager of the Professional Imaging team at Epson America, Inc., and a visit from Adobe showing off the latest beta version of Lightroom. For those that have not seen it yet, Lightroom may best be described as Adobe’s answer to Apple’s Aperture. However they approach many things quite differently, and of course, Lightroom will be available on Windows as well as the Mac.

An interesting side note. Upon starting his talk, George Jardine of Adobe asked for a quick show of hands: “how many Mac users in the room?” …a smattering of hands flew up across the room. “Now how many PC users?” and a sea of hands flew up. Had this been a roomful of accountants it would not be worth mentioning. However this was a roomful of 800+ NYC photographers, many of them professionals. So opposite results were to have been expected.

If you are a photographer, pro or otherwise, and you shoot digitally, make it a point to stop by Adobe.com and check out a pre-release version of Lightroom. It’s aim is to bring back some of the fast sorting and easy workflows we used to have while going through slides on a light table in the real world — something we lost in the digital workflow. (It also begs the question: Why didn’t Adobe call it “LightTable”?)

Gorman: Stone

After a nice lunch with other attendees we went back for more. The well know Hollywood photographer Greg Gorman spoke. While he was first to admit how new he is to all digital tools, he was quick to point out how easy they are and how quickly he has been able to not only come up to speed, but innovate many of his own techniques in Photoshop.

While not a great technical demonstration, his talk showed something important, that established “old school” practitioners can make the transition to digital with relative ease. This fact had already been confirmed for me during lunch not one hour before noticing the median age of the attendees in their 40s and 50s. The bottom line is that if you are a talented photographer, the digital transition will certainly not harm you, and will (at some point sooner or later) open up new creative opportunities.

The last segment of the day was given by fine art photographer and teacher John Paul Caponigro. This man has a wonderful voice to listen to and a very charming manner in which he communicates his message. As might be expected from the artsiest person in the group (compared with the technologists and commercial artists), Mr. Caponigro spoke on subjects that were obviously more touchy-feely than the others. He discussed a bit about marketing photography as a fine art, selling your work, and generally how to make a living at it. For many that means some parallel day job either teaching photography or producing commercial projects. I think the option of having a wealthy spouse was also briefly explored.

At some point in the discussion Mr. Caponigro turned the topic to technical tips and unfortunately things did fall short of expectations. At one point he started showing the benefits of a gradient fill — a 101 topic that certainly did not belong in this seminar. As it was already the end of a long day the audience began to thin down at this point.

Overall this was a very good seminar and even the most seasoned among us learned a few new things. While there was room for improvement of the scheduling (chemistry should never be the first class!), and working pros should not be treated to entry level content (hold those gradients!), we all look forward to next year’s incarnation of the Epson Traveling Circus.