Monthly Archives: November 2019

Flower Magic

November 29, 2019 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

This is a light box image of sunflowers, tulips, and irises, with bamboo cut from the neighborhood. Click here for an FAQ about my techniques for photographing flowers for transparency, and here for the next session of my Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop in June. My workshop is end-to-end, starting with floral arrangement, continuing to individual hands-on photography, and explaining the post-production techniques I use in these images.

Flower Magic © Harold Davis

The image shown here was photographed on a light box; the resulting image on white was then added to a scanned paper background, using the techniques I teach in my online Photoshop Backgrounds & Textures course.

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Mandala with Starfish

November 28, 2019 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

I’ve been experimenting with creating light box mandalas that include seemingly unlikely objects, particularly as the central element. Last week I built the mandala around a succulent plant. Along with the autumn leaves this helped to create an effect like a seasonal wreath.

The mandala below is “anchored” using a starfish.

Mandala with Starfish © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Black Friday Workshop Discounts

November 25, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

In honor of the great tradition of Black Friday, we are offering special discounts (through Sunday December 1) this week for workshop registrations, as follows:

Photographing Flowers for Transparency, June 21-22, 2020 in Berkeley, CA: Take $50 Off.

Exploring Tokyo for Photographers with Harold Davis and Mark Brokering, October 24 – November 1, 2020: Take $100 Off.

Patagonia Photography Adventure, March 21-31, 2021, with optional extension to Iguazu Falls (March 31 – April 4, 2021): Take $100 Off.

Paris in the Spring, April 24 – May 2, 2021: Take $100 Off.

The “Black Friday” discounts are by way of saying thanks for early registration, which makes planning easier for us, and is in addition to those early-bird discounts that already are applicable.

With Photographing Flowers for Transparency, if registering through Meetup, deduct $50 from the Paypal amount to pay (or contact us for direct registration). With Tokyo, Patagonia, or Paris, please drop us an email to say you’d like to come, and note the Black Friday deduction on your Reservation Form.

Learn about LAB Color Backgrounds & Textures in Photoshop Creative Black & White [Use code HDAVIS40 at checkout for discount]

Pale Garden on Black © Harold Davis

Posted in Workshops

Untitled In-Camera Multiple Exposure

November 23, 2019 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

Untitled In-Camera Multiple Exposure © Harold Davis

I’m back at the in-camera Multiple Exposures. This one can be visually interpreted in a number of ways if you don’t look too closely, as is the case for many of the Multiple Exposures on my blog.

To create this image, there were ten individual exposures, combined in the camera. The model was the talented and somewhat incredible (in a very good way) PoppySeed Dancer (click here for her Instagram).

Posted in Models, Multiple Exposures, Photography

My life story in and out of photography along my road less traveled

November 20, 2019 by Harold Davis | 2 Comments

Harold Davis: Self portrait with moustache

Self Portrait with Moustache © Harold Davis

In Guest Blog Post: Photographer as Poet Harold Davis I write that selfies are silly and that photography is poetry. I also tell some of my life story in and out of photography along my road less traveled. Check it out!

Road Less Traveled © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography, Writing

Wreath

November 18, 2019 by Harold Davis | 3 Comments

A good time of year for wreaths, this is a not-quite-Thanksgiving wreath slash mandala in California style with a succulent in the center and autumn grasses arranged symmetrically around the edges, photographed on my light box.

Wreath © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Trio of Prints Sold: Sometimes Simplicity Is Best

November 12, 2019 by Harold Davis | 1 Comment

Bench © Harold Davis

I’m very happy to have sold a trio of lightly sepia-toned monochromatic prints on Moab Juniper Baryta to a collector.

In garden photography, sometimes simplicity is the point. I made the images shown in these prints in August while teaching a week-long garden photograph course at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine. The first image shows a wooden bench just outside the front gate to the well-known and spectacular Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine. You can see the bench in this wide-angle view of the garden gate!

The stone arrangement and patterned shakes in the two images below were taken at Shleppinghurst, a unique garden built into the landscape of an abandoned Maine quarry over 40 years by Ken Cleaves.

Stones and Lichen © Harold Davis

Shakes © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Tracking the Curls

November 8, 2019 by Harold Davis | 4 Comments

I don’t know how to keep track of the curls any more. Maybe the best way is to run a train track through the curls in the two-dimensional substrate. Any train on these tracks can pass through a green defile on to fly across a sunset sky with distant mountains, and, curving onward, steam back again through a distant green land. Ah, the malleability of pixels!

Trouble with Tracks © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Peonies mon Amour on Washi

November 8, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

The image shows a print of my 2012 Peonies mon Amour, one of my most popular botanical images, as printed on simulated Awagami Unryu washi, distributed in the United States by Moab Paper. My hand-stamped inkan (a Japanese version of a “chop” that can be used in place of a signature) is shown on the lower right of the print.

In this simulated view, the inkan is a bit larger than actual life size in proportion to the print. The inkan roughly translates to “Photographer as Poet.”

For collectors who are interested in one of my botanical prints on washi, I offer the option of including a stamp of my inkan in addition to my signature.

Peonies mon Amour © Harold Davis (2012), print on Unryu washi with hand inkan stamp

Most of my images are available as prints. Please inquire.

Posted in Flowers

Print Sold

November 6, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Print of Through the Rabbit Hole © Harold Davis

I am grateful to a longtime collector and friend who recently purchased this print on Moab Juniper Baryta of my Through the Rabbit Hole.

Most of my images are available as prints. Please inquire.

Posted in Photography

End of Days

November 5, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Soon the hot wind from on high is among us, and we feel the devil’s riding crop. What unknown blasts fuel the motion of an already unstable and pockmarked sphere? Give me a marble and you never know what I’ll do!

Hidden Worlds (within marbles); more impossible imagery; the Eye of Sauron in his cups; marbles below.

Most images available as prints. Please inquire.

Posted in Photography

Leek and Lichen

November 4, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Leek & Lichen should perhaps be the name for a pub on the outskirts of London, somewhere past Elephant & Castle and nearby to the Queen’s Head and Artichoke. Alas, the reference here is to photos of two prosaic subjects (although hopefully the photos themselves are anything but prosaic): a cross-section of a leek that later became part of our dinner, and lichen scraped from a tree and then dried. It is interesting that one need not travel anywhere exotic to make photos; photography is about seeing, and vision is just as valid close to home as it is abroad.

Posted in Monochrome

Snows of Yesteryear

November 2, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Thinking about the upcoming photography conference in Yosemite led me to browse through some of my archives of work of Yosemite in winter’s past. Digital means never having to say one is sorry, and that it is always possible to reprocess. Contemporary advances in software interpolation means that even fairly low resolution images can be enlarged and printed at decent sizes. So maybe it is worth going through one’s files to see what was captured at the dawn of the digital photography era!

The color version of the image above was originally blogged in 2006 in But Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear.

I think the three images below, of a snowstorm in Yosemite, ice on the Merced River, and a somewhat hair-raising view off the spine of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park were never blogged—they do not appear in any of my books—and date to roughly the same time frame. The image of the Blizzard takes a little looking at in the larger size (and maybe squinting) before the shapes of the snow-laden trees become fully apparent.

View from Angel's Landing © Harold Davis

Posted in Landscape, Monochrome, Photography, Yosemite

X-Ray Floral Medley Fusion Print Sold

November 1, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I’m pleased to sell a print of X-Ray Floral Medley Fusion (an iPhone snap of the print is shown below) to a longtime collector. Printed on Moab Juniper Baryta, one of my favorite “go-to” papers.