Monthly Archives: May 2016

What’s it like to join a Harold Davis Destination Photo Workshop?

May 30, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Want to see what joining a Harold Davis destination photography workshop is like? Check out this wonderful PDF book by Romantic Southwest of France participant Katie Kutschinski (thanks Katie!!!). It’s the next best thing to being there.

Mas de Garrigue © Harold Davis

Upcoming trip: Please consider joining us for a magnificent destination photography week in Venice, Italy this October. Click here for more info.

Stay tuned! We’re planning one or two very special destination travel workshops for 2017. As these plans move towards reality, they will be posted on my Workshops & Events page—or you can subscribe to my email list or blog for notifications.

Posted in Workshops

Succulent from our Garden

May 29, 2016 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

Succulent from our Garden © Harold Davis

Fortunately, this succulent was in a planter so I could bring it indoors and out of the wind to photograph. 85mm macro, nine exposures at shutter speeds from 1/4 of a second to 2 minutes, each exposure at f/64 and ISO 100; tripod mounted; processed and converted to black and white in Adobe Camera RAW, Photoshop, Nik HDR Efex Pro, and Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Posted in Monochrome

Peonies

May 28, 2016 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

Peonies on Black © Harold Davis

Peonies on a Scanned Paper Background © Harold Davis

Peonies on White © Harold Davis

Peonies on White (bottom) is a photo composite created from 18 individual 36MP captures on a light box photographed for transparency. Peonies on Black (top) is an LAB L-channel adjustment (an inversion) of the image on white. Peonies on a Scanned Paper Background (middle) shows the white version added to a background that was created by scanning a somewhat aged sheet of paper..

Posted in Flowers

Old Train Bridge near Calvignac, France

May 27, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I clambered up the steep embankment, and followed the faint path that ducked under the barbed-wire fence. Once on the train tracks, I headed onto the old bridge across the Lot River rural France.

Old Train Bridge near Calvignac, France © Harold Davis

Clearly, these tracks weren’t in use. Still, there’s something about being planted squarely in the middle of train tracks on an old, rusty bridge high above a rushing river that gets the blood flowing (almost as fast as the water below)!

Old Train Bridge near Calvignac, France (Black & White) © Harold Davis

Old Train Bridge (Black & White) © Harold Davis

Zeiss 35mm lens at f/16 and ISO 100, ten exposures at shutter speeds from 0.4 of a second to 1/500 of a second, tripod mounted. Processed in Adobe Camera RAW, Bik HDR Efex Pro, and Photoshop. Black and white conversion using Photoshop, Nik Silver Efex Pro, and Perfect B&W.

Related image: Old Train Bridge, Maine.

Posted in France, HDR, Monochrome

Flowers at Monet’s Giverny and at Home

May 26, 2016 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

Willow Reflections, Giverny © Harold Davis

Scarab of Flowers © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Nocturnes Exhibition and Competition at the Southeast Center for Photography

May 25, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I am the juror for Nocturnes a competition and exhibition based around night photography at the Southeast Center for Photography.

Here’s the description: A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. Enter your best photos that express the poetry of the night referentially in visual symbolism. Show us you night images, your light painting talents. Imagery should be evocative of the night and our human relationship to nocturnal darkness. Structures are okay, as is the urban landscape. It’s fine to include celestial features such as star trails or the Milky Way, but images should include terrestrial markings as well; this will be an exhibition about the human relationship, and feelings about the night.

Submissions close on June 5, 2016. Click here for the prospectus for the competition and exhibition.

Edge of Night © Harold Davis

Posted in Digital Night, Photography, Workshops

Nanzenji Aqueduct

May 24, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Nanzenji is one of the Five Great Zen Temples of Kyoto, Japan. Wandering through the grounds at Nanzenji, I came across a huge red brick aqueduct, built in the 19th century, and designed to carry water to Kyoto from Lake Biwa (it is still in use today). The mammoth nature of this structure seemed incredibly interesting to me, so I moved underneath the aqueduct with my camera and tripod to capture its supports, which seemed oddly out of place, almost like an ancient Roman engineering project in the heart of Japanese Zen.

This image is brought to mind because it is one of the illustrations in my new book The Photographer’s Black & White Handbook, which will be published by Monacelli Press.

Under the Aqueduct at Nanzenji © Harold Davis

28mm, 4/5 of a second at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted; processed in Photoshop, and converted to black and white in Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Click here for more blog stories about Japan.

Related image: Under the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

Posted in Japan, Monochrome

Monet’s Garden

May 23, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Two more from Giverny via my iPhone and the Waterlogue app:

Giverny on my iPhone © Harold Davis

Monet’s Garden © Harold Davis

Posted in France, iPhone

Morning Mist

May 21, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Morning Mist © Harold Davis

In the early morning in the Lot River Valley fog follows the course of the river, shown here behind a stand of trees and in front of the cliffs on the far side of the valley.

Posted in France, Landscape, Photography

Country Rainbow

May 20, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

To paraphrase Ansel Adams, if you don’t go out in the rain, you will never get to photograph the clearing storm. As I explored the ancient town of Cordes sur Ciel, it began to rain. I pulled out my rain gear and continued up to the highest battlement. From the top of the fortifications, a rainbow spread out over the countryside of southwest France below me.

Country Rainbow © Harold Davis

Posted in France, Landscape, Photography

Gourds

May 18, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I realize that I never blogged this iPhone image of gourds, which I rather like. It was photographed locally at the wonderful Berkeley Bowl produce market. I processed in on my phone in the Snapseed app.

Posted in iPhone, Monochrome

Echinacea Peeking

May 17, 2016 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

I photographed this echinacea (cone flower) peeking through the translucent white rose petals shown in Back to the Flowers with my 200mm telephoto macro lens and a 12mm extension tube. The settings were twenty seconds at f/40 and ISO 100, of course using a tripod.

Posted in France, Photography

Venice Destination Photo Workshop Rescheduled

May 15, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

We’ve rescheduled the Photograph Venice with Harold Davis destination photo workshop. The new dates are October 23-29, 2016. Click here for details. Please let us know if you would like to join us in Venice!

Destination Workshop Description: Venice is the largest preserved antique city in Europe, and possibly the world. Extravagant, decadent, charming with ever-changing light, Venice is a photographer’s delight with its fairy-tale canals and endless maze of footpaths and bridges.

Join acclaimed photographer Harold Davis for the experience of a lifetime exploring and photographing La Serenissima, the most serene and exciting Republic of Venice. There you’ll have the opportunity to experience firsthand the places and sights that have inspired artists for centuries.

We’ll focus our lenses on canals, reflections, and the infinite wonder found around every corner in Venice. There will be special emphasis on techniques for impressionistic rendering, and several sessions will be held to teach the related post-production techniques, as well as how best to use an iPhone camera in Venice.

Click here to learn more!

Posted in Workshops

Remains of the Clematis

May 15, 2016 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

What happens when the bloom on the clematis fades? When the leaves fall off, and all that is left is the wabi-sabi of the central flower core?

Shown here photographed on a light box, in Photoshop converted to monochromatic, and duplicated—with the duplicate L-channel inverted in LAB color to substitute white for black, and black for white.

Posted in Flowers, Monochrome, Photography

Back to the Flowers

May 14, 2016 by Harold Davis | 5 Comments

I’ve been in Europe (rural southwestern France, and then Paris) for most of the past month, which has blissfully enabled me to avoid American politics. Except when I admitted to someone that I was American, in which case loud laughter and pointing commenced. Followed (after the second bottle of wine) by the lachrymose admission that things were just as bad locally.

So coming home I do feel that I’ve slipped into Bad Biff’s alternative universe in Back to the Future Part II, with he-who-shall-not-be-named all too likely to become our new overlord. The only defense to this mass insanity is to practice Back to the Flowers as a viable alternative to Back to the Future.

Posted in Flowers, Photography