Mastery: The Art of Color Photography

Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.
 — Marc Chagall

Over the last five decades, Stephen Wilkes has been a passionate explorer of the language of color. Seeing color has captivated his soul, from his earliest explorations in photography to the evolution of his visual style in creating his “Day to Night” series. Color has been at the heart of everything he feels and sees. Over two evenings in early May, Stephen shares his inspirations in developing a personal language in the art of color photography. His four-hour program is certain to change the way you experience and perceive color as a photographer and alter your creative approach toward the medium.

On Tuesday evening, Stephen explores the photographers who shaped and defined the creative use of color in photography and the processes they used to define their work, beginning with autochromes in the early 1900s to Kodachrome to Dye Transfer to Polaroid to Velvia to digital capture. Stephen exposes the ground-breaking photographers from the early color masters to his contemporary colleagues. He uncovers the lessons and insights each photographer adds to the history of the artful use of color photography. The multitude of visual dialects within color photography over the past century is extraordinarily important to all imagemakers today.

As he moves through his rich history of artful color photography, Stephen covers light and color theory moving through a timeline of discovery and influence, we engage in a rich aesthetical analysis along with varied technical considerations—the WHY of photographing in color, and how certain photographs only work in color. He discusses how one can create a visual narrative using color and focuses on the unique interactions between colors, and how the color of light drives all of these interactions. Stephen reviews the different techniques for photographing with color film versus digital capture and how having mastery in analog expands your skills in digital. And finishing up this engaging evening, Stephen discloses how digital capture can actually allow you to dial in the color you are seeing in real-time.

On Thursday evening, Stephen focuses on his inspiration from studying art history and paintings, in particular. He guides us through a selection of master painters whose work has changed the way he perceives and understands color. We explore a deeper way to view a painting, how “optical blending” exposes your mind’s eye and sensitizes your visual cortex to see new colors within our natural world. As visual artists, there is much to be learned from examining and being inspired by painters. This evening also includes an insightful sharing by Stephen of his personal work in color—reinforcing how his influences and inspirations have formed his creative process as a color photographer.

Question and answer sessions are sprinkled throughout each evening presentation to keep the audience engagement at a high and enjoyable level. This being said, if you can’t make the live events, recordings of the two programs will be available for a month for all those registered.