Monthly Archives: August 2016

Pre-order Photographer’s Black and White Handbook

Please consider pre-ordering my new book from The Monacelli Press. My book is The Photographer’s Black & White Handbook: Making and Processing Stunning Digital Black and White Photos. It’s also available for pre-order on Amazon. We have been working extremely hard on this book, with much thought, photography, and experimental monochromatic processing over the past several years, and it is truly exciting for me as it gets published!

9781580934787

Book description: You’ll find inspiration, ideas, techniques, and tools to use in your black and white photography, along with a soup-to-nuts workflow to take you from black and white pre-visualization through capture and post-production. Along the way you will lean over Harold’s shoulder as he travels to exciting photo destinations and creates stunning black and white imagery, explaining his creative and technical processes as he goes.

Photograph in Black & White with me: If you are interested in black & white, why not consider Black & White in San Francisco: A Weekend Workshop with Harold Davis? The dates of this workshop are Nov 19-20, 2016.

Where could be more fun to photograph in black and white than the southwest of France? If this intrigues you, please check out our April, 2017 guided destination photography workshop to rural France. Click here for the Prospectus, and here for the Reservation form.

If not now, when?

Harold Davis - 2017 Destination photo workshop to southwestern France

Related stories: Explore Bordeaux, Perigord, and the Dorodgne with Harold Davis; Handsome Gargoyle Devil and the Pinhole Effect; Black & White in San Francisco; Rooftops of Paris—Split-Toned VersionTraveling France with Harold (PDF download).

Posted in Workshops, Writing

Rooftops of the 5th arrondissement

You’ve got to love the roofs of Paris for their variety, antiquity, and the sheer wackiness of the patterns they create!

I made this pair of images, shown here in color and black & white, in Paris this spring on a bright day with my Zeiss 135mm telephoto shooting hand held at a very fast shutter speed (1/8000 of a second) and intentionally underexposed by about 3 EVs to get more contrast. When I enlarge the images and zoom in, I can see an incredible array of details!

Some related stories and images: Rooftops of Paris (Split Toned); Manarola and the Rooftops of Paris.

Rooftops of the 5th arrondissement © Harold Davis

Rooftops of the 5th arrondissement © Harold Davis

Posted in Paris, Patterns

Purple Dahlia

In what is almost a starfish of the land, this purple Dahlia is wonderfully asymmetric and spiral-like. Related image: Dahlia.

Purple Dahlia © Harold Davis

Purple Dahlia © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Metamorphosis

This is a single in-camera multiple exposure, photographed at a variety of focal lengths. The model is Sera Ferron, who you can also see in Three Poses and a Two-Fer and Fight Off Your Demons.

Metamorphosis © Harold Davis

Metamorphosis © Harold Davis

Related image (and technique): Obeisance.

Posted in Models, Multiple Exposures, Photography

Stonington Harbor, Maine

When you saw the title of this blog story, I’ll bet you thought it would be illustrated with images of picturesque lobster boats, lobster traps, and so on. Well, there are plenty of those in Stonington, at the foot of Deer Isle, facing Penobscot Bay.

Stonington Harbor © Harold Davis

Stonington Harbor © Harold Davis

Stonington is a true working harbor, and a little off the beaten track of tourists to Acadia National Park, with an industrial-scale lobster operation. At dusk, when the tide was low, I wandered some of the rundown piers, and admired the still reflections in the waters of the Atlantic.

Pier, Stonington Harbor © Harold Davis

Pier, Stonington Harbor © Harold Davis

Setting up my tripod amid tall grass and old lobster traps, I ignored the mosquitoes buzzing my ankles, and focused on the pilings and stone walls across the inlet from Stonington’s commercial fishing pier.

Posted in Monochrome, Photography

Infinite Repeating Flower Pattern

© Harold Davis

Repeating Flower Pattern - Proof of Concept

Repeating Flower Pattern - Proof of Concept

Top: Photographed on a light box (FAQ, Workshops); composited with flipped mirror of itself twice to create repeating, infinite pattern. Bottom two: LAB inversions (webinar recording).

Posted in Photography

Two iPhone Floras

Succulent

Succulent © Harold Davis

Air plant

Air plant © Harold Davis

Posted in iPhone, Photography

Dahlia Petals

Yesterday I photographed my dahlias on a literal table (the term “table-top photography” can sometimes be a bit figurative), using sunlight, a telephoto macro lens, and a low-to-the-ground tripod to make portraits of the petals.

Dahlia Petals Purple © Harold Davis

Dahlia Petals Purple © Harold Davis

Dahlia Petals Red Yellow © Harold Davis

Dahlia Petals Red Yellow © Harold Davis

Dance of the Seven Dahlia Petals © Harold Davis

Dance of the Seven Dahlia Petals © Harold Davis

Are you an experienced photographer who enjoys photographing flowers? If so, you might consider my Flower Photography Intensive: 4-Day Masterclass in Flower Photography, scheduled for June 2017 in Berkeley, CA. We will explore some of the advanced nuances of light box photography for floral transparency, and work on flower photography in the field and studio. Click here for more information and registration.

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Spring 2017 Destination Photo Workshop to France: early-bird discount ends soon

We have only a few spaces left in our exclusive small-group destination photo workshop to southwestern France April 22-30, 2017. $500 early-registration discount ends August 31. What are you waiting for? Click here for the Prospectus, and here for the Reservation form.

Harold Davis - 2017 Destination photo workshop to southwestern France

Posted in Workshops

Rockland Breakwater

The Rockland, Maine breakwater is a loosely laid wall of large granite rocks that protects Rockland harbor, and stretches about a mile out to a lighthouse. The photo below shows the breakwater in its causeway aspect, while I used the motion of the waves on a float anchored to the causeway and a longish time exposure (two minutes) to create the still water effect in the image shown underneath.

Rockland Breakwater 1 © Harold Davis

Rockland Breakwater 1 © Harold Davis

Rockland Breakwater 2 © Harold Davis

Rockland Breakwater 2 © Harold Davis

Posted in Landscape, Monochrome, Photography

Dahlia

It’s great to be home and back with my family. I got back late last night, and spent the day catching up with correspondence and projects, and getting reacquainted with some deadlines. But I did take a little time out to photograph some beautiful dahlias.

Dahlia © Harold Davis

Dahlia © Harold Davis

The flower shown here was photographed on a black velvet background with my Nikon D810, the 85mm f/1.4 Zeiss Otus with a 12mm extension tube, at one second, f/16, ISO 64, using a tripod. The flower was illuminated with natural light, meaning cloudy but bright sunlight. I processed the image in Adobe Camera RAW, and made a few adjustments in Photoshop.

Posted in Flowers

Penobscot Crossing

The observatory at the top of the bridge across the Penobscot Narrows bills itself as the highest bridge observatory in the world. Be that as it may, on a rainy day the lines and shapes of this interesting bridge became an abstract from above, particularly when crossed with the wake of a motor boat.

Penobscot Crossing © Harold Davis

Penobscot Crossing © Harold Davis

Posted in Monochrome, Photography

Departing

The long exposure motion blur in this image from the back of a Maine State Ferry makes the image general and dram-like. The departure could be from many places, with the cool green hills and an ambiguous structure in the distance balancing the strident and saturated flag above the wake of the departing ship.

Departing © Harold Davis

Departing © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Isleboro Ferry

Today I took my workshop class on a field trip to Isleboro, a short ferry ride from the Maine mainland. One of the techniques I asked the group to practice was intentionally hand-holding long exposures for a blurred look. This kind of blurring becomes one possible tool in the in-camera digital toolbox—tack sharp is not the only aesthetic choice when we make images. As an example, here is a long exposure image of the Isleboro ferry coming into the dock.

Isleboro Ferry © Harold Davis

Isleboro Ferry © Harold Davis

Exposure data: Nikon D810, 28-300mm lens at 90mm, six seconds at f/25 and ISO 64, +4 neutral density filter, circular polarizer, hand held; processed in Photoshop, Nik Silver Efex, and Perfect B&W.

Posted in Monochrome, Photography

Sky View from the Olsen House

Today I photographed inside the Olsen House, where Andrew Wyeth made many of his most famous paintings. The bare rooms were really inspiring and visually interesting. While not particularly Andrew-Wyeth-esque, I thought this view of a chair in an empty room with a cloudscape out the window was fun!

Sky View (Olsen House) © Harold Davis

Sky View (Olsen House) © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography