Photoblog 2.0

Getting the Drop, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll know that I’ve been photographing water drops. And that for me, each water drop is a world, as Blake put it, in a grain of sand. (Here’s a fairly complete selection of my water drop photos on Flickr.)

The two photos in this story are among my favorites of my recent water drop worlds. Everything seems to come together in the photograph of a single drop above: sharp focus on the drop, a nice sunburst, and a nice inner world showing the white Scabiosa atropurnea (”Snow Maiden”) that hosts the water drops and shows drops within the drop.

The photograph below shows a cosmos full of water drops, each caught by the thin filament of a spider’s web, and on and on into an apparent infinity.

Both photographs were captured with the same gear, and roughly the same setup. That is, my wonderful Nikon D200, my stupendous Nikkor 200mm f/4 macro lens, a 36mm extension tube and a +4 diopter close-up filter, mirror lockup, and a remote trigger. The single drop (above) was exposed at f/36 for 0.2 of a second, and the multiple drops (below) at f/40 and 0.8 of a second (both ISO 100).

To digress for a second, the 200mm f/4 Nikkor macro is as heavy as big telephoto lens (which it kind of is at 300mm 35mm equivalence). One of the things about it that really makes my life easier is the built-in tripod collar. The tripod collar lets me shift the center of gravity forward on the tripod (by mounted the lens rather than the camera). It also lets me change the orientation of the photograph by loosening the screw that holds the collar in place and rotating the lens. Meaning that I don’t have to move the camera at all. A big, expensive, special purpose lens. But well worth the price if you do much macro work.

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Hawk Feather, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

Phyllis and I left the kids with Rachel on Sunday and went for a hike in Tilden Park. We found this tail feather (I think it is from a hawk) on one of the ridges.

When I brought it home, I beamed light through the feather to bring out its colors and translucency. Then I photographed the feather extremely close-up.

Here’s another feather I photographed up close (click here for the original story about the feather):

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Web-a-licious, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

Compositionally, a photograph without a central item of particular interest can work when the photo is about a distinctive pattern. The scale of the pattern doesn’t really matter. Macro patterns (like the water drops on a spider web above) or trees on a snow-covered cliff in Yosemite’s winter (below) can be interesting.

Provided the pattern provides variety as well as homogeneity. And that the photograph has enough resolution so that the water drops or cliff side can really be scrutinized. With this kind of photograph, the viewer wants to believe it might be possible to delve into the pattern closer and closer without ever disrupting the suspension of disbelief.

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Echinacea Harvest Moon, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

I have been growing echinacea—also called coneflowers—in my garden because they are so spectacular to photograph. This one is the first of my Harvest Moons—a designer flower bred by Richard Saul specifically for its looks. Creating varieties of flowers based on their appearance brings up a number of issues, including the one raised by Michael Pollan in his Botany of Desire: we think we are forming the flowers, but are they really controlling our behavior to their own benefit? This is comparable to wondering whether the beautiful gold digger or the rich old dude gets the better deal. (You can read more about Richard Saul and his beautiful new echinacea varieties here).

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Blind Shadow, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

The late afternoon sun streams in strongly through my windows that face northwest at this time of year. I shut my Venetian blinds and then pull the curtains across. Otherwise, the light is just too strong. Although it has been ten years since I lived in the east, the western Pacific sun still surprises me with its brightness and heat.

In an hour or so, I’ll be able to open the windows again. In the meantime, this shadow of the blind against the curtain, with its suggestion of three dimensionality, intrigues me.

Flowering Yucca, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

Driving down the dramatic road from Grant Grove into Kings Canyon, Julian and I descended through a gentle but steady rain. Above the confluence of the middle and southern fork of the Kings River we saw this flowering Yucca. It stood maybe twelve feet tall, decked with drops of water from the rain, over the edge of the immensity of the landcape. I mounted my camera on my tripod, as best I could sheltered it from the rain, and snapped this photo from the edge of the road with a telephoto lens.

Worlds without End, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

Everytime I point my lens at water drops on a spider web, I think of worlds within worlds and the multiplicity of possible worlds that there might be. I took this photo today while on break from other (less fun) pursuits near the side of our house. Well, from debugging code if you must know.

The image reminds me of an earlier photo of mine of water drops and a web.

Waves on the Shore, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

The waves on the shore make a pattern like lace or some wonderful texture. Julian and I visited this lonely coast out at the end of Point Reyes, the most western point of land in the continental United States, last week. He was on spring break, and we took advantage of the one clear day to hike the Chimney Rock trail. Here’s a view that shows more of the landscape:

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Morning Merced Ice, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

If everything has embedded within it an opposite and contrary self, then this ice must contain fire at the core.

I found the ice along the banks of the Merced River in Yosemite Valley–unable to make up its mind to be winter or spring with a cold wind fighting the warm early spring sun.

Blue Feather, Boulder, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

I found this beautiful blue feather on a rather grubby street corner of Boulder, Colorado. Across from the ritzy hotel where our publisher put us up, this street corner seemed to be the kind of place that homeless people would congregate. But probably Boulder doesn’t have homeless people, it seems very white-bread and homogenous. (Boulderites reading this, please feel free to correct my impression. If anyone can identify the bird from the feather, I’d also appreciate that!)

The ambient light on the feather was great just where it was, so I got down on the sidewalk with my tripod and macro rig and started photographing. Passersby looked at my oddly, but the only technical hitch was that the feather kept wanting to blow away.

This feather was so beautiful that I decided to take it home, and put it in my luggage. Unfortunately, the FAA went thoroughly through my suitcase. In the process, my beautiful feather must have fluttered away, to grace some security station in Albuquerque or Denver airports forever.

Someone commented about my Horsetail Falls photos that in thumbnail they look like feathers. Well, here’s a real feather to match!

Stars Like Diamonds, photo by Harold Davis. View this photomacrograph larger.

Yesterday after the rain had ended I went out with my rig. I stopped along the outer fence of our garden, captivated by these drops of water caught in a spider web. The water drops reflect their environment, sunshine, and (in some cases) my camera and tripod. Hint: you have to look really closely to see me.

I think these myriad drops of water look like sculptured jewels or stars in the sky. In other words, irredeemably beautiful, vast, and special.

Photos taken with my 105mm macro lens, 68mm of extension tubes, a +4 close-up filter, ISO 200, f/36, and about 0.3 of a second. The big capture challenges: micro focusing, and movement of the spider web in the wind.

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Falling, photo by Harold Davis. View photo larger.

It rained last night. Between dropping the kids off at school and getting ready to go across the Bay to MacWorld, I noticed these beautiful drops in the garden.

I was dressed in my presentation clothes–not that these are much, in this case a pair of clean pants and a Lens Baby T-shirt that I won as my honarable mention prize in the Lens Baby macro contest. Keeping reasonably presentable, a contradiction with down and dirty photography, was on my mind. (Here’s my honorable-mention winning photo.)

To start with, I took out my new water-proof toy, which can kind of be used casually (and of course all the wetness didn’t matter to it). But using it felt a bit removed from the water drops, and I couldn’t get in close enough with precision.

So I trotted out the classic macro technology, the D70 on a tripod stopped way down with long exposures and my 105mm macro lens with 68mm of stacked extension tubes. What fun!

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Guzmania 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

I’ve photographed this bromeliad flower (it is a Guzmania hybrid) over the last couple of days at Berkeley Hort. The people at Berkeley Hort are very nice to me when I am photographing: thanks, Berkeley Hort!

The pattern of the photo above reminds me of an abstract landscape like might be used to illustrate Big Rock Candy Mountains. (Click here for the words and lyrics.) The song was part of the soundtrack for the film O Brother Where Art Thou.

This photo, taken with my toy Pentax Option WPi, gives you a better idea of the context of this fantastic flower:

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Here’s another view somewhere between the extreme close-up of the first photo, but not as broad as the second:

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Saguaro Pattern, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

Way out in the desert where saguaros reach to heaven
lived a mother jackrabbit and her little jacks seven.
“Snuggle!” said the mother. “We snuggle!” said the seven,
so they snuggled all night where saguaros reach to heaven.

–from Way Out in the Desert, a book my kids enjoy.

In Arizona there are plenty of saguaros rising to heaven, and not just in the desert. I find these cacti an irresistible subject!

These saguaros are home to birds and animals:

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Up close, they are really formidable (or else look like a map of a very foreign country):

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They bear witness as construction turns the desert into gated suburbs:

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Most of all, these saguaros do their job–reaching for heaven:

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Passiflora Water Drops, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

I was really excited when photographing the passion flower near Sean, Robin, and Keara’s front door to look closely at the pattern of water drops.

This photo, taken with my 105mm Nikkor macro and a 36mm Kenko extension tube, seems to show the world in the refelection in the lower left water drop. I also like the light on the water drop on the extreme left of the leaf: white against white.

This is a very different approach from the intentionally soft focus Lens Baby images I’ve been playing a lot with lately!