Calypso Orchid © Harold Davis

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.

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.”

Tulip Wabi-Sabi © Harold Davis

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.

Tulip Within © Harold Davis

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.

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.

Setting Sun and Cherry Blossoms © Harold Davis

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.

Anemones 1 © Harold Davis

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.

Botanique pages hot off the press © Harold Davis

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.

Click here for more information about Botanique.

Star Magnolia © Harold Davis

We are busy prototyping our handmade limited edition book of floral images, Botanique, and a reproduction of Star Magnolia on Kozo will be included.

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.

Ice-Nine © Harold Davis

Other examples of texture overlays: Everything in moderation, Like a Titian, Venice of Cuba.