The USPS has created a page for my Tulip Pano stamp at stampinformation.com/tulips/. This page has information about the stamp, the first day of issue, where to buy the stamp, and biographical info about the art director as well as yours truly!

Construction began on the Pantheon as a church for the patron saint of Paris, Saint Genevieve. As so often happens when there is construction there were delays, then more delays, then the revolution happened.

Saint Genevieve’s church was about half finished. Egalité was in the air, at least for a short while, and religion was out. So the idea became to transition the design from religious to a secular mausoleum for honored citizens. The architectural result was one part church, and one part based on the Pantheon in Rome.

Over the years the Pantheon bounced back and forth from religious to secular temple, with great folks interred including Marie Curie, Victor Hugo, Voltaire, and Emil Zola.

In the first image, I have pointed my camera at the domes of the Pantheon using a very wide angle lens (15mm). The next image (below), taken by my friend Julian Köpke, shows me making the first photo, along with some possible annotations to the issues of curvature in space and time. 

Pantheon © Harold Davis

Harold Davis photographing in the Pantheon © Julian Köpke

Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance. [Source: Wikipedia.] In other words, group interaction at a distance! With no apparent connection! Over vast distances! Explaining quantum entanglement using classical mechanics seems impossible, which has lead to the field of quantum mechanics.

Quantum Entanglement © Harold Davis

The Quantum Entanglement series of images began as several frames photographed down on a light box from the inside of a parfait glass. I combined the frames (they were different exposures), composited the result with itself several times, and made a number of round trips into the phantasmagorical LAB color space. 

Quantum Entanglement 2 © Harold Davis

One thing worth noting about these images: there’s an optical illusion in the center, which appears to be an almost lenticular trompe l’oeil effect. This is particularly noticeable in an enlarged version of Quantum Entanglement 2.

Quantum Entanglement 3 © Harold Davis

Daffodils and Irises © Harold Davis

Dear Ones:

In our garden, the Iris and Freesia are flowering. The peony bush I planted last autumn has produced an enormous, platter-sized blossom. This is Paeonia ‘Morning Lilac’, an Itoh Peony—also called “Intersectional”. Itoh Peonies are hybrids between Tree Peonies and herbacious Peonies, with some of the best properties of each. This was not an easy hybridization, begun in the 1940s in Japan by Toichi Itoh. Only a few Itoh Peonies have recently made it into commerce.

It is spring in Berkeley, with the air redolent of the rich, fragrant California floral perfume that I smell nowhere else.

Of course, no matter where one lives, and however immersed one may be in horticulture and flower photography, one cannot ignore the events in the wide world. My heart bleeds for those whose lives are ruined or ended by the greed of autocrats and under the fascist boot. I would so like to see the forces of evil defeated, and humanity approach decision making with more thoughtfulness, gratitude, humility—and caring for others. In the meantime—I am generally an optimist, but I am not really holding my breath—I intend to live life to the fullest, and to celebrate beauty where and how I find it.

Professionally, this has been an exciting time for me. My new book, Composition & Photography: Working with photography using design concepts, is available as an eBook, with the actual “real” books to get here soon. The USPS stamps using my work are now available. And I am to be the 2022 Photographic Society of America (PSA) Progress Award winner.

Regarding the PSA Progress Award, this comes as a total surprise to me. I am so grateful, and certainly in good company, considering the previous annual award winners. Most of all, it means to me that people are “listening” to me—that I am seen. That my work is seen. I do not plan to “rest on my laurels.” This is not the end, it is only the beginning. Thank you PSA, so very much!

I am very excited to be leaving soon on extended travels. I’ll be meeting friends in Paris, then leading a small photography group in the southwest of France, then hiking on my own as a pilgrim on a portion of the Camino de Santiago (click here for a video discussing some of my previous Caminos).

Please consider joining me in August in Berkeley, California for Photographing Flowers for Transparency, in September in Maine for Composition and Photography, or in October for Off-the-Beaten-Track Japan. Click here for my 2022 Works & Events schedule.

I send my very best wishes in photography,

Harold Davis

Peony One © Harold Davis