Monthly Archives: December 2008

Grandparents Holding Katie Rose

December 17, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Grandparents Holding Katie Rose, photo by Harold Davis.

In this photo, Katie Rose’s Grandpa Martin and Grandma Virginia hold her. Katie Rose is wearing a smile and a tunic that her grandma brought back from Uzbekistan.

Posted in Katie Rose, Kids, Photography

Seasons Greetings!

December 17, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Seasons Greetings!, photo by Harold Davis.

Katie Rose is living proof that miracles do happen. May your new year be joyful, quietly miraculous, and full of grace.

Here’s some information about how I made this image and a related low light, high ISO photo of Katie Rose.

Posted in Photography

Morning in the Foothills

December 16, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

From time to time I repost from my archives. This is a reposting of a photo and the related story originally published in September 2006.

Morning in the Foothills, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

Early in the morning of a chill day in February, Julian and I found ourselves along Route 49 just south of Jamestown, California in the western foothills of the Sierra. Later in the day, we would encounter a blizzard in the mountains, but that was still in the future. For now, all I knew was that the clearing morning fog looked like it should make for great atmospheric photos.

I was disappointed to find that the photos of the lifting morning clouds didn’t live up to my hopes because they lacked contrast and color. This one was salvaged using multiple layers, each of which consisted of a different RAW exposure. There are three layers involved, one for the foreground, one for the middle areas (the trees and some hills), and one for the fog and clouds (and hills in the distance).

Posted in Landscape, Photography, Photoshop Techniques

Miracle of Light

December 14, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Miracle of Light, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

It was a chilly (for the Bay area) December afternoon with intermittent squalls of rain. Around 3:30PM I drove to Inspiration Point in Tilden Park. I dressed in several layers of wool and a down jacket. With about thirty pounds of camera gear on my back I headed for Wildcat Peak.

I got to the summit in good time, about half an hour before sunset. There was a chill and moist wind blowing, so I bundled up. I was ready with camera, tripod, and long lens as the sun sank behind the Golden Gate Bridge. After a brief moment showing the miracle of light, the sun disappeared into a fog bank, and all was cold, dark, and gray. I made the trek home bundled in my balaclava as one by one the stars came out.

[Nikon D300, 70-200mm VR zoom lens, TC20E extender, effective focal length 280mm (420mm in 35mm terms), 1/1250 of a second at ISO 100 and f/14, tripod mounted.]

Posted in Photography, San Francisco Area, Tilden Park

Speaking in Tongues

December 14, 2008 by Harold Davis | 3 Comments

Speaking in Tongues, photo by Harold Davis.

Katie Rose sometimes explores by sticking her tongue out, for all the world like a baby snake tasting her world. In the unfamiliar environment of the conference room at March of Dimes in San Francisco, she tested the atmosphere with her tongue. Her mom went along and mugged for my camera.

Thanks to my beautiful spouse for her forbearance when I publish photos like these.

Below, Katie Rose explains to the good people at March of Dimes what life is like for a preemie graduate of the NICU.

Posted in Bemusements, Katie Rose, Kids

Flowers on Ebony and Ivory

December 13, 2008 by Harold Davis | 2 Comments

I’ve been photographing flowers for transparency the last few days, and processing them to appear on black and white backgrounds. The trick here is lighting, photography, and Photoshop: so three disciplines combine.

View this image larger.

In terms of lighting, you want a high key setup with strong backlighting. The exposure histogram should be biased to the right, implying nominal overexposure.

To put the flower on a black background, I convert to LAB color, and invert the L channel. I then adjust the colors and channels to create a pleasing effect.

View this image larger.

For the Fourth of July Rose below I used the lighting setup described in One-Off. This was an HDR image in the sense that I shot a number of different exposures, with the darkest more or less what the light meter liked. I started with the lightest exposure, and used layer masking to build up the final image.

View this image larger.

Posted in Bemusements, Flowers, Photography, Photoshop Techniques

Impossible Images

December 10, 2008 by Harold Davis | 9 Comments

Variety is the spice of life, and it is certainly part of what I enjoy about photography. Having a camera is an excuse for being anywhere and examining anything. Those of you who follow my blog or my photostream on Flickr will know that my subjects range from kids and flowers through the night landscape. I’m also intrigued with the idea of extending photography via software manipulation to create images of the impossible.

I’m pleased to announce that Spirals, one of my images of the impossible, has won a place in the prestigious MacWorld 2009 digital imaging exhibition.

View this image larger.

The image may be impossible, but it should not be implausible. To achieve this sleight of eye requires, as artist M.C. Escher put it, “deception.” Plausible impossibility tends to the opposite of plausible deniability: until you look very carefully it just might be for real, but it’s clearly imaginary if you give it thought.

My favorite impossible images often involve twisting stairs like Calling Alice (below) or infinite progressions to an impossible vanishing point, like World without End (far below).

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In the photocomposition below, I sandwiched larger and smaller versions of the progression of doors together to make an apparently endless series. The doors do go on to the bitter end, namely the single pixel level.

View this image larger.

Posted in Photography

Night Photography Webcast

December 9, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Here’s the replay of my recent Secrets of Digital Night webcast. Enjoy!

If you can’t see this video, click here to view it on YouTube.

Posted in Photography

Calling Alice

December 8, 2008 by Harold Davis | 2 Comments

Alice followed the White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and found a weird world of inexplicable twists and turns. Besides Alice and Lewis Carroll, this twisting photocomposition is in part homage to the work of M.C. Escher, whom I’ve been studying lately.

Getting the size right wasn’t so hard for Alice; as Jefferson Airplane put it, she had one pill to make her small, and another to make her large again. But getting the geometry of curvature right as Escher did is no trivial feat. This stuff takes visual and mental gymnastics.

View this image larger.

You have to start someplace, and I started with this shot of stairs in San Francisco’s Embarcadero complex. The Photoshop gyrations are a bit too complex to explain in gory detail, but mostly it’s an issue of blending the original image with portions of rotated and resized versions of itself. Finally, to give an added splash of vertigo, I turned the whole composition upside down.

The image is best viewed larger. Enjoy!

Related images: Spirals (this photocomposition has been selected for exhibit at MacWorld 2009); Resistance to Spirals Is Futile, made from the same base photo as this one.

Posted in Bemusements, Photography, Photoshop Techniques

One-Off

December 8, 2008 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

Transparent Lily, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

The bunch of pink Asiatic lilies I got at Trader Joes had one white bud. Almost transulucent, with pink veins, it called out to the photographer in me.

I set the lily on a mirror, put an overhead difuse light above it, and rigged some reflections for highlights. Then I had a grand old time bracketing to extend the dynamic range of the image, but starting with what my camera thought was an overexposure. To get that transparent effect, you really want to bang the histogram to the right.

When it was all over, I inverted the luminance information in LAB color to get the effect below. If one lily is nice, then two are twice as much fun!

This is more or less the same technique I used recently on some Papaver (poppy) buds, treated for transparency. I like the way the poppies came out a bit better, but the glossy transparent look here is really a one-off, and has some charms of its own.

View this image larger.

Posted in Photography

Baby Face

December 8, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Baby Face, photo by Harold Davis.

I photographed Katie Rose straight down on our bed (below). Since she can’t roll over yet, this is a pretty safe place to put her down. I stood on the bed over her taking her portrait, then got in close for a head shot.

I love it when she smiles at me, as she often does. When I look in those baby blues, her spirit and intelligence are plain for me to see. Katie Rose is living evidence that miracles do happen.

Posted in Katie Rose, Kids

Picking Up Big Brothers

December 6, 2008 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Picking Up Big Brothers, photo by Harold Davis.

In this snapshot, Katie Rose is in her carriage on her way to pick up big brothers Julian, Nicky, and Mathew.

Lest we forget.

Posted in Katie Rose, Kids

Meditations on Transparency

December 5, 2008 by Harold Davis | 3 Comments

Transparency on Black, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Transparency is good in many things: political processes, business contracts, lingerie, and (of course) flower petals.

The more it seems that I can almost see through these petals:
The more I want to see through them,
The more I want to look,
The more I want to see,
The more I want.