Soulful Pictures A Noted Local Photographer Describes Her Art and Our Lives August 2006

by Linda Johnson
Photos by Russell Byrne & Linda Johnson

Linda Johnson is an Antioch businesswoman who has found a way to create “museum quality” portraits of startling beauty and excellence. She tells the story behind her vocation and passions that led her to her artistic life.

I’m an Antioch photographer. I’ve developed the ability to manage a photographic session so that people become comfortable enough to forget about the camera. Once that happens my lurking lens is often able to capture the subjects’ souls through expressions that come on their faces.

In some cases I can get such an effect without even showing the person’s face. One client told me that she wanted a portrait of her husband, who was dying of an incurable disease, taken with their son. My portrait of that man with his arms wrapped around his boy successfully evoked the love they shared. The father’s face is turned away, but it wasn’t necessary for anybody to see his expression to understand the bond that held him close to his son.

The difference between photography as a craft and photography as art is the presence or absence of a quality that evokes a genuine emotion in the heart of a person viewing a piece. Such a work of art transcends mere craftsmanship by creating an impact that derives from inspiration. A cycle of inspiration is created when a picture, itself the product of inspiration, inspires such a heart-felt response from the viewer. I’m practicing my profession as art by creating portraits incorporating this kind of inspiration.

My Life and Work as an Artist
I took my first picture with a hand-me-down Brownie Holiday camera. From the beginning I loved taking pictures of people, animals, mountains, valleys, beaches… Any interesting place or person might become a subject for me to capture with that little camera.

I took my first photography class when I was 14 years old. The school had an actual dark room. I remember the magical moment when my first print began to appear before my eyes as I rocked the page back and forth in the developer. That experience gave birth to a love for photography that has continued growing until the present. My passion began to divert me from my original goal of becoming a veterinarian – a decision made easier by the fact that I was flunking biology.

I ultimately earned a Master of Photography Degree from the Professional Photographers of America – an organization that has been certifying top photographers for nearly 100 years. I trained with some of the greatest portrait photographers in America, many of whom work right here in the Bay area.

People are often amazed to learn how big the nation’s photography sub-culture actually is. Each state has its own organization of professional photographers, which is subdivided into local organizations. Sixteen local-level groups are affiliated with the Professional Photographers of California alone. I belong to the Northern California Professional Photographers, which has a membership of about 80. The association conducts competitions so that photographers can earn recognition for their work. It’s a great organization! We inspire each other towards excellence.

My work, like all truly artistic endeavors, is a pilgrimage in which the journey is itself the destination. Also, the industry is evolving and I owe it to my clients to always reinvent myself – going beyond what I’ve already mastered and trying to reach a higher plane of creativity. As a result, I’m in a continual learning mode. I take workshops and classes every month and learn something from everyone. In addition, I’m constantly searching for inspiration from paintings, magazines, greeting cards, movies, and videos. I study the photography of masters, like Ann Geddes, and continually seek visual stimulation to inspire me to create new design concepts. I never remain in one “place” long enough for my eye to become accustomed to beauty. The process never stops; I’m a better photographer than I was a month ago.

The artistic process, itself, can never be taken for granted; nothing artistic can be done by mere rote. Before a shoot I go through a set of visual exercises like a dancer warming up. I expose myself to things like art books, paintings, and magazines and get my eyes visually “warmed up” to the portraits I’m about to take.

The fine arts inspire some of the ongoing evolution of photography as art. However, portrait painters interpret what a person looks like. Photographers, on the other hand, are able to capture the person’s essential character and personality. Interpretation isn’t necessary.

Melding Business and Art
My portraits capture the best of both worlds of photography and fine art, because we transfer a picture to canvas and add subtle enhancements that give it the illusion of being a fine oil painting. I have created a niche for myself by taking photography to an ultimate museum-quality level of excellence. I create fine works of art that would not look out-of-place hanging on the walls of the Legion of Honor or the de Young Museum. Because of that quality, people who are familiar with my work are able to recognize my pictures whenever they see one. My finished portraits result from 12 separate production steps including printing, touch-up, canvas bonding, lacquer spray, and framing. I have three employees working behind-the-scenes; I do all the photography myself.

A good picture is as much about psychology as it is about science. Composing a photograph that represents the true nature of a person as opposed to merely taking a snapshot results from a careful, deliberate procedure. The process begins by my spending an hour or so getting to know a person before I do anything with the camera. I work hard on building relationships with clients and making them feel comfortable. I have a casual approach that gives people opportunities to open up and share their feelings with me.

The ultimate goal of my work is to celebrate the person being photographed. Our mission statement is summarized in our slogan, “Your Pride is our Joy.”

My task as a portrait photographer often puts me in the privileged role as witness to the epochal events in my clients’ lives. I share the excitement at the birth of a first child, for example. What I love most is photographing newborn babies. I record a baby sitting up for the first time, and a child taking its first steps. I document the experiences of children who survive medical miracles. Parents frequently realize that they have an exceptional child; through one of my portraits everyone can know it.

A portrait often becomes an image of what love looks like. I had a session with one client’s wife and baby. The man had always wanted a child and the son was the desire of his heart. “Are you planning to have another child?” I asked.

“Not after what my wife went through,” he replied. “She had a seizure on the delivery table and I never heard anyone scream like she did. They needed to get the baby out of there and so they performed an emergency C-section. My wife and child both almost died.”

That man’s story literally sent goosebumps running down my legs. I was overwhelmed by a realization of how fervently that family had desired that child and at what cost he had come to them. I had to create a portrait that would somehow capture that longing and that love.

Clients also come to me when they are facing one of the other great transitions in life – an illness in the family perhaps, or aging parents. My camera captures signs of love and affection between people who are united in illness or through the death of a spouse or relative. My art plays an important role in meeting a family’s need to express feelings that go beyond words.

Clients often feel the need of capturing an image of the family while the members are still together. A family portrait has the magical ability of permitting the family to remain together, caught forever in a single moment of time.

My sense of accomplishment from my work provides personal rewards that justify the tedium and bother of daily business details. The most genuine measure of my success is not the number of dollars I receive from a client, but the degree to which I feel I am able to serve – to give to people images that reveal the depth of their feelings for each other and appreciation for the people in their lives.

Picturing People Small and Big
I specialize in creating portraits of children that tell a story. My work is not only moving, but is often humorous, and entertaining. I love adding amusing captions to my photographs. Sometimes my portraits are carefully composed and premeditated, other times I just seize upon some unanticipated event that’s taking place in front of my lens.

I take some outdoor pictures, but photographing young children or newborns is much easier in the controlled environment of my studio. Children are often distracted when they are outside. I actually create sets in the studio that generate an illusion of being out-of-doors that is as convincing as the real thing.

I incorporate scenes and props to tell a story. In an outside shoot I might use an oak tree in a picture to create a California kind of setting. At other times I might use family heirlooms that communicate some interesting fact about the family and about the generations that preceded them. For example, a strand of grandma’s pearls or a grandfather’s pocket watch might help the picture of a child resonate with the lives of people who preceded him and who made his life possible.

Another thing that props do for children is to give them permission to play in front of the camera. I will never ask a little girl to smile; I simply give her a bright piece of jewelry, perhaps, or a puppy or a shiny toy and then simply wait for the perfect expression to come across her face.

For older subjects I use real-world settings such as a garden, a tea party, a sporting event, camping, fishing, or skateboarding. I might incorporate a beloved pet, the room of a family’s home, or some reminder of a family’s nationality. I take a lot of lifestyle portraits. I capitalize on occupations and professions. I might show the young daughter of a dentist as a dentist, herself, but dressed up as a tooth fairy.

I often do story-board frames, with several pictures that record actions and reactions showing a child’s personality. A series of pictures can really test my skills. It’s relatively easy to get a good single portrait of a child, more difficult to do this with a family, most difficult to maintain excellence over a sequence of portraits that all fit together to make, as it were, a single composite event.

I did a maternity portrait of one of my employees standing beneath a stream of water coming from a hose. The water at first was warm from the sun. As the spray fell across her I told her not to move and then waited for the moment when the water would turn cold. It was beautiful!

Children are great subjects! All I have to do is lurk for a while and simply catch them being themselves. Two weeks old is not too young to bring a baby into the studio. I’ve discovered that under two months is the best time to catch beautiful sleeping portraits.

Sometimes adults aren’t as natural before my lens as children. Some of my clients have never had a portrait taken before and don’t feel photogenic. Many of them simply leave the process up to me. On the other hand, people with previous modeling experience often describe what they want from the picture in exact detail. I’m flexible and easy-going enough to be comfortable with people at both extremes. After all, the whole process is about them, not me.

It seems paradoxical, but sometimes the most beautiful women are the hardest to please. I suppose that it is natural because in many cases women are beautiful precisely because they are concerned about their looks and demand excellence of themselves.

Beyond skills and training, my reputation is my most important asset. Some of my clients are commissioning me to photograph their third or fourth child. It is wonderful to be in the position of not simply watching families grow, but documenting and preserving the story of that growth.

Showing the World in Black-and-White
I’ve discovered that the quality I refer to as “soul” is easier to capture through black and white photography, which has become half my business. Relationships become more apparent in black and white. Crying babies, fidgety kids – emotions of all kinds often become more visible when the busyness of color is removed. Emotion is also more easily captured in black-and-white because the surface reality is suppressed. I mean that a black and white picture is not like what you see reflected in a mirror. The resulting surreal quality makes it an easier task to capture feelings and emotions.

Black-and-white portraits permit me to create priceless images that hold the key to my clients’ hearts. One little boy contracted cancer. The family wanted a color portrait, but I told them I would also give them a set of black-and-white pictures. One of the parents subsequently told me, “Every day I look at those pictures and they help me to remember the wonderful relationship we had with him. We miss him so much! I look forward to the day when we will all be together again.”

Our black and white portraits are deliberately retro – printed on museum-quality cotton base paper, without dyes. In a hundred years color portraits will have diminished, but one of these prints will never fade.

I’ve taken portraits of famous people, but I prefer the people who surround me everyday. In the same way, I could work anywhere, but I love the people in East County. There is a sense of authenticity about much of the culture in this area – a quality of being real and down-to earth.

Being with my clients always fills me with renewed appreciation of life. I’m continually delighted by the common courage I find in so many ordinary people as they face both the dazzling hilltops and dark valleys of their lives. I»sm always inspired by the ability of anyone to keep going in the face of some defeat, disease, or death. People lift me!

I’ve developed a set pattern in my own life of asking for what I hope for but then accepting whatever comes to me. If I ever find that I’m not getting what I want from life I just turn up the love. I find ultimate joy through embracing with arms wide open whatever life sends my way. It’s a great way to live, because after all, it isn’t really the years we remember, nor even the days. We remember the soul-filled moments – particularly when we are able to capture those moments in a portrait.°

People unfamiliar with Linda’s work can view a collection of her pictures on permanent display in the new wing at Sutter Delta Hospital in Antioch. All the portraits in the collection are of children under the age of one year.