Monthly Archives: July 2018

Mountains of the Mind

Distant Mountains © Harold Davis

Distant Mountains © Harold Davis

Mist in the distant mountains is nature’s way of replacing clarity of sight with unspoken nuance. We do not know what lies beneath the layers of mist, but there is always the possibility that it is what we seek. Therefore, we peer and trudge onward through the mountains of the mind, always looking for that which transcends the literal that is before us.

Like Poem of the Road, this is another texture demonstration image from my course on Photoshop Backgrounds and Textures for LinkedIn Learning slash Lynda.com.

Posted in Landscape

Poem of the Road

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

The poem of the road is as old as the ages. The road beckons, tantalizes, leads us on. There are new vistas, new opportunities.

We flee from danger down the same road. Who know what lies beyond where the horizon meets the leading lines and curve of the road?

For good or for evil, the poem of the road is a siren nudging us ever onward, worrying us whether we are really satisfied, or whether there is more, better—or, here’s the real point, different—around the next bend in the road.

Yes, the poem of the road is seductive, dangerous, and powerful. Leaving the life you know for the unkowns of the road is always frightening. But ignore the pulsing of the possibility of adventure at your peril, for without time on the road, is it really life at all?

I have been in the Santa Barbara area making an online course about Photoshop Backgrounds and Textures for Linked In Learning a/k/a Lynda.com. A demonstration for my course called for the use of texture overlays in Photoshop.

Looking through the images I brought with me, I came across an image from the basins and ranges of Nevada in the haze of oncoming twilight. To take the photo, I had stepped in the middle of the road, not much of a risk as traffic is light in that part of the world. I liked the receding car, and snapped the photo.

The results pleased me as far as the road and telephone poles go, but not so much the sky, which was basically a light gray. I added a couple of textures, and in a few seconds in post-production made the image you see. This is part of my course since I was creating the image in real time, and it was being recording. So if you want to see exactly how I made this, it will be in my course!

Posted in Photography

The Art of Photographing Flowers for Transparency: Harold Davis at B&H in New York (Aug 13, 2018)

I’ll be presenting The Art of Photographing Flowers for Transparency on Monday August 13, 2018 at the B&H Photo Event Space, 420 Ninth Avenue, in New York City from 1-3 PM. The event is free, but space is limited, so pre-registration is strongly suggested. Click here for information and registration for the live event, or to view it live-streamed.

Poppies and Mallows on White © Harold Davis

Event Description: According to Popular Photography, Harold Davis’s botanical images “have a purity and translucence that borders on spiritual.” Harold Davis is a renowned photographer, an internationally-known digital artist, a workshop leader, and a bestselling author of numerous books about photography. His upcoming title is The Art of Photographing Flowers for Transparency. He has been honored as a Zeiss Lens Ambassador and a Moab Master. His high-key photographs of flowers on a light box are widely imitated, but seldom equaled.

Poppies Dancing Inversion © Harold Davis

In this presentation, Harold will show examples of how he arranges and lights his flowers for photography. He’ll explain the secrets of high-key HDR photography, and show how his images are combined using post-production techniques. Tools, techniques, and the craft of light box photography will be demystified. Harold will explain inverting his light box images using LAB color, so they can be easily presented on a black background, and will discuss botanical printmaking, including how he makes his sought-after washi prints.

There will be a Q&A session following the talk. Click here for information and registration for the live event, or to register to view it live-streamed.

Bouquet of Neighborhood Flowers © Harold Davis

Click here for information and registration for the live event, or to register to view it live-streamed.

Posted in Flowers, Workshops

Papaver Poppy Pods Gone to Seed

When Papavers go to seed, they produce pods that hold the seeds. You can scrape out the pod to harvest the seeds. When one puts a  clump of these seeds into a mortar and pestle and grinds them into a paste then one is well on the way to refining opium. Of course, to be clear, you have to start with a Papaver somniferum rather than some other Papaver variety to get opium. Who me? Lest anyone is curious, mine are purely decorative, and I have absolutely no interest in growing my own opium patch in my garden. I swear…

Papaver Pod from above © Harold Davis

I think the Papaver gone to seed looks almost like a marine sea creature, perhaps more like a sand dollar than a flower!

Papaver Seed Stalks © Harold Davis

I photographed the specimens shown here on a black velvet background, and processed the images in Photoshop using my digital Karl Blossfeldt effect.

Papaver Seed Pod © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Monochrome

Anthers in Love

Sometimes it is fun to get lost in the worlds of macro photography. Even the somewhat commonplace can become a different and intriguing universe. As in this conventionally lit, extreme close-up image of the anthers of an Asiatic Lily covered in pollen.

Anthers in Love © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Through a Glass Lightly

The last few years have been traveling years for me. This means time in restaurants. Sometimes alone. Waiting for food. Or with a crowd out eating, but alone inside. Either way, what better time to play with photography and glassware? Here are some of my favorites…

After a long day walking the Camino, I stopped at a small hamlet for a meal and bed. Watching the trees from the perspective of a glass of wine I felt I was in touch with a holistic sense of the world, and that everything would be integrated and alright:

Trees and Wine © Harold Davis

In a French brasserie they take their glassware and bottles seriously. I got up from my culinary meditation over an excellent cassoulet and photographed these blue bottles at the bar:

Blue Bottles © Harold Davis

Blue or green, what’s in a color? Apparently, this depends on the shadows against a stucco wall:

Green Bottle © Harold Davis

Bottles come in ones and twos, and perhaps the Pepper Shaker enjoys a colloquy with the water bottle in this Maine waterfront restaurant:

Two in a Bar © Harold Davis

Across the spectrum red is possible as well as blues and greens at this informal place in Paris:

Carafe at Lunch © Harold Davis

Sometimes the cutlery likes to get into the game, and the spoon is reflected in a polished, reflective carafe in Germany:

Spoonerismo © Harold Davis

It’s a short leap from spoons refracted in a reflection to a place setting reflected in a napkin holder at a roadside rest in Portugal:

Napkin Holder © Harold Davis

Other times things can get rowdy as when I lined up these glasses at an end-of-workshop party in Heidelberg:

Wine Glasses at a Dinner Party © Harold Davis

I photographed this glass and carafe in a cafe on the main square of Monpazier, one of Acquitaine’s signature bastides (you can see the covered market structure through the open doors):

Monpazier Cafe © Harold Davis

Neither white nor red, but definitely a good watercolor subject:

Rosé © Harold Davis

At a romantic, candle-lit restaurant in Germany I made an abstraction of a candle refracted in a drinking glass. The glass was green and held some kind of fancy drink. The shape of the green glass occupies the right side of the image:

Glass and Candle © Harold Davis

In the historic Ferry Building, in downtown San Francisco:

Glasses © Harold Davis

Waiting for service in a restaurant near Valletta, Malta:

Maltese Cross © Harold Davis

Paint-it-darker patterns and magnification with a beaded placemat in a casual Dordogne restaurant in Brantome, France:

Glass on a Placemat © Harold Davis

In Bourges, France, I was primarily interested in the differing way the shadow from my glass fell on the table cloth as opposed to the way the shadow fell on the wood of the table itself. The bright, curved lines within the shadow are created by bright reflections off the water in the wine glass, but they aren’t quite aligned at the borders of the cloth and wood, due to the differing refractive qualities of the two surfaces:

Shadow of the Glass © Harold Davis

A different phenomenon of light and shadow is to be found in this glass of wine, with the sunlight coming through an awning in Varenna, Italy, where I was enjoying a late lunch beside the Lago di Como with my good friend Mauro:

Eye of Sauron in his Cups © Harold Davis

No matter where you are, and what you are doing, you can always find interesting visual subjects, things to photograph, and ways to make art. Olé!

Posted in iPhone, Photography