Workshops
Click here for more information about Harold Davis photography workshops.
Featured workshop: 2013.12.07 and 2013.12.08—Photographing Flowers for Transparency, Two-Day WorkshopArt Editions
Harold’s Books
-
Recent Posts
- Eiffel Tower from Sacre Coeur Dome
- Chateau de Nazelles
- Eiffel
- Katie Rose is Five
- Au Sauvignon
- La Tour Eiffel
- Harold Davis Photo Workshop at Giverny
- Parc de Sceaux
- San Sulpice
- Luxembourg Gardens
- Opera Garnier
- City of Light
- Beside the Seine
- Piggyback Waterdrop
- Keeping in Touch
- The Unphotographed Photos
- Katie Rose in Tiger Paint
- Windswept Sea
- New $10,000 Stretch Goal for Monochromatic Visions
- New Harold Davis Kickstarter: Monochromatic Visions
- Calypso orchid
- The infinitesimal and the infinite
- Living at the border of immensity
- New Harold Davis Workshops, Events, and Webinars Too!
- Smoking Gun
- Shell Spiral
- Remembering Jack Tasoff
- Botanique on the Moab Paper blog
- Making Tracks
- Dragon Dawn
Trending
Site Map
Kickstarter
- Funded: Botanique. More about the Botanique limited edition.
- Present: Monochromatic Visions
Blog Categories
- Abstractions (6)
- Bemusements (569)
- Book Reviews (4)
- Cuba (28)
- Digital Night (243)
- Flickr (13)
- Flowers (567)
- France (2)
- Hardware (32)
- HDR (49)
- Hearts (6)
- High Sierra (26)
- Hiking (28)
- iPhone (17)
- Iris (10)
- Katie Rose (121)
- Kids (211)
- Landscape (603)
- Lensbaby (48)
- Models (46)
- Monochrome (144)
- New York (7)
- Paris (10)
- Patterns (84)
- Phoenix Roundtrip (9)
- Photograms (75)
- Photography (2182)
- Photoshop Techniques (215)
- Point Reyes (90)
- Print of the Month (7)
- Road Trip (22)
- San Francisco Area (268)
- Software Reviews (7)
- Still Life (24)
- The Wave (14)
- Tilden Park (16)
- Water Drops (151)
- Workshops (17)
- Writing (126)
- Yoda (4)
- Yosemite (143)
- Zion (14)
Archives
- May 2013 (8)
- April 2013 (15)
- March 2013 (12)
- February 2013 (13)
- January 2013 (15)
- December 2012 (14)
- November 2012 (13)
- October 2012 (12)
- September 2012 (7)
- August 2012 (11)
- July 2012 (13)
- June 2012 (17)
- May 2012 (10)
- April 2012 (8)
- March 2012 (14)
- February 2012 (6)
- January 2012 (9)
- December 2011 (10)
- November 2011 (13)
- October 2011 (14)
- September 2011 (16)
- August 2011 (11)
- July 2011 (18)
- June 2011 (25)
- May 2011 (21)
- April 2011 (18)
- March 2011 (23)
- February 2011 (21)
- January 2011 (25)
- December 2010 (22)
- November 2010 (23)
- October 2010 (15)
- September 2010 (15)
- August 2010 (17)
- July 2010 (19)
- June 2010 (12)
- May 2010 (20)
- April 2010 (19)
- March 2010 (23)
- February 2010 (24)
- January 2010 (24)
- December 2009 (26)
- November 2009 (23)
- October 2009 (20)
- September 2009 (22)
- August 2009 (18)
- July 2009 (25)
- June 2009 (22)
- May 2009 (25)
- April 2009 (17)
- March 2009 (25)
- February 2009 (24)
- January 2009 (34)
- December 2008 (32)
- November 2008 (32)
- October 2008 (25)
- September 2008 (28)
- August 2008 (28)
- July 2008 (33)
- June 2008 (36)
- May 2008 (34)
- April 2008 (25)
- March 2008 (25)
- February 2008 (30)
- January 2008 (35)
- December 2007 (50)
- November 2007 (32)
- October 2007 (39)
- September 2007 (32)
- August 2007 (22)
- July 2007 (34)
- June 2007 (24)
- May 2007 (42)
- April 2007 (31)
- March 2007 (29)
- February 2007 (29)
- January 2007 (31)
- December 2006 (29)
- November 2006 (31)
- October 2006 (31)
- September 2006 (31)
- August 2006 (27)
- July 2006 (26)
- June 2006 (34)
- May 2006 (20)
- April 2006 (39)
- March 2006 (42)
- February 2006 (29)
- January 2006 (53)
- December 2005 (52)
- November 2005 (73)
- October 2005 (44)
- September 2005 (35)
- August 2005 (26)
- July 2005 (27)
- June 2005 (28)
- May 2005 (28)
Meta
Category Archives: Flowers
Calypso orchid
Hard to see among the debris at the forest floor, the tiny Calypso orchid can be photographed when conditions are right on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais for brief periods in the spring. I have been photographing the Mt Tamalpais Calypso orchid, Calypso bulbosa, also sometimes called a ‘Fairy slipper,’ for years. You can see a couple of my other photos of this marvelous flower, and read a bit about its background, in Close Encounters with Calypso.
Yesterday Mark and I headed in search of the elusive Calypso as a dense fog swirled around Mount Tamalpais. By the time we found the first specimens, hiding among old leaves beneath tall trees on a steep and muddy slope, the clouds were intermittently breaking up.
As I got to work I found that I was struggling to get my tripod low enough to the ground. Photographing this flower from above just didn’t work. So I improvised a sling made of my hat, twigs, and some raw earth, and finally got the camera stable enough to make this fairly long exposure (2/5 of a second).
Here’s an iPhone photo Mark snapped of me at work photographing Calypso:
Exposure data: 105mm macro lens, 36mm extension tube, 2/5 of a second at f/18 and ISO 200, improvised earth-and-hat camera platform.
Tulip Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-sabi is a name for a Japanese philosophical and aesthetic movement with a key tenet of acceptance of the transient nature of all things. According to wabi-sabi, everything passes, and in that passage and imperfection lies the possibility of true beauty.
As I write in Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis, “in my work with flowers, I seek to understand how ephemeral life is, and to translate this sense into the emotion we associate with time passing—which is a deeper sense of true love than that associated with the first blush of early, often fickle and shallow, beauty.”
In other words, the syllogism goes as follows:
- Expressing emotion is one of the most important things any photo can do.
- Flowers are often a vehicle in art for projecting our feelings about love and beauty.
- If we are to progress beyond the infatuations of shallow youth towards the meeting of true minds that is mature love, then flowers as they age with all their imperfections are as much a valid subject as blossoms in the first sensuous blush of opening.
- Flowers in decay are therefore a valid subject for photographic interpretation.
With this composition of Tulip Wabi-Sabi, I watched my tulips over the course of a week as they gradually matured, lost a few petals, and curled—beautiful at every step of the way.
The resulting image, shot against black velvet, is a little mysterious and exotic, as though birds with colorful plumage were descending through the dusk. No birds, these are just my lovely tulips, subject to gravity and aging like all of us.
Exposure data: 85mm tilt-shift macro, nine exposures at shutter speeds from 1/60 of a second to 8 seconds, each exposure at an effective aperture of f/64 and ISO 200, tripod mounted; exposures processed via Adobe Camera RAW and Nik HDR Efex Pro, and finished in Photoshop.
Tiptoe through the tulip
The tulips that I found last week at the North Berkeley Farmers Market have transmogrified into fantastical shapes and forms as they age and illustrate wabi-sabi in action. Like the anemones, these flowers started out somewhat closed, and grew into their beauty as they opened.
With this tulip, a petal fell to the ground while the rest of the flower was still radiant. This missing petal allowed me to peer inside with my camera, and to capture the beauty within the tulip.
Floral Sunset
It’s hard to imagine two subjects that are more over-photographed than sunsets and flowers. Of course, there’s a reason that something is a popular subject for photography. It’s wonderful to make images of flowers, and as I ask in the introduction to Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis, “How can we not want to capture this ephemeral and bold stand against the entropy and chaos of the universe?”
The virtues of sunset to the serious photographer are also greater than one might suppose based on all the awful images of sunsets out there, and also the disdain of the professional cadre for imagery that depicts the setting of the sun. Each and every sunset reminds of us of our place in the solar system, and also the passage of time. I am reminded of Galen Rowell’s remark that every photographer only has a certain and fixed number of sunsets—so one should witness every single one of them. This may be overkill, but leaving metaphysics aside it is true that some of the most interesting light in the field occurs right around sunset.
So as a photographer I love the sunset time of day. Also, it’s fun to turn the double cliché on its head, and approach combining sunsets and flowers in an unusual way. With this shot of a setting sun seen through a cherry blossom I relied on the fact that throwing the sun way out-of-focus makes it appear much larger. With my camera on my tripod, I used my 105mm macro lens combined with an extension tube. My aperture was wide open, and I focused on the very close cherry blossom to make the sun seem even larger than life. I finished the image with a texture overlay to make it seem even more painterly and dreamy.
Also posted in Photography
Leave a comment
Anemones
The North Berkeley farmer’s market, on a stretch of streets sometimes known as the “gourmet ghetto,” is certified organic throughout. Cruising with my camera, I spotted a flower vendor, Thomas Farm, with some wonderful tulips on display. Closer inspection also revealed some anemones, which mostly hadn’t opened yet. The anemones were one bunch for $5 and five bunches for $20. I “haggled” and got six bunches for my $20—a good deal indeed for my inner photographer since once these flowers started to open they displayed gorgeous translucent colors!
Anemones are named for the wind, using the Greek word for wind, anemos. They are supposed to open best when it is windy. Placing them in a sunny room, I found that they are also highly heliotropic—they open with sunshine and close up again at dusk.
So in the middle of the day, using sunshine for front light, I photographed them on my lightbox. For the image shown above I used eight exposures, with each exposure at f/32 and ISO 200. Shutter speeds were between 1/15 of a second and 10 seconds. (If my photographic and post-production techniques for shooting flowers for translucency interest you, you might want to consider the Photography Flowers for Transparency workshop I am giving at the end of 2013.)
I used my 85mm tilt-shift macro lens to make this shot, a lens I once described as “channeling” Edward Weston because it is completely manual and the kind of lens Weston used—you even have to stop it down yourself when you are ready to shoot because there is no auto diaphragm.
Also posted in Photography
2 Comments
Papaver Solo
I’ve been spending time in my garden this week, getting it ready for spring. Actually, around here it is spring already, with sunny weather in the sixties. My poppy seedlings are growing briskly, reminding me happily that soon it will be time to photograph Papavers once again—like the backlit flower below (two different washi paper scans were added as a decorative background).
Also posted in Photography
Leave a comment
Hot off the press
The pages of Botanique—my hand made, limited edition artist book—have all been printed. Some of them are shown here on the table formerly known as our dining room table. You can read about assembling the Botanique prototype by clicking here, and click here for the Kickstarter campaign that used crowd-sourcing to fund this unique project that uses cutting-edge technologies in combination with hand crafting in a made-in-the-USA cottage industry project. I also like the way the aesthetic combines the old with the new, and echoes both 19th century botanical prints and Asian art while looking towards the future of digital photography.
The next step is to assemble the actual copies in the edition, and deliver the ones that have already been sold.
I am excited about the level of interest in Botanique. At the risk of being immodest I understand why, every time I take my prototype copy out of its box. It’s fun to show it to people and watch their jaws drop! We’re of course very pleased by how many of the copies in the edition have already sold—Botanique is already a huge success—and thank you to everyone who has supported my art via this venture.
There are only two copies left in the $750 price tier. Please contact the studio if you would like to reserve one of them.
I can’t wait to post some photos of the finished Botanique—probably early in the coming week.
Star Magnolia
This Magnolia stellata was clipped from a flowering hedge in my neighborhood that borders a major avenue and photographed for maximum translucency. It makes a great print on Kozo washi (rice paper).
We are busy prototyping our handmade limited edition book of floral images, Botanique, and a reproduction of Star Magnolia on Kozo will be included.
Also posted in Photography
Leave a comment
Ice-Nine
In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle ice-nine is a crystal with the power to freeze all life on earth, perhaps as I did with these yellow roses. Not really! Nor were they shot through a wet shower door.
The roses were shot on a white background, and then I applied one of my images of waterdrops on windows (Window Study #3) as a texture overlay.
Other examples of texture overlays: Everything in moderation, Like a Titian, Venice of Cuba.
Also posted in Photography, Photoshop Techniques
Leave a comment
Fireworks to greet the new year!
An expression of joy and hope with the coming of a new year can be lavish in size, or small indeed. This dandelion, shot from below and skyward, exhibits points of exploding light like fireworks, but on a very small scale. Enjoy!
Also posted in Monochrome, Photography
1 Comment
Hellebore Stems
A collector just ordered a copy of my Hellebore Stems (shown below). Originally, I shot the hellebores on a white background. To print the image on Moenkopi Kozo Washi I added a scanned paper background with a texture overlay. The technique is explained in my forthcoming book, which is tentatively titled The Way of the Digital Photographer and due to be published in mid-2013.
White Dalhias
Shot on a lightbox at the same session as When Dahlias Dream, my thought in processing White Dahlias was to create an image that showed its photographic heritage with a painterly aspect thrown in. In other words, if Georgia O’Keeffe had painted with photos.
When Dahlias Dream
Shopping for groceries at Berkeley Bowl the other day I came across these dahlias and asters that called out for photography. Taking the flowers home, I shot them on a light box (this version with a white background is second from the top) using eight exposures. Click here for more about this technique. To see a larger version of any of the images below, just click the image.
To finish the image and relieve the starkness of the white background I virtually “placed” the image of dahlias and asters on a paper scan and added a texture to warm the image (above, top version).
Next, I used a LAB color inversion to create a composition on a black background (bottom version). Since my idea was to create a painting on canvas with this version of When Dahlias Dream, I worked to add a textural feeling to the background.
As noted in Photographing Flowers, dahlias and asters are part of the same flower family. In particular, dahlias are named for Dr. Anders Dahl, a Swedish botanist who worked with Linnaeus and first classified this genus. Originally native to the new world, dahlias were a show plant for the Victorians because of their over-the-top visual attractiveness.
Also posted in Photography
Leave a comment
Photographing Flowers on a Lightbox for Transparency
So far as I know I am the inventor of my process for creating images of flowers using a lightbox that are transparent—actually, images that seem translucent. This process relies on digital capture and post-production techniques and would not have been possible in film photography.
Like all photography the technique relies on illusion. Specifically, the illusion in this case has to do with the fact that lighter areas in an image can appear more translucent to the human eye—whether or not they actually are. The reality is that the effect has to do with color differential rather than degrees of opacity, but this is not the way the difference is perceived.
The technique for creating these images involves four distinctive stages, with aspects worthy of commentary at each stage:
- Manually bracketed HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography using backlighting
- Combining the bracketed exposure sequence using hand-HDR
- Adjusting the combined image
- Placing the image on a scanned or textured background (this step is optional)
The key observations about the HDR process I use in this technique are that it is high-key and that it is manual. High-key means that I throw away everything to the right of the histogram, I am really only looking for frames that are “overexposed” (at least according to the in-camera light meter). Manual means that I am not using an auto-bracketing program. There is more information about this style of HDR in Creating HDR Photos on pages 82-85.
In my book Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis there is a spread showing both the photographic setup I use for this technique and the manually bracketed exposure sequence that I used with a specific image (pages 184-185).
Putting together the bracketed exposure sequence is also a manual affair. Essentially, I start with the lightest image (to use as the white background) and use Photoshop to selectively paint in the contrasting areas I want for the final image. Usually this involves 4-6 different exposures and layers. I then often very selectively paste in some structurized details from an automated HDR program such as Nik HDR Efex Pro.
With Schizanthus grahamii and Iceberg Roses (shown above) I used a 40mm macro lens, and with my camera on a tripod shot six exposures with shutter speeds ranging from one second to 1/100 of a second. Each exposure was at f/10 and ISO 100. I combined the images starting with the one second exposure version (the lightest capture) as the bottom frame.
The image was finished by placing it on a scanned paper background. The formula I usually use is to blend the floral on white into a scanned background at 15% opacity using Normal blending mode, and (using a duplicate layer) also at 85% opacity using Multiply blending mode.
My technique for placement on a scanned paper background is shown and explained on pages 190-193 of Photographing Flowers.
Of course, another issue is the paper I print the image on—using special Washi such as the Moab Moenkopi Unruyu I used to print Peonies mon amour (shown above) can increase the appeal of an image greatly.
If my technique for photographing flowers on a lightbox intrigues you, may I suggest the Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop I am giving in December 2012? This is a one-time special purpose event that will include demos and a chance for participants to try their hand at the technique with my guidance.
Also posted in HDR, Photography
2 Comments
Botanicals Fine Art Photography Exhibition
I’m excited about having my large botanical Washi prints in the Botanicals group exhibition at PHOTO in Oakland. The exhibit runs from August 23 through September 29, 2012. Note that a percentage of sales from this exhibit and at the opening will benefit the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society.
Please consider joining me at the Artists Reception on Friday, September 7 from 6:00 to 9:00 PM and/or attending the benefit opening on Thursday, September 13 from 6:30 – 8:30 PM. Click here for gallery location and directions.
Please also give some thought to my Botanique Kickstarter project, which only has a few days left to run.
On the topic of floral photography, I’m excited to let you know that my book Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis has been rated the “best guide to flower photography” by Digital Photographer magazine. This is a UK publication with one of the widest circulations of any photography magazine in the world. Besides the “Best in Class” rating, the review of my book goes on to state that my book is “superb…with excellent attention to detail and infused with the author’s passion for his subject.”
If you want to read the full review here it is in a PDF download.
Also posted in Photography
Leave a comment










































