Since I wrote my story about our handmade botanical art book project on Kickstarter, I’ve had a number of questions. If you are one of the people who wrote me, I appreciate your interest. Great questions!

Also, a very big thanks to those who have supported the project already—we are already more than one third of the way towards our funding goal for the project.

I’ve done my best to answer the questions I’ve been asked below! Please check out Botanique—a handmade book of art prints by Harold Davis on Kickstarter. Feel free to contact me with comments, questions, and concerns.

Peonies mon amour

Q: How do I sign up?

Go to the Harold Davis botanical art book Kickstarter project by clicking this link. Click the green Back this Project button on the right. You can pledge any amount starting at $1.00.

Q: What do I get out of it?

I hope that the idea of supporting my botanical art and handmade printmaking appeals to you.

I am also offering some tangible tokens of my appreciation for your support. These start at as little as $5.00.

For example, a $100 pledge gets you a phone session with me that you could use for Photoshop tutoring (or other subject of your choice). There are a limited number of $500 pledges that get you a numbered copy of Botanique (see the question below for more information about the availability and pricing of Botanique).

You’ll see a complete list of the rewards I am offering on the right side of my Kickstarter project page.

Q: What if I’d like an incentive I don’t see on your Kickstarter project page ?

Please contact me and we’ll see what we can arrange.

Q: How will the book be priced after the Kickstarter project?

We haven’t fully worked out the pricing of Botanique following the conclusion of the Kickstarter project—but you can be assured that we will never sell it for less than the pledge prices you’ll see on Kickstarter. As is customary in the art world, we intend to price earlier numbered copies lower than the later copies in the edition. Since the edition is strictly limited (to 25 numbered copies plus 5 artist copies) it is likely that the value will go up over time.

At this point, two copies have already been committed in exchange for a $500 pledge. Via Kickstarter, there are 8 more copies available at the $500 level, 5 copies at the $1,200 level, and 5 copies at the $1,750 level.

Q: When is the Kickstarter project over? 

The Harold Davis botanical art book Kickstarter project is over on Monday August 27, 2012 at 2:55PM EDT. If the funding goal ($3,000) has not been reached at that point, no money changes hands. If the funding goal has been met, then your credit card will be charged the amount you have pledged.

Q: When is my credit card charged?

Your credit card will be charged on August 27, provided that the funding goal has been met. Credit card payments are processed by Amazon.

Q: Does Kickstarter take a portion of the money I’ve pledged?

Kickstarter takes a 5% fee and Amazon Payments takes another 5% fee of all pledges that are paid for a project that has successfully funded.

Q: If I’ve sponsored you and am expecting a reward, how do I get my reward? Don’t you need my address?

Provided the project is funded, address information for each sponsor is provided to us, and we will ship your reward to you (with my heartfelt thanks!).

Q: What happens if your project raises more than the funding goal of $3,000?

It’s all good because there’s no limit to the amount a Kickstarter project can raise. Some Kickstarter projects do raise more than their initial goal, and I’m hoping that my project will be one of these success stories (we’re only a few days into the project and off to a good start already!).

Q: What about shipping rewards overseas?

The pledge amounts for the tangible awards are based on shipping within the continental United States. If you would like a reward shipped outside the continental United States please contact us for the additional shipping amount, and then add the additional shipping charge when you make your pledge.

Q: Where can I learn more about how Kickstarter works?

You can “dip your toe” into the Kickstarter universe by pledging a small amount to my project (or to someone else’s project). Here’s a short summary of how Kickstarter works, and a link to the Kickstarter FAQ.

I love to photograph dahlias—and, as I wrote in Photographing Flowers, it is “not for their good taste. Rather, I see these flowers as extravagant: wonderfully different from each other, and wild in their colors, shapes and exotic forms.”

Purple Dahlias © Harold Davis—Click to view larger

This time of year there are a great many dahlias to choose from, and it is great fun arranging and assembling them. I shot this image of purple dahlias intending it to look a bit like a botanical illustration as well as a photo—and thus to accompany Peonies mon amour, Red Poppies, Easter Lilies, Dahlias, and Gaillardia, and White Irises (among others!).

© Harold Davis

The Vertical Panoramic Format

I’ve been creating a number of horizontal floral panoramics, for example my Star Magnolia Panorama and Floral Tapestries, but this image, Peonies and Matilija Poppies, is my first high resolution vertical floral pieced together from more than one frame.

The horizontal format is much more typical than a vertical format when it comes to panoramas. Maybe this is because panning from left to right comes naturally, and up to down less so. Also maybe there aren’t that many spaces that lend themselves to a really tall vertical print.

Creating the Image

I shot the image in two frames straight down on a lightbox. The lighting comes from behind via the lightbox, and from in front using controlled natural lights and reflectors.

Each frame consists of ten exposures, with each exposure shot using a 40mm macro lens at f/14 and ISO 100. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/30 of a second for the darkest image to 5 seconds for the brightest image.

I combined the twenty exposures that went into this vertical panorama by first layering together each frame. I started with the brightest (5 second) exposure, and used layers, layer masks, and the Brush Tool in Photoshop to paint details in—with some assistance from  a layer constructed using Nik’s HDR Efex Photoshop plugin.

Once the top and the bottom of Peonies and Matilija Poppies had been combined I stitched the two panels together to construct the final image. I then placed the image in Photoshop on a scanned paper background, with some added texture on top of the final image.

Making a Print on Unryu

I shot this image at the same time as Peonies mon amour, and am only now getting around to processing it. Like Peonies mon amour, I think Peonies and Matilija Poppies will make a great print on Moenkopi Unryu Washi rice paper.

Please let me know what you think of this image. Click on the image or here to view it larger (opens in a second window).

This is an arrangement of Peonies, Hydrangeas, and Campanulas—mainly Peonies—arranged on my lightbox and shot straight down in pieces. Each piece was shot using high-key HDR, with ten bracketed exposures.

Peonies, Hydrangeas, and Campanulas © Harold Davis

I used Photoshop to stitch the pieces of this panorama together. Between all the HDR exposures to hand blend and the panoramic stitching, putting all the elements together took quite a bit of planning and work—at least one entire episode of Prairie Home Companion, and maybe two. Thanks, Garrison!

To finish the image, I added a background of scanned paper, and a warming texture.

Like Peonies mon amour, this image makes a great print on Moenkopi Unryu washi! I hate it when Peony season is over.

At this time of year some flowers are too special not to photograph. In that spirit, I’ve been having a great time the last few days photographing peonies. These flowers are unabashedly sensuous and over-the-top. Associated with healing in classical Greece, in Japan peonies became common on tattoos, along with koi fish, lions, and dragons—partially thanks to the illustrations of ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1862). In this context, peonies became associated as a symbol with hyper-masculinity and a disregard for consequences—which seems to me to be all wrong!

Peonies mon amour © Harold Davis

To create this image, I shot the peonies on a lightbox and combined five exposures using hand-layering (hand-HDR) in Photoshop.

My idea was to present the images as something like an old-fashioned botanical illustration, but created photographically. To enhance this look, I added a scanned background and a texture to the version of the flowers on white.

To print the Peonies mon amour image, I used Moenkopi Washi Unryu, which adds an exciting textural effect to the image and makes for a very interesting graphic.

Peonies on Unryu © Harold Davis

Odds and ends: You may have tried to reach this blog over the past few weeks and not been able to! Sorry about that. The problem was that I’ve been getting a great deal of traffic—which is mostly good news for me, but not when my webhost shuts me down without notice because I have too many readers. So I’ve migrated to WPEngine, a site that manages WordPress blogs in a scalable way, and promises never to shut me down because I am popular!

• Check out my new Macro Flower Photography: A Tutorial on Focus Stacking, now up on Photo.net. You can click here to see more of my Photo.net articles and columns.

The tulips were strongly backlit by the sun. The flowers were also swaying to and fro in a swift breeze. With my 200mm telephoto macro lens mounted on a tripod I shot this flower at a fast enough shutter speed (1/640 of a second) to stop the motion. My thought was to use the very distinctive natural lighting to create a flower composition that had echoes of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting.

Tulip © Harold Davis

Odds and ends:

• Interview with Harold Davis, Maestro of Flowers and Waterdrops is a new podcast on Pixiq. I actually enjoyed listening to myself and my refrain that “there are no rules”—maybe you will, too!
• We have room for only two more photographers one more photographer on our April, 2013 Photograph Paris with Harold Davis workshop. Besides shooting Paris at night, we will shoot Monet’s Gardens at Giverny, and work to emulate the monochromatic visions of Paris expressed by Brassai and Atget. Click here for workshop overview, complete trip itinerary, and online registration.
• There are a few places left in my weekend Macros, Close-Ups, and Flowers workshop coming up from Friday, June 1 through Sunday June 3, 2012, and hosted in the romantic Coastguard Boathouse on the western tip of Point Reyes, California. This workshop is given under the auspices of the Point Reyes Field Institute, and it is an absolutely unique opportunity in many ways. I should also point out that the workshop is extremely reasonably priced for the weekend (meals are potluck). Here’s the link for online registration.

Most photographers have bucket lists of things they’d like to photograph before they die. Flowering quince—because of the lushness of the blossoms contrasted with the sparseness of the stems–has long been on my bucket list of things I want to photograph before I “slip this mortal coil.”

I know that as “Bucket List” items go flowering quince isn’t all that dramatic—I have some dramatic bucket list items as well—but modest pleasures are important too.

What’s on your “bucket list”? Feel free to add a comment telling me what you’d like most to photograph!

Flowering Quince 1 © Harold Davis

You don’t see much flowering quince growing wild around here, and I’ve been loth to buy an expensive specimen from a florist. So I was pleased to find some intertwined with a chain link fence near Rosa Parks, the elementary school that Nicky and Mathew go to.

Someone must have planted the Quince a long time ago, but I don’t think anyone was really tending the Quince shrub. Nevertheless, in the interests of poetry and drama I treated snipping some stems as a matter of nighttime drive-by pruning, with the engine running and the minivan’s tailgate open.

From there, it was a matter of arrangement and backlit studio photography on my lightbox.

Flowering Quince 2 © Harold Davis

Checkout my work in the February 2012 New Releases (PDF) and January 2012 New Releases (PDF) fliers, both from World Art Group.