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)!

Thanks for all the input on my Blades of Grass series. I appreciate the (varied) input. Here’s another sequence of Decorative Grasses. Which is your favorite variation, and why? I particularly appreciate comments entered directly on the blog story (the comment box is below, or follow this link!). Thanks.

Decorative Grasses Variation D © Harold Davis

Decorative Grasses Variation C © Harold Davis

Decorative Grasses Variation B © Harold Davis

Decorative Grasses Variation A © Harold Davis

Which version do you like better, and why?

Blades of Grass Variation A © Harold Davis

Blades of Grass Variation B © Harold Davis

Blades of Grass Variation C © Harold Davis

I am deleting my Facebook account one week from today. The week’s delay is to give my real friends on Facebook, many of whom hail from other parts of the world, a chance to connect with me IRL or via other social media (my preference among photo-sharing and social media sites remains Flickr, call me an old stodgy).

Here’s what I wrote on Facebook: 

I am deleting my Facebook account one week from today. #deletefacebook I no longer want to be complicit with the egregious misuse of personal information at the behest of commercial profit.

I will miss many of my Facebook friends’ updates, and hope that you decide to keep in touch with me off Facebook. My website is https://www.digitalfieldguide.com – My contact info is publicly available on my website at https://www.digitalfieldguide.com/about/contact-harold-davis(including snail mail, phone, and email). I work hard to respond in reasonable real-time to personal emails at harold [at] digitalfieldguide [dot] com. You can subscribe to one of my email lists at https://www.digitalfieldguide.com/about/subscribe.

Finally, if you want to laugh (or cry) about all this, check out Alexandra Petri’s Deleting Facebook? Don’t Worry I’ll Replace It for You from the WaPo.

Bullseye on Black © Harold Davis