Harold Davis

Gaillardia x grandiflora, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This flower is a Gaillardia x grandiflora ‘Oranges and Lemons’. Gaillardias are native to North America, and are sometimes called Blanket Flowers because of their coloration.

I’m using an eight foot long raised bed in my protected side yard to grow flowers for photography, and this Gaillardia is the first subject. As models go, I think my flowers will prove to be very pretty and cooperative. Another benefit: they don’t seek modeling fees.

I photographed this flower on a black velvet background using diffuse natural sunlight. A previous experiment had convinced me that a single point of focus wouldn’t create an image that was sharp all over the flower. So I made twelve varying exposures at three focus points, and hand layered them together for an HDR and HFR image.

[Nikon D300, 200mm f/4 macro lens (300mm in 35mm terms), 12 captures at shutter speeds from 1/2 of a second to 8 seconds, all at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]

Sun Flower II, photo by Harold Davis. View this photo larger.

Sometimes immediately after I take a photo, I fall in love with it. But after a while it’s no longer so great, in my opinion. Other times the opposite happens: I archive a photo, forget about it, then come back to it and see it as grand. It’s like falling in love again with your spouse!

Seriously, there are a number of reasons for this phenomenon in both directions. What they boil down to is that with a little distance and space I’m more likely to be objective about one of my photos. And I probably don’t even remember what seemed so great to me when I looked through the lens. So my photo editor’s objective cool is not biased by my intense photographer’s passion. A good marriage of photographer and photo editor (even when they are married in one and the same person) requires both the passion and the coolness.

My screen saver randomly plays through my photographs. This is one mechanism I use to salvage photos from the archives. If I glance at the screen saver and really like what I see, I have another look at the photo. The screen saved is the Windows XP Slide Show, which also dispalys the file name and path for every photo it shows.

I shot this sunflower in the summer time, and when it appeared on my monitor just now, I decided it was worth another look. Looking at it, I decided to publish it in my blog. It kind of goes with the African Daisy, anyhow.

How many photos are there in my archives waiting to be rediscovered?