Monthly Archives: July 2019

My Photoshop Courses Now Available for Standalone Purchase

I am pleased to be able to offer my Creative LAB Color in Photoshop and Photoshop Backgrounds & Textures courses for standalone purchase. Each course costs $44.99, and you can have it yours for good without having to worry about subscriptions, unsubscribing, and all the rest.

The courses are available from LinkedIn Learning. As I noted, you can buy my courses individually; alternatively, you can still subscribe to the entire platform of LinkedIn courses (not just my LinkedIn Learning courses). The subscription is really a pretty good deal: you get the first month free (and can cancel at any point), and with the wealth of Photoshop course offerings it is a great way to hone your Photoshop skills.

Here’s some more information about my courses!

Photoshop Backgrounds & Textures

Click here to buy or view my course on LinkedIn Learning.

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis
Poem of the Road © Harold Davis (as shown in the course, this image uses two texture files)

Course Description:
Turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Learn how to transform relatively straightforward photographs into distinctive visual art, using Photoshop backgrounds and textures.

In this course, photographer and digital darkroom expert Harold Davis walks through the technical specifics of adding backgrounds and textures to your Photoshop compositions, and provides the inspiration and resources you need to get fantastic results.

Learn how to provide context and “frames” with backgrounds, and use textures as nondestructive overlays to enhance the look and feel of your images. Harold shows how to use scans and photos of found objects as the basis for custom textures, and even license textures from commercial libraries.

Plus, discover a post-production workflow for the iPhone that maximizes your flexibility, mobility, and creativity, and explore four iOS apps that Harold recommends for iPhone photography.

Topics Include:

  • Using blending modes, masks, and selections to build backgrounds
  • Creating and sourcing backgrounds
  • Creating effects with textures
  • Adding textures to portraits and landscapes
  • Licensing textures
  • Creating texture-based effects on the iPhone

Duration: 2h 18m

Click here to view my course on LinkedIn Learning. There is a free preview. The full course is behind the paywall, but note that a free trial subscription is available for one month. Alternatively, you can buy my course as a standalone.

Creative LAB Color

Click here to view or buy my course on LinkedIn Learning. Here’s a preview:

 Photoshop: Creative Lab Color by Harold Davis

Course Description:
Explore the tools, techniques, and creative possibilities of Lab Color in Adobe Photoshop. Lab opens new opportunities for photo enhancement and creative image making, enabling you to apply contrast, sharpening, inversion, and equalization adjustments to individual LAB channels. If you want more exciting images, it’s time to explore Lab Color. In this course, Harold Davis explains how Lab compares to other color spaces and how it is implemented in Photoshop. He walks through his own professional post-production workflow for enhancing and transforming images with Lab Color. Then learn how to use Lab for more creative fun and image-making prowess with Harold’s custom Photoshop Lab action, color channels, and blending modes. Plus, learn how to leverage images in Lab for pattern making and surface design.

Topics Include:

  • Converting images to Lab Color space
  • Applying Curves to Lab channels
  • Selective sharpening
  • Inverting channels
  • Making per-channel equalizations
  • Using the Lab action
  • Combining Lab Color with blending modes
  • Making patterns with Lab images

Click here to view or buy my course on LinkedIn Learning.

Posted in Photography

Stuff

As George Carlin put it in one of his most memorable routines, a house is nothing but a pile of stuff with a cover on it. In contrast, I suppose a home might be something more important than the mere stuff in a house, having to do with where the heart is. Since a home is where the heart is, it is transportable: your home is where ever your family and those you love are.

In any case, love stuff or hate it, we all seem to gather it. Here are two photos, and one variation, of some of the stuff in my house, made with a macro lens on a black background of some of our stuff. The first image shows flowers from my garden that have been drying for a while, along with shells, lichen, a sea horse, and a blue jay feather I found on a walk the other day.

Collection © Harold Davis

Collection © Harold Davis

The next image is of a pile of elastic bands, specifically, rubber elastic bands used to keep hair under control. I’ve been telling Phyllis I would photograph these for years, and somehow she never believed I really would. Finally (far below) I made an LAB adjustment in Photoshop, by equalizing the L-channel, of the elastic band image, with somewhat surprising results.

Elastic Bands © Harold Davis

Elastic Bands - L-channel Equalization © Harold Davis

Elastic Bands – L-channel Equalization © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Playing with Lilies

There’s nothing like a carpet of oriental lilies on my light box for photographic fun! Shown here with a few petunias, roses, and jasmine blooms to round out the prevailing pink. An L-channel LAB inversion, putting the image on a black background, is shown below.

At Play with Lilies © Harold Davis

At Play with Lilies © Harold Davis

At Play with Lilies Inversion © Harold Davis

At Play with Lilies Inversion © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Creative Black and White 2 Ed (and Discount Code!)

I’m very pleased that my new book, Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, is now available. The publisher, Rocky Nook, is offering a 40% discount. Click here to buy Creative Black & White 2nd Ed directly from the publisher. Use the code “HDAVIS40” [no quotes] at checkout to apply the discount (you can also use my discount code for all other Rocky Nook books, by the way!).

Here are the links for my book on Amazon.com and on B&N as well, so the choice of supplier is yours.

If you like Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, I would really appreciate a thoughtful review. Thanks!

Creative Black & White has been revised, substantially expanded, and brought up to date.  I’ve added entire sections, substantially enlarged the book (it is 80 pages longer than the first edition), and most of the photos are new. Every photo includes information about how it was made, both from a technical perspective, and also the story about my thinking behind the image.

Click here to buy my book from Rocky Nook (please use the HDAVIS40 discount code for your discount), here for my book on Amazon, and here on Barnes & Noble.

Posted in Photography

Mallow and Friends

I like the way this light box image, never before blogged, shows the translucency of the rose petals with the mallow coming through, diffracted but loud and clear!

Mallow and Friends © Harold Davis

Mallow and Friends © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers

The Story of a Cactus Flower

Cactus Flower © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower © Harold Davis

Phyllis told me she saw a giant cactus flower at about camera height near the small shopping area of Kensington, California about 1/2 mile from our house when she passed through the Kensington strip in the morning. So I went up with my gear, and in a small, arid strip next to a parking lot there was indeed a barrel cactus, possibly a Ferocactus cylindraceus, with a large, white flower. The cactus seemed to be nestling in the shade of a Yucca, also in bloom and dripping sap. The flower was perhaps a foot in diameter with a yellow center (see photo above) and exuding a strong, pungent odor.

I had hoped to use my tripod, but there was a fierce wind blowing the petals of the flower, hence no real point to the tripod. Most of the images shown in this story were made with my 150mm Iris ‘Dragonfly’ macro hand-held, with the aperture pretty close to wide open (f/2.8).

My thought was to come back in a few hours in the early evening, when the light would be softer, and perhaps the wind would have died down. But when I got back, the bloom was off the cactus. This indeed is an illustration of the ephemeral nature of beauty: the flower had a lifespan of less than a day.

Cactus Flower Detail I © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail I © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail II © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail II © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail III © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail III © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail IV © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail IV © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail V © Harold Davis

Cactus Flower Detail V © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Monochrome, Photography

My Artist Statement

Mountains on the Beach © Harold Davis

Mountains on the Beach © Harold Davis

I haven’t reviewed the Artist Statement I wrote a number of years back for quite a while, and I recently had cause to take another look at my statement. I’m pleased that my Artist Statement stills speaks of me, and for me. Here’s the gist of it (you can read my full Artist Statement by clicking here):

My work lies at the intersections of many styles and disciplines: between east and west, classicism and modernism, photography and painting, and the new technologies of the digital era versus the handcraft traditions of the artisan. To understand my imagery, one needs to see where it fits within each of these dichotomies.

Before I explain, let me mention that my primary goal is not to evoke academic, scholarly, or pedantic understanding. I’d almost rather my work not be understood–so that the response is evoked on a primal level that has more to do with the heart and gut than the intellect.

A great deal of thought goes into my work, but it shouldn’t have to take thought to enjoy it. At the simplest level I am trying to evoke–at both conscious and unconscious levels–a sense of serenity, wholeness, and wonder. My work can be experienced and enjoyed simply and organically for its structure and beauty.

With many of my images, unwrapping the sense of wholeness that the work conveys is not immediate. I am asking someone experiencing my images to have the patience to contemplate–and perhaps resolve a visual puzzle–but I don’t necessarily let on upfront that my viewers will be confronting a conundrum. 

I believe that advances in the technology and craft of digital photography have created an entirely new medium. My years of contemplation have opened my eyes and my heart, and taught me to see more deeply. I use this alchemy of wonder to combine the traditions of painting and photography with new technology.

Read more.

Panorama of the Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

Panorama of the Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

Posted in Writing

Creative Black and White 2 Ed Now Available (with Discount Code!)

I’m very pleased that my new book, Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, is now available. The publisher, Rocky Nook, is offering a 40% discount. Click here to buy Creative Black & White 2nd Ed directly from the publisher. Use the code “HDAVIS40” [no quotes] at checkout to apply the discount (you can also use my discount code for all other Rocky Nook books, by the way!).

Here are the links for my book on Amazon.com and on B&N as well, so the choice of supplier is yours.

If you like Creative Black & White, 2nd Edition, I would really appreciate a thoughtful review. Thanks!

Creative Black & White has been revised, substantially expanded, and brought up to date.  I’ve added entire sections, substantially enlarged the book (it is 80 pages longer than the first edition), and most of the photos are new. Every photo includes information about how it was made, both from a technical perspective, and also the story about my thinking behind the image.

As I note in the Preface to this Second Edition, “Of course, I was flattered to be asked to write this revised and expanded second edition of Creative Black & White. One of the goals of this new edition is to bring the tools and techniques explained in this book up to date. This is particularly important in the realm of Lightroom and Photoshop software, and with the plug-ins that are a necessary extension of the Adobe ecosystem.

“Beyond keeping current, I want to help you become a better and more creative photographer, whatever your interest level or toolset may be.”

It’s been great fun updating this book, making a good book even better, refreshing the images, and bringing the software explanations up to date. I hope my new book proves to be inspiring and useful to you!

Click here to buy my book from Rocky Nook (please use the HDAVIS40 discount code for your discount), here for my book on Amazon, and here on Barnes & Noble.

Posted in Monochrome, Photography, Writing

Nautilus Spiral Imagery

Nesting Bowls and a Nautilus Slice © Harold Davis

Nesting Bowls and a Nautilus Slice © Harold Davis

The graceful curve of the interior of the Nautilus shell is beloved by artists, and has often been a subject of my imagery. The other day, I placed a slice of a Nautilus shell showing its spiral within a series of kitchen bowls. 

X-Rays revealed the interior spirals within two intact Nautilus shells (below). An actual Nautilus shell before it has been sliced is pretty solid looking (as you can see in my photo of a whole shell on Flickr), but the x-rays don’t care about the outer, opaque casing, and reveal the inner spirals in all their glory.

Nautilus X-Rays © Harold Davis

Nautilus X-Rays © Harold Davis

One of my best-known Nautilus images, Nautilus in Black and White,  was captured on a light box, the back lighting accounting for the inner glow at the core of the spiral. In post-production, I inverted in LAB color, swapping white for black and black for white, and simulating a black background in the image (below).

Nautilus in Black and White © Harold Davis

Nautilus in Black and White © Harold Davis

Another very well-known image of mine is a Photoshop composite in which a spiral staircase (from San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center) blends, apparently seamlessly, into an enlarged Nautilus shell spiral at the bottom of the stairwell (Spirals, shown below).

Spirals © Harold Davis

Spirals © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Weaving with Light

Weaving with Light © Harold Davis

Weaving with Light © Harold Davis

Recently I was asked, “Ok. I have to know what these are and how were these lovely pieces produced?”

A fair question, but one I have some ambivalence about answering. Not (as might be supposed) because I fear giving away secrets. There are no secrets anymore. Actually, I’d rather have folks immersed in an image. Not thinking about me, and certainly not thinking about my techniques.

But it is a fact that I have been working on these images for a while now, about six months, and have amassed a considerable body of work. You can check it out using these links: Bottled Light Exploration; Easy Travel to Other Planets; Earthlight; Blue on Red; Homage to Rothko; A Point of Information; Approaching Indigo; Playing with Light; Cosmic Misunderstanding; Life is Strange; More abstractions!; The Making of the Abstractions; Abstracts, and a Photographic Mystery.

Mostly, this style of image making is “a hecka” fun! I am having a blast.

Natural Bridge © Harold Davis

Natural Bridge © Harold Davis

To get down to the nitty-gritty, I set the photography up using glasses and glass vases. There is liquid in the glassware, mostly (but not always) food color. Sometimes I use clear water in colored glass, and other times I use a fluid such as wine or maple syrup that has a color on its own.

The imagery is primarily created using strong back lighting, so each colored vessel of water casts a variety of colors on the vessels in front.

Finally, I use a macro telephoto lens, often with an added extension tube, handheld at a fast shutter speed and a wide-open aperture (f/1.8) to create very low depth-of-field photos focused very close, and capturing whatever phenomenon the light is creating.

I actually think you’d have to see the setup to believe it!

Blue Bars 1 © Harold Davis

Blue Bars 1 © Harold Davis

Mostly, these are single shots, pretty straight from the camera, and with almost no serious tweaking in post-production. I like keeping things simple, and it is fast and easy not to need to spend a great deal of time in Photoshop.

But in a couple of images—think Cosmic Misunderstanding and Weaving with Light, the image at the start of this story—I’ve added Photoshop post-production doodling, photo composition, and photo-compositing of an image with itself to the mix.

After all, why not?

Blue Bars 2 © Harold Davis

Blue Bars 2 © Harold Davis

Yellow Vase and Blue Vase © Harold Davis

Yellow Vase and Blue Vase © Harold Davis

This one was photographed on a mirror, into a standalone glass concave lens, with a smaller aperture and more depth-of-field than I usually use for these images:

Optical Wheel © Harold Davis

Optical Wheel © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Black and White Cookies: What’s in a Name?

Black and White Cookie © Harold Davis

Black and White Cookie © Harold Davis

The Black and White cookie, shown here in an iPhone grab shot converted to black and white in Snapseed, goes by many names. In New York City, where I come from, they are simply “Black and White” cookies. This makes sense to me.  But in New England they are “Harlequins” and in the Midwest “Half Moons.” In Germany, and most of the rest of the world, they are “Amerikaners.”

Even the origin of the name “Amerikaners” is controversial: it is rumored that the cookie was named after the post-World-War-II American soldiers who brought them to Germany. On the other hand, and perhaps less plausibly even if it is in the dictionaries this way, the name “Amerikaner” is said to be a corruption of Ammoniumhydrogencarbonat, the German for ammonium bicarbonate, a leavening agent used in baking the cookie.

Using yet another name, in a reference to racial harmony, President Obama dubbed them “Unity cookies” in 2008. And, in a Seinfeld episode, Jerry asks, if black and white mix together well on a cookie, why can’t they do the same in society?

Great question (and a tasty cookie) for these troubled times.

Posted in Bemusements, Monochrome, Photography

Featured on Macro Photography Live Chat Show

I am featured on episode #46 of the lively and entertaining Macro Photography Live Chat Show. Click here for the YouTube replay of the episode featuring my work recorded recently. 

Pale Garden © Harold Davis

Pale Garden © Harold Davis

On the hour-long show, my interlocutor, the enthusiastic Janice Sullivan, and I had a wide-ranging discussion. One topic covered was my Artist Statement, which I haven’t looked at in quite a while. It was so cool to take a look at this with fresh eyes and be able to say: Yes, this is me. This is what I aspire to be as an artist. Harold, you keep on truckin’!

Tulips X-Ray Fusion © Harold Davis

Tulips X-Ray Fusion © Harold Davis

If you haven’t seen any of the videos of my presentations of my work, here are some that might interest you:

The Art of Photographing Flowers for Transparency (B&H)

Black and White in the Digital Era (2017)

A Creative Palette of Possibilities Using Topaz (2018)

An oldie-but-goldie (from 2009): the KQED-TV segment showing me at work!

Degrees of Translucency © Harold Davis

Degrees of Translucency © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Angel’s Trumpets

Phyllis and Nicky came home with this branch from an Angel’s Trumpets shrub (of the Brugmansia genus). They had cropped it from an overhanging specimen in the neighborhood. Since Brugmansia flowers wilt almost instantly, I hurried to photograph it on my light box.

Angel's Trumpets © Harold Davis

Angel’s Trumpets © Harold Davis

Some interesting facts about Angel’s Trumpets: The common name of this plant and flower comes from the large, trumpet-shaped flowers that Brugmansia shrubs and bushes exhibit. A close relative of Datura, Brugmanisa is highly toxic, and is one of the most poisonous decorative plants. Although fairly popular in gardens, Brugmansia is extinct in the wild. It is believed that the extinction of some animal responsible for spreading the seeds of the Brugmansia became extinct, causing the plant extinction in the wild, although of course the plant continues to exist as a human cultivar.

In the past, several South American cultures have used Brugmansia to discipline naughty children, so that they might be scolded by their ancestors in the spirit world, and become better behaved. Mixed with other psychogenic agents, maize beer and tobacco leaves, it has also been used to drug wives and slaves before they were buried alive with their dead master.

Another beautiful but deadly flower: Gloriosa Lily.

Posted in Flowers, Photography

All this, and Heaven too!

It’s with great joy that I announce a full panoply of interesting workshops. What could be better than intriguing places, fun and interesting people, and the chance for exciting photography? Here is some of what I have coming up, in chronological order:

  • Photographing the Great Gardens of Maine, August 11-17, 2019 at Maine Media Workshop. This year we’ll have access to a great range of public and unique private gardens to photograph. In many cases, there would be no other way to get access to these locations. Click here for more information and registration. It is a great time of year to be in the heart of coastal Maine and photographing these luscious gardens, and there is still space available in the workshop.

Dahlia Mandala © Harold Davis

2020

  • Romantic Southwest France, April 29-May 7, 2020. Early-bird discount applies. Click here for information, here for a detailed itinerary (PDF), and here for the Reservation Form. The workshop is hosted in an exquisitely renovated fortified farmhouse in the Lot River Valley. This has been a  popular and successful workshop with very limited space availability, so please let us now as soon as possible if you’d like to come. This group is almost full. If you’d like to join us, please contact us ASAP to see if we can accommodate you! Early-bird discount through the end of August.

2021

Click here for my Workshops & Events page. I have a number of interesting upcoming conference and event appearances that haven’t been publicly announced yet, I will post them as soon as I can. You can also subscribe to my email list to get notifications.

I hope to see you with your camera in a workshop! If not now, when? 

Flowers at Giverny © Harold Davis

Flowers at Giverny © Harold Davis

Posted in Workshops

Danse Macabre and the Tree of Life

Dance Macabre and the Tree of Life © Harold Davis

Danse Macabre and the Tree of Life © Harold Davis

Want more fantastic imagery? Check out Surreal Lady Fish, my Multiple Exposures portfolio of in-camera model photography, and a selection of Impossible composite imagery.

The Danse Macabre a/k/a “The Dance of Death” is an allegorical artistic genre of the late middle ages. The point is that no matter what our station in life, we all die. Danse Macabre images are a kind of momento mori, to remind folks of the vanity and ephemeral nature  of all earthly things.

This image is a Photoshop composite of five photos: two in-camera exposures of a model (each containing a number of exposures), a background canvas used as a texture, a skull from the Paris catacombs—and, of course, the Tree of Life from the slopes of Mount Diablo.

Posted in Photography