Harold Davis

Blowing out the candles, photo by Harold Davis.

We had a nice little birthday party for Julian, who celebrated his ninth birthday. Everyone was happy, and nobody cried. Which is one of our key birthday party metrics of success.

It’s hard to believe that nine years ago Julian was a two-and-a-half pound preemie in the NICU. The time has flown by like no time at all, and we are certainly blessed that he has done so well.

Of course, I took a few photos of showing Julian blowing out his candles with my flash—and they show Julian in focus. But I rather prefer this impressionistic handheld using ambient light to show color and motion. It fits Julian, who is constantly in motion. Check out this photo of Julian chasing wild geese.

McClamp Bubble, photo by Harold Davis. View this photograph larger.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably know that about a year ago, I started a series of extreme close-ups of water drops on the flowers in my garden. You can see some of these photos on my blog in my Water Drop category.

Of course, one of the main technical challenges with this kind of photography (when I’m using available light rather than a strobe) is the motion of the flower and water drop. A partial answer to this problem is to use my McClamp The Stick (click here for the McClamp website). This piece of equipment keeps flowers from swaying in the breeze using a stake to anchor into the ground, flexible plastic piping, and a padded clamp to hold the flower. If you are really careful, it won’t even damage the flower!

In my photo “McClamp Bubble” (above), I attached the McClamp stick to a dahlia, and after it was attached turned on my irrigation system to get a natural looking set of drops (if I had attached the McClamp after spraying the flower, the drops would gave shaken off).

I was pleased to see how sharp this water drop looked when I opened the RAW file on my computer, and amused to see the McClamp stick reflected in it. At first I was going to discard the photo because of of the way you can see The Stick in it.

But, “on reflection,” the reflection of The Stick makes the photo more interesting to me (rather than less), because it helps to show within the photo the tools I used to make the photograph. I’m glad I kept it, and I hope you enjoy it!