I’ve stumbled into a new series of flower images. These images have in common the appearance of “artful randomness.”

They are supposed to seem casual and minimally arranged. But the fact is that I create these images from “the ground up” using both a scaffolding and an intermediate structural layer, so the appearance of randomness is just that—an appearance—and there is very little about these images that has been left to chance, whatever chance may be.

In art, I like to think, there are no accidents, only serendipity. To play fast and loose and improvise, first understand and master your craft!

If you like these images, also check out Joy of the World in Flowers, Glory of the Garden and Wilder Shores of Love.

Falling Flowers © Harold Davis

Iris Lattice © Harold Davis

Dancing with the Flower Stars © Harold Davis

Canopy of Flowers © Harold Davis

Butterfly Ranunculus and Friends © Harold Davis

Music of Irises and Poppies © Harold Davis

Translucent Flora: Photographs by Harold Davis is an exhibition at the San Francisco Botanical Garden Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture, June – September 2023

Join us for the Artists’ Reception on Sunday, June 11, 4-6pm

This beautiful new art exhibition features stunning botanical photographs by award-winning photographer and author Harold Davis. Using a special photographic technique, Harold Davis creates images of flowers and plants with an ethereal, translucent effect. The author of several books, his work is featured on two USPS Forever stamps. 

Visit https://www.sfbg.org/davis for more info.

Flowers of Spring’s Desire © Harold Davis

Having a number of teenagers and twenty-somethings in the house exposes me to some (understandable) pessimism about life, society, and the future. These are indeed strange times. We—and our kids—have experienced the pandemic, the coarsening of civic discourse, and the specter of global warming.

Joy of the World in Flowers © Harold Davis

But let’s not forget that where there is life there is hope. We have lived through difficult and tumultuous times before. There is such joy and beauty in the world, starting—for me—with the flowers from my garden, shown in this image. There are always things to make me happy. Seek beauty out in nature and gardens, look for it, and refresh your soul, because no matter what we face there is always much to celebrate.

How wonderful to be photographing flowers from my garden at this time of year when the world comes to life and all the colors glow and are so glorious!

Glory of the Garden © Harold Davis

Glory of the Garden 2 © Harold Davis

Glory of the Garden 3 © Harold Davis

This Rojasianthe superba, sometimes called “White Sunflower Tree,” was growing in the entry garden of San Francisco Botanical Garden, where (with permission) I cut this specimen.

The seeds of Rojasianthe were collected by a botanist on the slopes of a volcano in Guatemala, and sent to the garden to propagate. Currently, only San Francisco Botanical Garden and UC Berkeley grow this amazing specimen outside of its native habitat.

San Francisco’s moist, relatively warm, and sunny climate make it ideal for growing plants that are originally from cloud forests in subtropical high-mountain ecosystems, where these flora may be endangered in the wild.

Rojasianthe superba © Harold Davis

After cutting the specimen (special thanks to SFBG!) we brought it back to my studio across the Bay in Berkeley in water with a growing medium added. On the light box, I used six exposures with my Nikkor 85mm tilt-shift macro, each exposure at ISO 64 and an adjusted aperture of f/64. Shutter speeds ranged from 2/5 of a second to 13 seconds. The exposures were combined using Photoshop as explained here and here and placed on a virtual scanned-paper background as explained here.

Perhaps this image will be a print in my exhibition at San Francisco Botanical Garden’s Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture coming up in June, 2023.

What is love? It is, of course, a “many-splendored” thing: supple, wonderful, wistful, and maybe all of these at once and maybe more. The passionate rush of dopamine when encountering the inamorata is not the same as the click of logical desire when the beauty of flowers from my garden becomes apparent, yet both feelings use the same nomenclature. Surely we should have an enhanced vocabulary, at least as many nuanced terms as some peoples are said to have around snow.

Wilder Shores of Love 2 © Harold Davis

The images in this series were made with flowers all in bloom right now in my garden, and photographed on my light box.

Wilder Shores of Love 1 © Harold Davis

Peony as big as a platter © Harold Davis

I’m proud of our bush Peony. For a toddler—I planted it close to two years ago—it certainly produced a huge and beautiful flower. It’s hard to get a sense of the size from this image, but it is at least a foot in diameter. I am hoping there are more blossoms this year.

The version above was photographed on my light box, and processed as a high-key layer stack. The version below, on a black background, is an L-channel LAB inversion of the upper image.

Peony Inversion © Harold Davis

A great deal of our energy lately has gone into clearing my parents’ house to make it ready for sale. This is a thankless task and emotionally very difficult. Fortunately, we are almost done. But every time I think we’ve removed everything the house disgorges something new—this time a collection of small glass bottles, cowering in a corner.

I used these bottles to anchor some flowers from my garden, photographed with my 85mm tilt-shift macro on a white seamless background.

Fantastic Iris © Harold Davis

White Camellia © Harold Davis

A single blossom from my garden is apparently the essence of simplicity. The power of these images of flower blossoms relies on this apparent simplicity: you are supposedly looking at the whole blossom and nothing but the blossom against a straight black background. 

To the casual glance, the only real photographic control involves lighting. Simple as these compositions seem to be, they do depend upon attractive overall lighting.

Sometimes the apparently simplest things are the hardest to pull off. It would be a mistake to underestimate the craft that goes into these straightforward compositions.

Related images: Frilly Goddesses; Topography of Camellia.

Camellia ‘Pearl Maxwell Blush’ © Harold Davis

Camellia ‘Elizabeth Weaver’ © Harold Davis

Ranunculus on Black © Harold Davis