White Ranunculus, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Before planted, I pruned this Ranunculus blossom, placed it in a thin vase, and surrounded the vase with black velvet. I used a special low tripod so I could get right in front of the flower with my macro lens; the image you see is the result of combining eight exposures.
Magnolia World, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is another Lensbaby fisheye. I put the camera on tripod up very close to the magnolia tree and used the f/22 aperture ring. I intentionally overexposed to create a high-key effect.
In post-processing I used FocalPoint from onOne Software, a Photoshop plugin, to give the image a sense of focus in the middle and to help blur the edges. Then I partially desaturated the image using the High Structure filter in Nik Silver Efex Pro. My goal was to get the image looking almost like old-fashioned needlepoint.
Leucospermum Fisheye, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is a close-up fisheye of my Leucospermum Scarlet Ribbons. I photographed the flower with the Lensbaby Composer and the new Fisheye Optic.
The image you see is a hand-HDR composite of five exposures, all at ISO 100 on tripod. Each exposure used the f/22 aperture ring. Exposure time ranged from 1/4 of a second to 1/30 of second.
Coiled, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Bondage, as practiced in the plant kingdom, can be an involuntary affair. A Passiflora vine makes beautiful flowers, but it is surely an agressor without conscience. Left to its own devices, spring-boarding with coiled energy, it will tie and knot to everything and anything, killing neighbors. The only way to get this territorial imperialist to let go is to cut it free.
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All shots with 200mm macro lens, 36mm extension tube, tripod mounted.
Life Is Full of Beauty, photo by Harold Davis.
In David Lynch’s wonderfully creepy classic film Blue Velvet you know you’ve entered an alternative and not altogether wholesame nether world when severed body parts start appearing at macro level in the grass.
In the Blue Velvet spirit, I am offering a prize to the first person to correctly identify the disembodied (so to speak) body part in this “wholesome” photo of water drops on two blades of grass. Please specify the body part, where in the photo it is to be found, and provide a theory as to whom it belongs. You can enter your guess or opinion as a comment on this blog story, or send me an email. I will be the sole judge as to accuracy and general craziness of any such submission.
The prize is a free copy of my new book Creative Black & White, shipped when it is available.
Pink Rose 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
I forgot to blog this pink rose from about a month ago; better late than never. Particularly when I am coming in on the end of a major project with deadlines—as I am now—sometimes things get away from me.
Here’s the first Pink Rose. Enjoy!
Solarized Hellebore, photo by Harold Davis.
Solarization in photography reverses blacks and whites. Also called the Sabattier effect, in the chemical darkroom solarization was achieved by exposing an already exposed negative or print to light before development was finalized.
In the Photoshop darkroom, there are of course a number of ways to achieve a simulated solarization effect; the solarized (and converted to monochrome) version of Hellebore Curves is one example.
Hellebore Curves, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Flowers are beautiful—although why they seem so beautiful to us humans is an interesting question. But when I photograph flowers close-up, like this tiny Hellebore, I am not looking to document that beauty. Instead, I am trying to create an interesting abstract composition that uses shapes, lines and (yes) curves to evoke the ideal flower while maintaining a sense of mystery and novelty.
100mm macro, 1.6 seconds and f/22 at ISO 100, tripod mounted, photographed in the calm natural light of morning with the Hellebore part of a medley in a shallow pan of water.
Lenten Cross, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Phyllis arranged the hellebore medley I photographed earlier into a regular pattern, with the results you see.
The Lenten Rose is a variety of hellebore, Helleborus Orientalis. It turns out that some of the Lenten Rose genome is present in most modern hellebore hybrids, so I’ve taken the slight liberty of naming this photo after both Lent and the pattern in the image, even though strictly speaking there are no Helleborus Orientalis in this photo.
Hellebore Medley, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Like Flower Medley, I photographed these Hellebores looking straight down. The Hellebore blossoms from my garden were floating in a pan of water. The pan was lined with black vinyl.
Exposure data: 100m macro, 1/10 of a second at f/16 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.
Floral Medley, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This floral medley contains roses, a camellia, and three varieties of hellebore. The hellebores and camellia are from my garden, but the roses come from Trader Joe’s.
I photographed these flowers floating in a black tray of water this morning using my 85mm macro stopped down to f/64 for maximum depth-of-field—and hang the diffraction.
White Tulips, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Shot with a Lensbaby Composer and the standard glass optic, using the f/4 aperture ring. I love my Lensbaby, a great spur to creativity when I’m feeling like trying something different. Check out my Lensbaby set on Flickr.
Camellia sasangua ‘Kanjiro’, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
In the gray weather of mid-January it can be hard to find flowers to photograph outdoors in the San Francisco Bay area. Camellias are the oustanding exception, which begin to bloom this month.
As Diana Wells notes, the camellia is “utterly beautiful, but far from perfect.” There’s a sensuous irregularity in even the most lush camellia that intrigues—but makes them surprisingly difficult to photograph well.
Red Camellia, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Exposure data:
Camellia ‘Gualala Glow’, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
Pink Rose, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
I photographed this pink rose by morning sunlight, using a mirror and some white board to reflect the sunlight streaming in the window back up and into the rose.
This view is pretty close, because I was really taken with the inner spiral—almost appears to be two spirals curled together.
I have some other nice versions of this rose and one of its buddies, purchased in a Trader Joe’s bouquet. Proving once again that the you don’t need to be expensive or exclusive to be beautiful—at least if you are a flower.
Some of my recent rose images: Eye of the Rose; Kiss From a Rose; Variegated Rose; Curves; Structure of Rose.
Eye of the Rose, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.
This is a more extended version of Kiss from a Rose presented with my best wishes for a Happy New Year and Happy New Decade!
