Up at Step One, Amber face-painted all the pre-schoolers. Our Katie Rose became a tiger—not inappropriate for someone born with her fierce life force and will to survive. She’s also very sweet, at least when she gets her way!
Katie Rose in Tiger Paint © Harold Davis
I’ll miss Katie and her brothers very much while I am away—but I’m glad to know they’ll be doing well, and that I’ll be coming home to Phyllis and the kids.
When you have four kids like I do, shopping for food occurs frequently. The one thing you want to do when you take the kids into the supermarket is to encapsulate them to prevent general madness, mayhem, and terrorizing of the civilian population.
Kids in a Shopping Cart © Harold Davis
What better way to encapsulate them than in a honey trap, like this shopping cart? Katie Rose and Mathew are shown in the “cab” and Nicky is riding on top.
It’s times like these that I am grateful for my iPhone camera because it is the camera I always have with me!
I am teaching Katie Rose to play chess. She gets the basic moves and is learning some openings—although she sometimes wants to jump all the pieces over each other the way the “horsies” do.
Katie Rose chess player
Phyllis snapped this iPhone photo of the two of us playing. It is amazing for a four-year-old how much she concentrates! A bit over four years ago, the day my daughter was born, this would have seemed such a miracle.
Katie Rose has learned that the pout can be mightier than Mom and Dad, mightier than the sword, and mightier than this blogger. She is persistent and remorseless in getting her way—if not quite as devious as she thinks she is.
Pout (Katie Rose) © Harold Davis
We love our Katie Rose dearly, and are glad she is here to beg, wheedle, insist and pout. She also gives good hugs!
Recently we celebrated Katie Rose’s fourth birthday. As you can see, the birthday girl had a good time.
Katie Rose's fourth birthday © Harold Davis
To see her today gives us a big smile, and it always moves us to remember how unlikely her chances seemed four years ago, and how small she was then (she weighed a good bit less than two pounds).
Some background regarding Katie Rose:
It’s hard to have her living so joyously and happily without believing that miracles do happen. Her whole life is a miracle, and a blessing to us.
Let her eat cake © Harold Davis
Yesterday we received an advance copy of my new book Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography published by Amphoto. In keeping with family traditions, this morning I photographed Katie Rose perusing the book. Katie Rose is sitting on our front steps; big brother Julian is helping her hold up the book.
Advance copy: Creating HDR Photos © Harold Davis
Creating HDR Photos definitely has a different look-and-feel from my previous books. I like the way my photos came out. My book is packed with information you can’t find anywhere else. How I would have loved to get my hands on this book a few years back when I was just starting to figure out HDR!
Presumably the bulk of the copies of Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography are in containers on the proverbial slow boat from China. My book has a publication date of July 24, 2012. I am looking forward very much to sharing my techniques and insights related to this exciting photographic subject with you when it is available.
In keeping with family tradition, Katie Rose is shown here with an advance copy of Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis from Focal Press. The bulk of the books are on the proverbial “slow boat from China,” but should be in stock at Amazon and other bookstores well before the official publication date of October 15 (you can pre-order the book from Amazon now).
We are very excited about Photographing Flowers. Paging through this book I can only say “Wow!” because it looks so spectacular. I am very happy with the design and production, and think it is one of the best looking of any of our books so far. I hope you like it as much as I do!
Here’s more about my new book: I love to photograph flowers, and it is very special for me to have a book devoted just to my flower photography. I think you’ll enjoy my photos in this book. If you are interested in photographing flowers yourself, you’ll also find ideas, techniques, and inspiration!
Here’s the description of Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis:
Capture stunning macro floral images with this gorgeous guide by acclaimed photographer Harold Davis. You’ll learn about different types of flowers, macro equipment basics, and the intricacies of shooting different floral varieties in the field and in the studio.
Harold also shows you techniques in the Photoshop darkroom that can be applied to flower photography to help you get the most out of your images.
Beautiful and authoritative, this guide to photographing flowers is a must read for every photographer interested in flower photography. Photographing Flowers will also win a place in the hearts of those who simply love striking floral imagery.
With Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis, you’ll get:
By the way, I am away the coming week leading a photography workshop east of the Sierras. I’m sure I’ll be posting photos from it, along with night photography adventure stories, when I get back!
I shot this photo of Katie Rose in the garden the other day with my new 35mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens. This is essentially a very high-quality prosumer lens, and surprisingly inexpensive (about $200 street price) considering its quality.
On a 1.5 sensor, such as the D300 I am using, this prime lens has an effective aperture of 52mm, roughly what we used to think of as a “normal” lens. The prime designation means that the lens does not vary in focal length (compared and contrasted to zoom lenses, which feature variable focal lengths). It does not mean that this lens is a cut of meat, or a number only divisable by itself or one.
To make this casual portrait of my daughter, I got low to the ground. I set the camera to aperture-preferred metering, with the aperture wide-open at f/1.8. I knew the wide-open aperture would let plenty of light in for a fast exposure, which would “stop” the motion of Katie’s jaunt in the garden. The flat depth-of-field would also contrast the in-focus child with the our-of-focus garden.
Then I focused on Katie’s eyes, and waited for precisely the right instant to release the shutter.
Exif data: 35mm, 1/1600 of a second at f/1.8 and ISO 200, hand held.
I took Katie Rose for lunch yesterday to Ikea. We both had Swedish meatballs and french fries. Then we started fooling around with my iPhone camera. Altogether Katie and I had lots of fun!
There are some advantages to a really small lens: it is easy to stick inside a glass. With one of my hands holding up the glass and the other holding the iPhone it helped to remember that the iPhone camera app takes the photo when you release the button, not when you first tap it.
When Katie Rose was born she weighed less than two pounds. She’s still small for her age, and likes to fit in small spaces like the bathroom towel storage shown in the photo. Proving that size isn’t everything.
The biology of fatherhood isn’t everything, either. I occassionally joke around with Phyllis about our kids—“What did I have to do with them?” Being a DNA provider is often a brief matter and hopefully enjoyable. I keep in mind the Shakespearean conceit that if the parents had a good time conceiving, the child is likely to be of happier disposition. In King Lear the villainous Edmund therefore describes the “lusty stealth of nature” as providing more “composition and fierce quality” than a “dull, tired, stale bed.”
My point is that Phyllis did the tough work of pregnancy, and does a great deal of the grunt-and-scut work of day-to-day parenting around the house.
Fatherhood is more volitional. There are men who are great father figures to kids with whom they have no biological connection and—the opposite side of the coin—biological fathers who completely abandon their kids.
True fatherhood is a state of mind. Personally, I love being a father. It is the toughest job in the world—or second toughest after being a mother—and also the most rewarding!
In a family tradition, Katie Rose checks out my new book Creative Landscapes: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques.
My darling Katie Rose is three. She’s shown in this snapshot at her three-year checkup; check out Prize Specimen, an earlier visit to the same pediatrician.
Katie’s milestones remind us of how far she’s come from birth as 24-week preemie weighing less than six sticks of butter and resuscitated eleven times; check out The Day My Daughter Was Born and The Birth of Katie Rose for stories of her early days. She also has her own book that tells her story; you can find it on Amazon!
You’ll find my blog post A Preemie’s Journey: Using Photos to Tell the Story of Katie Rose featured on Rear Curtain, a fantastic new site devoted to storytelling in photography.
As I’ve previously noted, these photos won a Finalist award in the Worldwide Gala Awards for storytelling in photography. This Rear Curtain story explains why I began making these photos, as well as some of the technical and emotional issues related to creating them.
In the words of Sabrina Henry, “Wow. Received a story this evening that will make you cry”—tears of joy since Katie Rose is doing so well, and this is ultimately a message of hope and miracles.
Odd and Ends
Creative Lighting: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques is at the top of the digital photography charts on Amazon. Special thanks to everyone who placed such thoughtful reviews. This truly makes a big difference to us.
Harnessing the Power of Flickr is my latest Photo.net column in my Finding an Audience for Your Photos series.
There are still a few places in my Close-Ups and Macros workshop April 29 – May 1. You also have ten days and counting to register for the Alabama Hills Star Circle Workshop at a discounted price.
Finally, in the email version of my Print of the Month post about the Cherry Branch on White print, the image was inadvertently omitted. (It may be more than you wanted to know, but this shows the perils of using Unix relative paths rather than absolute paths in a blog post.) Herewith, the omission corrected:
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| Purchase Cherry Blossom on White for the special Harold Davis Print of the Month price of $195.00 |
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A sequence of photos from The Story of Katie Rose: A Preemie’s Journey has been honored as a Finalist by the jurors in the Storytelling Contest under the auspices of the Worldwide Photography Gala Awards.
One of the rules of the contest was that a sequence of photos had to tell a story without using words. Here are my photos that won, and help to tell the story of Katie Rose and her journey as a preemie.
You can learn more about Katie Rose and her journey as a preemie born very early in her book The Story of Katie Rose: A Preemie’s Journey.
Here’s the book description from the back cover:
The Story of Katie Rose is about a premature baby who was born very early. This book follows her journey as she grows in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and is finally able to go home.
Often siblings of a preemie do not understand why their new baby brother or sister has not come home. The Story of Katie Rose is written for children and is perfect for reading aloud to help explain what is happening. Actual photos of Katie Rose in the NICU accompany the text and will help familiarize children with what they may see in the hospital.
The hospital machines, such as respirators, monitors, and incubators, can sometimes seem scary. These essential machines are explained in simple, easy-to-understand language that describes how they help Katie Rose.
The Story of Katie Rose is not just for siblings of preemies. Parents and grandparents, and anyone who is close to a preemie in the hospital, will find the simple, clear information about medical technology related to prematurity helpful and enlightening.
Follow the inspirational story of Katie Rose’s journey as she grows from a tiny, fragile baby who weighs less than six sticks of butter into a baby who is ready to come home.
Publication Date: Feb 10 2011
ISBN/EAN13: 1460924797 / 9781460924792
Page Count: 48
Binding Type: US Trade Paper
Trim Size: 8.25″ x 8.25″
Language: English
Color: Full Color with Bleed
Related Categories: Juvenile Nonfiction / Family / New Baby
List price: $19.99—Purchase now.
Wherever you go, there you are. If you have an iPhone there you are with a fairly decent camera. A fairly decent camera with some interesting features. Great for photographing Julian and Katie Rose on our way down to the playground this evening.
