Glass Spiral, photo by Harold Davis.

The image above was shot through a magnifying lens straight down on a turned-over glass. You can see a bit more of the magnification in the shot below, showing various glass circles.

Both images used the post-production techniques I showed in Scabiosa Pods and Fern and HDR is technique, not style. Time permitting, more to come!

Glass Bead Game, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

One of the great things about the Crooked Creek Research Station, nestled high in a valley in a desert mountain range east of the Sierras in California, is the curatorial eye of Tim, the caretaker.

Tim collects interesting things, and leaves them around for one to look at, or to photograph. What more could a photography workshop ask for?

These glass beads were in a small, wooden box. I photographed them straight down in the shade of subdued natural lighting using my 200mm macro lens, and captured the full dynamic range of this macro subject using six exposures. Each exposure was at f/16 and ISO 100, with shutter speeds between 1/8 of a second and 20 seconds.

Red and Blue Splash, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a shot taken in Scott Dickson’s garage. In the grand tradition of American garage tinkerers, Scott has constructed a number of devices used to create stop-motion photos involving liquid. In some cases these gadgets were built using parts from toys his kids have discarded such as K’nex wheels.

To make this photo, the glasses were filled with colored water (using food coloring) and placed on a sliding table. When the table was released, it triggered a time delay circuit that then fired a strobe at the moment the table hit a barrier—which sent the liquid up in the air.

As in much of photography, timing is everything: if things were working as they were supposed to, the strobe fires just as the liquid flies, as in this photo.

Great fun indeed!

Compass Rose, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

A compass rose is a figure on a map or nautical chart used to display the orientation of the cardinal directions. You’ll find compass roses in functional devices such as, well, compasses—but also decorative compass roses have been around since the time of the Romans. Indeed, a beautiful compass rose helps give maps their visual allure.

I made this attempt at a compass rose from seashells, primarily two sea urchins and a marine gastropod. The gastropod was flipped horizontally and vertically to create the cardinal compass points. I then assembled the shells and their rotations in Photoshop on layers.

Hot Bouquet, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The morning has some real autumnal crispness, and there was frost on the ground when I walked the boys to the school bus stop—unusual for coastal California. So if you want to imagine feeling hot by comparision with the weather outdoors, consider taking a bite of one of these babies. Photographed with my 85mm perspective-correcting macro on a mirror with a black velvet background. And best wishes staying if not hot, then at least warm!

Boathouse Still Life, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The Workshop Gods were with me last weekend. The weather was stunning, never to be taken for granted on the tip of Point Reyes, and the spring wild flowers were lucious. The participants were strong photographers, and a socially compatible group—neither of which is a workshop given.

This workshop covered both improvised still life photography, like the grass in a vase shown against the background of the old Coastguard boathouse. The photo above is an example of simple still life photography using natural light and based on observation and placement, with beautiful afternoon sun coming through an antique window angled into a dusty room.

In terms of the outdoor macro flower photography—it was hard to miss with the carpets of flowers in a majestic landscape of rugged cliffs and ocean.

View this image larger.

Seven Peaches, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I like the comment on Flickr, where I originally posted this photo a few months back: “Yep…seven. I checked.”

Let’s hear it for literalism, an often overlooked and powerful way of thinking that goes against the prevailing tide of metaphoric mysticism that tends to inform art and photography!

I photographed the seven peaches on my garage floor using natural light with a white board to bounce some extra light into the peaches using my Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro lens at 1/20 of a second and f/11, ISO 100, tripod mounted. For once, there’s very little post-processing here.