At the Brasserie where I had a late lunch of poached salmon and ratatouille after flying in from Madrid to Toulouse, I saw these blue bottles lined up on the bar with nice cross-lighting. On my way out I snapped a photo with my iPhone, and later processed the image in Plastic Bullet, Waterlogue, Snapseed, and ImageBlender.

Blue Bottles © Harold Davis

I got into Madrid this morning about 10AM, and with my door-to-door transit time approaching 24 hours, and the +9 hours time zone shift, I am definitely feeling asleep on my feet despite a few hours of sleep on the flight from Newark to Madrid. Still, I managed to get out and explore parts of this vibrant and exciting city earlier today with my camera. Now the task is to stay awake until dinner!

The upper image shows a statue in the Plaza Mayor, with the exterior covered with laminated postage stamps. The location is appropriate, because the Plaze Mayor is used to this day as a periodic open-air market for philately enthusiasts.

The lower image was taken with my iPhone, and processed in the Waterlogue and ImageBlender apps. The door shown is around the corner from my hotel on the Gran Via.

Stamp Woman © Harold Davis

Door in Madrid © Harold Davis

Fly Day © Harold Davis

In about a week I’ll be leaving on a jet plane, and resuming the life of a peripatetic photographer after several months as a “homebody”. I am looking forward very much to my trip and new adventures, but also I will miss my family, home, and the great time I have photographing flowers (and weeds) in and around our garden. It’s all good!

On this voyage, I’ll first be headed to Madrid, then to the southwest of France, where I lead a group of friends who are photographers in the Lot River Valley. Next, I’ll be spending some time on my own hiking the world-famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail. Finally, I’ll join PhotoPills as an instructor for their annual camp in Menorca.

If you are interested in joining me on a photographic adventure, there is still space available in November’s Days and Knights of Malta. 

The early-bird discount for the 2019 Spring in Paris (with Monet’s garden at Giverny) ends June 1, 2018.

There is also some space availability in the following 2018 photography workshops I am leading:

• Capturing the Great Gardens of Maine (August 5-11, 2018 at Maine Media Workshops)
• Black & White Photography (August 17-18 at Heidelberg Summer School of Photography)
• Night & Low Light (August 19-20 at Heidelberg Summer School of Photography)
• Dark of the Moon Night Photography in the Eastern Sierras (September 7-10, 2018)

You can find my upcoming Workshops & Events on this page. For reasons I explain in this blog story I am no longer on Facebook, but I’ll try to keep blogging—of course, my rate of posting will likely slow down when I am “on the road”!—and to post images on my Flickr and Instagram streams as I go.

May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks!

Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

These images show common street grass stalks, probably in the Digitaria family, and most likely a variety of “crabgrass” (any botanists care to weigh in on this?).

I harvested the street grasses from cracks in the pavement, and from a clump beside the sidewalk.

These plants of course are not normally cultivated, and in fact are hunted and eradicated as weeds. Which goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and also that one person’s weed is another person’s photographic subject!

Street Grasses Inverted on Black © Harold Davis

Street Grasses on a Paper Background © Harold Davis

Related images: Decorative Grasses and Blades of Grass.

In September 2013 I spent a night in the guest cottage of famed photographer Edward Weston’s house at Wildcat Hill along the Big Sur coast, following a workshop I gave in Carmel, California. The gracious hosts, Kim and Gina Weston, rent the cottage as an occasional retreat, and it was like spending the evening in a museum. In the morning, I roamed the grounds with my camera.

Edward Weston’s Kitchen © Harold Davis

As a photographic hero of mine, I perhaps should have tried to emulate Weston’s wonderful monochromatic imagery in his own house. Instead, this rather colorful image of the Weston kitchen is what I came up with!

You can read more about my stay at the Weston house in the original blog story that I wrote contemporaneously with my visit.

Early this morning I came downstairs in my pajamas and found myself face-to-face with this wasp, somnolent before the heat of the day. I pulled some close-up gear together, and got down face-to-face and jowl-to-proboscis to eyeball her ladyship. Glad am I that our relative sizes are not reversed, as She is a formidable looking creature indeed!

I Wasp Eye © Harold Davis

In 2005, towards the beginning of my career in digital photography (for more about my roundabout route back into digital photography, check out Behind the Lens with Harold Davis on the Topaz Labs Blog), I climbed an unsteady stack of diaper cartons to photograph another sleepy wasp on our living room ceiling. (You can see the rinky-dink-and-possibly-dangerous setup in the linked story.)

The 2005 Wasp has been a surprise hit on the image licensing circuit. Special thanks to Pixsy for helping to protect this image from unauthorized use. Of course, my hope is that my more modern wasp will also be popular (for authorized use only)!