Photoblog 2.0

Nigella Recto, photo by Harold Davis.

This is the front and back (recto above, and verso below) of a small flower with an incredibly complex structure, a Negilla. The common name, which should be said mit feeling, is Love-in-the-mist.

I had absolutely no idea of photographing this flower from the back. But after photographing the front from the top down, I turned the flower over and saw that underneath it was more colorful, and even more complex, than from the front.

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By the way, you may be interested to see some of my work for sale, reproduced on canvas, as giclee prints on photo paper, or as giclee prints on Arch paper at PosterCartel.

Simple Poppy, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a simple Papaver Rhoeas, photographed with an unvarnished macro lens for depth-of-field. The flower may be simple, and the idea behind the image straightforward, but the context wasn’t either: I was talking with several people, and answering questions with “sound bites” for an audio recording as I composed and exposed this flower image in my garden.

Pagoda of Poppies, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Briefly noted: I used my 200mm f/4 telephoto macro lens to focus on the more distant poppies while letting the foreground poppies blur. The isolation of the sharp subject from the out-of-focus closer flowers creates a painterly effect.

The exposure details: f/14 at 1/250 of a second and ISO 100, tripod mounted. The “tripod mounted” with this lens almost doesn’t have to be said, you can’t reasonably hand hold this heavy piece of glass. The good news: the lens is equipped with a very convenient tripod collar. In my opinion, all lens should have one.

Variegated Gladiolas, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

There’s a lovely clump of variegated gladolias in the garden. Partly shaded by a climbing rose, water drops cling to them in the early morning. A single drop reflects the world of these flowers.

I used my 200mm f/4 macro lens, a 36mm extension tube, and a +4 close-up filter. I exposed at ISO 200 for 1/4 of a second at f/36.

Papaver Drops, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In the garden, water drops hang from a poppy bud, swinging at the end of its stem. Reflected in the drops, the flowers themselves are upright. You can see the poppies in the drops on the stem itself, as well.

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Both photos are tripod mounted. I used my 200mm f/4 macro lens, 36mm extension tube, and a +4 close-up filter.

In other words, these are very, very close, and magnified several times life size.

I stopped down for maximum depth-of-field at f/32. Using a setting of ISO 200, I exposed the top image at 1/60 of second and the bottom at 1/80 of second. While I was exposing for the bright water drops and not the darker background, I still intentionally underexposed so I could get a faster shutter speed, and so the bright areas wouldn’t “blow out.”

Poppy Core, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I photographed this poppy core handheld in my garden in the late afternoon. I used my 100mm macro lens at ISO 200, 1/320 of a second, and f/5.6. I took care to hold the camera parallel to the flower, and to focus very precisely. I’ve learned to be patient in this kind of situation, and wait for the moment in which the subject is almost still.

I converted the color version (below) to black and white using the techniques I explain in The Photoshop Darkroom: Creative Digital Post-Processing, published by Focal Press, and due out later this year. I like both the color and black & white versions.

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Related image: Nautilus in Black and White.

Wheels within Wheels, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I tend to like to photograph flowers deliberately with my camera on a tripod, stopped down for lots of depth-of-field. So late yesterday afternoon it was relaxing and interesting to experiment with some wide-opened, handheld poppy photos, with a water-color-like effect in mind. Of course, a photo like this doesn’t work if the central element (the poppy’s core) isn’t in focus.

Photographed using my 100mm Carl Zeiss macro lens at f/2, ISO 200, and 1/800 of a second (handheld as noted).

Poppy Duet, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I cut these poppies from my garden and photographed them on a lightbox. I used my 85mm PC macro lens and five exposures at f/48 between one second and ten seconds.

Starting with the lightest exposure (ten seconds), I dragged the other exposures on top in Photoshop using hand-HDR layer masking to create the transparent effect.

White Tulips, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I photographed these white tulips in a crystal vase with a Lensbaby Composer. I shot it in RAW, and (obviously) came back with a color image. Looking at the thumbnail in Adobe Bridge I decided that presenting the image in black and white (grayscale), with a theoretical absence of color, would actually remind the viewer of more color than it would have been had it been in color (if you know what I mean).

Related stories: Breaking Wave; Golden Gate in Black and White.

Poppies on Black, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I created the image of poppies on black by inverting the L (Luminance) channel of the white version (below) using LAB color in Photoshop.

The white version of the Poppy Medley is a hand HDR combination of five tripod captures with the flowers resting on a lightbox. I used my 85mm PC macro lens, stopped down to f/51, with five exposures at times ranging from 1/2 of a second to eight seconds.

With the five exposures, I created a layer stack in Photoshop, and used masking and the Brush Tool to “paint” in selective transparency.

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Calypso Orchid, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In mid-April the Calypso Orchid grows wild on the forested slopes of Mount Tamalpais.

I photographed these Calypso Orchids near Cataract Falls on tripod with a Lensbaby Composer. I used a +4 close-up filter and the plastic optic swapped into the Lensbaby to give the images a soft and dreamlike atmosphere.

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It’s poppy time of year in my garden. I can’t resist a poppy, they are among my favorite flowers to photograph. Ephemeral and architected to respond to even slight wind (so motion is always an issue at the slower shutter speeds often used for macro work), poppies are not the easiest flowers to photograph. Stunning colors and a kind of naive lack of pretension (decorative poppies are no hothouse roses bred for commerce) makes the effort worth it.

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With this Papaver rhoeas I intentionally underexposed to help me get a fast enough shutter speed to avoid the flower-in-motion problem. I shot at 1/800 of a second on a tripod with my 100mm macro lens fairly wide open at f/5.6 and ISO 200.

My idea was to get the center in focus, and to minimize the focus degradation across the rest of the flower by getting as parallel to the flower as possible.

Naturally, the histogram bunched to the left (I was underexposed by a couple of stops), but I was able to salvage this in the multi-RAW conversion process, with only a little extra noise.

Recent Papaver story: Salutation to the Sun; More poppies.

Salutation to the Sun, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Briefly noted: This newly opened poppy greeting the morning sun, with the lawn behind still in shadow. More poppies.

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Yesterday, a beautiful day with plenty of cloud cover and a strong wind, and the garden in full bloom, was perfect for indoor photography of flowers. I placed this dinner-plate-sized clematis blossom on a light box for transparency, and combined six exposures. All were skewed towards high key, meaning a right-facing histogram and and over-exposure bias (according to the camera, but what does the camera know?).

The clematis on white was my Annakin Skywalker, and I started the conversion process to Darth Clematis and the dark side (the image below) by converting the image to LAB color and inverting its L (Luminance) channel. From there, it was building up the dark side piece by piece through at least fifteen layers.

Note: if my silly Star Wars metaphor means nothing to you, you probably don’t have kids of the right age, and may the force be with you!

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In my passionate embrace with Photoshop, I often don’t make as good notes as I should about exactly what steps I’m taking. That’s why I save the history log of my Photoshop moves to the metadata of each image. To set this up, open the General tab of the Photoshop Preferences dialog and make sure History Log is checked. Choose to save the log items to the image metadata (you can also save it to a text file). Finally, make sure that the Edit Log Items drop-down list is set to Detailed.

Adding your Photoshop History log to your metadata will increase your file size, and it won’t tell you everything. Painting on a layer mask with the Brush tool is just listed as “Brush.” Photo metadata is often incomplete. You won’t learn from the image metadata that I combined a number of exposures (you just get the background layer). But all that said, you do a pretty good picture of the steps taken.

Recently, the history log of my Photoshop moves started showing up in the EXIF data published by Flickr. If you scroll down the links, you too can read the Photoshop history log of this Clematis, and on the dark side.

Speaking of Flickr, and the community of photographers and artists on the Internet generally, I find myself excited about the way I am constantly exposed to new ideas and artists through contacts on Flickr.

I belive that photographers need to look at visual artists beyond photography (for more on this topic, see this interview with me). M.C. Escher has obviously influenced my composites.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the work of Jacques Hnizdovsky, pointed out to me by a Flickr friend, a twentieth century artist known for his paintings and woodblock prints. Hnizdovsky’s work is intelligent, humorous, and photographic in the best sense of the word—astounding for imagery created as woodcuts. A true inspiration.

Ruffles Have Ridges, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I “discovered” (or perhaps “realized” would be the better verb) that there’s no reason I can’t combine flatbed scans at different exposures using hand HDR techniques. This Iris is from three flatbed scans.

No magnificent piece of equipment, the flatbed scanner is an older Epson 1660. Even so, it delivers wonderfully high resolution by camera standards (although of course there is no lens). Add to this the fact the software that comes with the scanner provides an RGB tone curve adjustment, a histogram that you can shove to the right or left, and a levels adjustment, and there’s plenty to play with.

To facilitate the capture, we constructed a black box, open on one side. I placed the Iris, fresh from the garden, face down on the scanner, and placed the black box over the Iris. I still had to mask out the background in Photoshop to fill it with true black, and (as always with scans) there was quite a bit of dust spotting.

The fun thing: this is really a digital era arts & crafts project, and pretty easy to do for anyone.

Capture: three combined RGB Epson 1660 flatbed scans at 1:1 and 3200 dpi.

Related story: Iris Scans; Revelation and Hiding; Nautilus on Black.