Search Results for: giverny

Home, Peonies, and Irises

May 23, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I’ve been traveling a month and a day—with x-ray photography, a lovely group in Paris (the after-hours session in Monet’s garden at Giverny was probably my favorite part), and a trek on the Camino Portuguese. How great to come home to family, and a house filled with flowers for me to photograph!

Sunset at Sea © Harold Davis

Somehow my adventures of the past month feel like a dream, but also it feels like a dream to be here now. Which is a dream, and which is real life?

Peonies and Irises on White © Harold Davis

Peonies and Irises on Black © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Paris in the Spring! There is still time…

January 30, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments
  • Photograph Paris in April with Harold Davis (co-host Mark Brokering), April 27-May 5, 2019; explore and photograph the City of Light; Destination Photography Workshop includes several excursions, including after-hours photography exclusive to artists at Monet’s gardens at Giverny. Click here for more information and here for the Reservation Form; what a great time of year to visit Paris with our cameras! I love photographing Paris, and am pleased to be able to offer this destination photography workshop to a select few and share my knowledge, tips, and secrets. There is still time to join us, but if you are interested please don’t wait much longer!

  • Garden and Flower Photography, Palm Beach Photographic Centre, Palm Beach, Florida, February 8-10, 2019; click for information and registration. Coming up very soon, and there is still space! This is my first workshop in Florida, and I am looking forward to exploring. Come join me for some great botanical photography!

Posted in Workshops

Workshop and Travel Opportunities—Off to make a new video course!

January 12, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I’m spending next week near Santa Barbara making a new video course. This one is about the Creative Use of LAB Color in Photoshop. I’ve been scripting and rehearsing the course this past week, and I’m excited to see it come together. I’ve been too “heads-down” on authoring my upcoming course to think about much else, but I do want to bring to your attention some upcoming workshop and travel opportunities:

  • Garden and Flower Photography, Palm Beach Photographic Centre, Palm Beach, Florida, February 8-10, 2019; click for information and registration. Coming up very soon, and there is still space! This is my first workshop in Florida, and I am looking forward to exploring. Come join me for some great botanical photography!

Double Rainbow over Paris © Harold Davis

Posted in Workshops

A Tale of Three Flower Workshops

January 2, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I am giving three flower-related photography workshops in 2019. I have been asked a number of times how these workshops differ, and how they overlap—so I’d like to make things as clear as possible so that, if you are interested, you can make the right choice.

First, Photographing Flowers for Transparency in June in Berkeley is the only workshop I will be giving that exclusively focuses in depth on my light box techniques.

Poppies and Mallows on White © Harold Davis

Here are some more details about how to choose between the workshops:

The three workshops are very different in focus. My annual Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop here in Berkeley is a studio-and-Photoshop based course in photographing and processing high-key light box images. This is a complex technique, and it is the only technique the workshop covers, with the goal of getting each proficient technically capable of making this style of image on their own.

You can find the full workshop curriculum on the workshop listing page if you scroll down. The short version is that Day 1 is about arranging and photographing flowers on a light box, and Day 2 is about the related post-production. Light box work—photographing flowers for transparency—is all this workshop will cover.

In contrast, the garden and flower photography workshop at the Palm Beach Photography Centre in early February is largely a field photography workshop. We will be photographing gardens and flowers in a variety of local locations, and also exploring a spectrum of studio photography techniques in the studio, along with critiquing work with an eye to improvement and forming an individual style.

Red Tulip, Giverny © Harold Davis

The workshop will demonstrate a range of techniques, including light box work, but the light box will only be a small portion of what is covered, just enough to give a taste of the technique.

I believe the workshop description a gives a pretty good idea of what is involved. For me, my first at the Palm Beach Photo Centre, a special feature of this workshop is that it coincides with a workshop led by national photography treasure, Joyce Tenneson, Light Your Creative Spark. Joyce has a thing or two to say about many aspects of photography, including flower photography. We’re hoping to co-lead some joint workshop sessions while we are both there; and, if you’ve already taken a workshop with me, you might consider Joyce’s workshop as an alternative to repeating with me.

I will be giving a third related workshop in 2019, the week of August 11-17, 2019 at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine, where I have been teaching for a number of years. This will be a five-day workshop on photographing the great gardens of Maine. This year we have lined up some extraordinary public and private gardens to photograph. Besides the field sessions, we will also be sharing work, learning studio floral photography techniques, and exploring how to enrich our individual creativity, and to express the ineffable with flower photography. I’ll post the registration link once it is available.

Shrub Mallow © Harold Davis

So, to summarize, the Maine and Palm Beach workshops are comparable, except for where they are given, and the lengths (three days for Palm Beach versus five for Maine). Light box work will be shown in a demo, but this is probably not really enough to master the technique in-depth. The Flowers for Transparency workshop is one I give annually, and is an intensive and immersive experience that has been designed to thoroughly teach my light box techniques (but does not include any field photography or visits to locations).

Obviously, potential workshop participants need to choose what works for them in terms of their own schedule and where they are located geographically, as well as what they are most interested in. For the light box process, come to Berkeley in June. You should expect to photograph some really spectacular gardens in Maine in August with me, and in Florida enjoy February’s special flora in a great location, along with the creative synergy that Joyce and I can create (personally, I would consider just signing up for the Joyce Tenneson workshop if I weren’t teaching at the same time!).

Click here for my Workshops & Events listings.

Falling Rose Petals on Unryu washi © Harold Davis

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Looking forward to 2019—2019 Harold Davis Workshop Schedule

January 1, 2019 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

In 2019 I am looking forward to another exciting year, with travel, creative projects, books to deliver, more online courses, and workshops.

If you are interested in my workshops, I particularly want to call your attention to our destination photography group visiting Paris and Monet’s gardens at Giverny in the spring. Also, the weekend Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop here in Berkeley in June guides you through the technique I have pioneered.

It is not too late to join my Paris group of select photographers, and there is still limited space in the transparency workshop.

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

Lonely Road (Poem of the Road) © Harold Davis

May your road carry you into creative growth in 2019, with time to savor the wonder, mystery, and magic of being human, and to foster the creative spark that lives in all of us.

I have come to believe that sometimes simple is best. Who needs gaudy ephemeral things when the world around us presents perfection if we take the time to truly see?

Summer Grass © Harold Davis

Here’s my 2019 workshop schedule so far, subject to change and to sessions filling up:

  • Garden and Flower Photography, Palm Beach Photographic Centre, Palm Beach, Florida, February 8-10, 2019; click for information and registration.
  • Webinar sponsored by Topaz, Tuesday February 19, 2019 at 2PM PT—free with advance registration, registration link TBA.
  • Photograph Paris in April with Harold Davis (co-host Mark Brokering), April 27-May 5, 2019; explore and photograph the City of Light; Destination Photography Workshop includes several excursions, including after-hours photography exclusive to artists at Monet’s gardens at Giverny. Click here for more information and here for the Reservation Form; please contact us for more information. We look forward very much to photographing Paris in the spring with you!
  • Photographing Flowers for Transparency—Covers Harold’s light box and floral photography and post-production techniques; two-day workshop Saturday June 22 and Sunday June 23, 2019 located in beautiful downtown Berkeley, CA. Click here for more information and to register via Meetup.
  • Photographing the Great Gardens of Maine, August 11-17, 2019 at Maine Media Workshop. This year we’ll have a great range of public and unique private gardens to photograph. Registration page and detailed description to come.
  • Northern Morocco Photography Adventure, October 19-30, 2019 (12 Days and 11 Nights), cost is $3,200 per person. Click here for the Prospectus and FAQ, here for the complete Itinerary, and here for the Reservation Form.
Posted in Photography

Star Gazer Lily

December 20, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

The Star Gazer Lily is more correctly StarGazer Lily or Lillium ‘StarGazer’, with “StarGazer” crammed together in one word. This Asiatic Lily is a fairly recent hybridization (circa 1974) of the Rubrim lily. The thing is that the flowers of the Rubrim lily faced downwards.

Downward facing petals were not popular with consumers. Leslie Woodriff, a California lily breeder, spotted a Rubrium that faced upwards. From the single specimen, he created the new hybrid, an Asiatic Lily with a builtin bias towards upward-facing flowers.

His name for the hybrid was a marketing success, and the StarGazer Lily has been a florist-industry megahit for many years. Of course, it helps that the Star Gazer is a beautiful flower, with a wonderful—but sometimes almost overwhelming—fragrance.

I made the close-up and almost abstract photos of a Star Gazer Lily shown below using a macro lens and an extension tube.

If you are interested in flowers, gardens, and flower and garden photography, I have a number of related workshops coming up in 2019:

Star Gazer Lily 1 © Harold Davis

Star Gazer Lily Anther © Harold Davis

Star Gazer Lily 3 © Harold Davis

Star Gazer Lily 4 © Harold Davis

Related story: Anthers in Love.

Posted in Flowers, Photography

Greetings from a peripatetic photographer and writer!

November 29, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I’ve just returned from a voyage to Paris, then leading a group in Malta, followed by a week exploring Sicily. Prior to this, in October I was on a road trip up the California and Oregon coast. In September, I was photographing in the rugged land east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Over the summer I was in Maine, New York, and Germany. The spring found me first in the southwest of France, then hiking along the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and finally in the Balearic Islands.

If you are interested in the images from these travels of mine, I urge you to take a look at my blog. Words do matter to me, and many times the words in my blog tell the stories behind the photo, or at least my thinking making the photo. For your reference, here’s the Paris category on my blog, the Malta category, the first story from the coastal Oregon trip, and the story that marks the start of my Camino. My Flickr stream and Instagram feed have more images than could possibly be on my blog, and these photos may help to fill in some of the backstory.

For personal, familial, creative, and artistic reasons I am contemplating a future with less in the way of in-person workshops that I lead. On this good news and bad news paradigm, I still will be teaching via my books, video courses such as my Photoshop Backgrounds and Textures, and on this website. I have book revisions scheduled for the coming year, along with new books, and a new video course planned for early in the year. 

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

Lonely Road © Harold Davis

It’s not easy to change course on a dime, and this will be a busy workshop year for me as well. For a long time, folks have been asking me to lead a workshop in Florida. I am finally doing so in February, at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, with the topic being Garden and Flower Photography. 

In April, I am looking forward very much to once again to leading a destination travel workshop to Paris and Monet’s gardens at Giverny. If this intrigues you, this small group of photographers is edging towards completeness, so it might be a good time to sign up, particularly if you are interested in gifting yourself and/or a loved one with a lavish photographic Christmas present.

June brings once again our annual Photographing Flowers for Transparency master workshop, held here in Berkeley, California (a few spaces are still open).

In October 2019, I am planning to be the photographic “Golf Pro” on a destination photo workshop to one of my favorite parts of the world, Northern Morocco, with logistics spearheaded by a major travel organization.

I like to quote Yogi Berra’s witticism that “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But of course we all make these predictions (and plans) regardless. As I look ahead at the new year, and contemplate both the needs of my family and how best to nurture my own artistic creativity, I do feel that cutting back on in-person teaching is almost certainly a step I need to take, at least for a while. 

The implication of course is that if you’d like a hands-on workshop with me, or to travel with me, this would be the time. If not now, when? Click here for my Workshops & Events page with the 2019 listings.

Bridge of Light – Color Version © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography, Writing

Garden and Flower Photography Workshop at Palm Beach Photographic Centre

November 23, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

I’ve had many requests for a Florida-based workshop, and I’m happy to say that this indeed will be happening! Please note that the workshop size and places are limited.

I’ll be leading a Garden and Flower Photography Workshop at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre in West Palm Beach, Florida. The dates of the workshop are February 8-10, 2019. Click here for more information and registration.

Workshop description: This workshop combines field sessions to practice garden and flower photography with classroom and studio instruction in photographic and post-production techniques.

Giverny © Harold Davis

Classroom and studio sessions will focus on specific areas of technique, including macro photography, focus stacking, and lightbox work.Field sessions will include a number of different kinds of gardens and a variety of flower photographic situations. Emphasis will be on supporting each participant in achieving an individual approach to floral, botanical, and landscape garden photography.

 

Post-production will be shown in the context of utilizing an individual workflow customized to each participant, as well as best practices in Photoshop and color management.

Kiss from a Rose © Harold Davis

Along the way, we’ll examine the theory, philosophy, and practice of garden design in the context of photography, as well as working with individual participants to develop a cohesive and personal body of work.

Bio

Harold Davis is a bestselling author of books including Photographing Flowers (Focal Press), the developer of a unique technique for photographing flowers for transparency, a Moab Master, and a Zeiss Ambassador. He is an internationally known photographer and a sought-after workshop leader.

Harold is a popular workshop leader and has taught at institutions including the Center for Photographic Art, Maine Media Workshops and College and Point Reyes Field Seminars.

He has been called an “amazing teacher” whose workshops are “inspiring.” As one workshop participant noted, “Harold Davis is that rare master photographer who can both do, and teach.”

Click here for more information and registration.

Flowers of Spring’s Desire © Harold Davis

Posted in Workshops

Last Day in Paris

October 31, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

This is my last day in Paris until the spring. I took the Metro into Concorde, walked over to the Orangerie, and sat for a while and marveled at the wonderful installation of Monet’s mammoth water lilies, abstractions created based on his ponds at Giverny. 

La Tour Eiffel © Harold Davis

Next, I wandered across the Tuileries to the Jeu de Paume. The most interesting exhibition there (at least to me) showed the work related to social injustice of Dorothea Lange. While not always the greatest photographer from a technical perspective (e.g. framing, composition, and exposure) she certainly had an eye for faces and telling details, and she cared. The caring may matter more than the technical considerations.

Manzanar diorama via iPhone capture © Harold Davis

What does a diorama of the World War II era Japanese-American internment camp at Manazar have to do with this? In a museum in Paris, looking at the contemporaneous photos of the camp by Lange, I was solipsistically struck with the thought that I had just been (a little more than a month ago) to the memorial museum on the site of Manazar in the arid Eastern Sierra. What a small world we live in, where one thing has consequences for other things, and there are no coincidences!

After I left the museum I wandered the banks of the Seine with my camera until it started to rain. Then I stopped into a restaurant for a late lunch, and made my way back to the hotel.

The car picks me up early tomorrow to get to Malta. I have enjoyed my relatively short visit to Paris, but I am also hoping for a bit warmer weather in the southern Mediterranean.

Posted in France, Paris, Photography

Springtime in Paris for the Flaneur with Camera

October 3, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

We’ll always have Paris! You may not need me to remind you of the beauty of Paris, the City of Light. Perhaps this is a treasured memory for you. Along with the joy of strolling Paris city streets and visiting French gardens as a flaneur with a camera! But if you’ve never visited Paris with your camera, then Oh là là! You have a peak experience in store.

Paris Sunset © Harold Davis

Please consider joining me and a select group of photographers in Paris towards the end of April this coming year. If you know Paris, you know how special it is in the spring. If you haven’t ever visited Paris, you are in for a treat.

Giverny © Harold Davis

We will focus our lenses on the boulevards and springtime airs of Paris, gardens (the trip includes a special artist hours tour of Monet’s famous gardens at Giverny), Paris at night, and Paris in black and white. Paris as it ought to be seen, experienced, and photographed. We will be photography flaneurs in the best sense of both words with a small group of like-minded souls!

Rooftops of Paris by Harold Davis

Rooftops of Paris © Harold Davis

We’d love to have you join us, and there are a few places left. But hotels in the time period are filling quickly, and we have booked into a boutique 4-star hotel in the prized 6th Arrondissement, only a couple of blocks from the Luxembourg Gardens. Accommodations are in fact limited. If you would like to come, please let us know as soon possible.

Click here for more information about this destination photography workshop. To reserve your spot, drop us an email letting us know you’d like to come and then complete the Reservation Form. Please feel free to contact us with any questions!

I hope to photograph Paris with you in the spring.

Luxembourg Gardens by Harold Davis

Luxembourg Gardens by Harold Davis

Posted in Photography, Workshops

Photographing Flowers

Photographing Flowers with Harold Davis 

Click here to sign up for Photographing Flowers with Harold Davis on Craftsy!

Red Tulip at Giverny © Harold Davis

Red Tulip at Giverny © Harold Davis

Course overview: Learn exposure, focus and creative techniques for photographing flowers in spectacular detail. Join top photographer and bestselling author Harold Davis to explore the many facets of successful macro photography, starting with expert tips on composition.

Delve into extension tubes and filters for an affordable way to master extreme close-ups, and navigate challenging lighting with ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Cultivate your artistic vision using selective focus, unexpected angles and depth of field to create imaginative, Impressionist-inspired shots.

Plus, learn how to execute an indoor shoot and present your photos in a strikingly unique portfolio.

Please check out the positive reviews of this course at the bottom of the registration page!

Online Courses

Creative LAB Color in Photoshop

Click here to view or buy my course on LinkedIn Learning.

 Photoshop: Creative Lab Color by Harold Davis

Course Description:
Explore the tools, techniques, and creative possibilities of Lab Color in Adobe Photoshop. Lab opens new opportunities for photo enhancement and creative image making, enabling you to apply contrast, sharpening, inversion, and equalization adjustments to individual LAB channels. If you want more exciting images, it’s time to explore Lab Color. In this course, Harold Davis explains how Lab compares to other color spaces and how it is implemented in Photoshop. He walks through his own professional post-production workflow for enhancing and transforming images with Lab Color. Then learn how to use Lab for more creative fun and image-making prowess with Harold’s custom Photoshop Lab action, color channels, and blending modes. Plus, learn how to leverage images in Lab for pattern making and surface design.

Topics Include:

  • Converting images to Lab Color space
  • Applying Curves to Lab channels
  • Selective sharpening
  • Inverting channels
  • Making per-channel equalizations
  • Using the Lab action
  • Combining Lab Color with blending modes
  • Making patterns with Lab images

Click here to view or buy my course on LinkedIn Learning.

Photoshop: Backgrounds and Textures with Harold Davis

Click here to buy or view my course on LinkedIn Learning.

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

Course Description:
Turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Learn how to transform relatively straightforward photographs into distinctive visual art, using Photoshop backgrounds and textures.

In this course, photographer and digital darkroom expert Harold Davis walks through the technical specifics of adding backgrounds and textures to your Photoshop compositions, and provides the inspiration and resources you need to get fantastic results.

Learn how to provide context and “frames” with backgrounds, and use textures as nondestructive overlays to enhance the look and feel of your images. Harold shows how to use scans and photos of found objects as the basis for custom textures, and even license textures from commercial libraries.

Plus, discover a post-production workflow for the iPhone that maximizes your flexibility, mobility, and creativity, and explore four iOS apps that Harold recommends for iPhone photography.

Topics Include:

  • Using blending modes, masks, and selections to build backgrounds
  • Creating and sourcing backgrounds
  • Creating effects with textures
  • Adding textures to portraits and landscapes
  • Licensing textures
  • Creating texture-based effects on the iPhone

Duration: 2h 18m

Click here to view my course on LinkedIn Learning. There is a free preview. The full course is behind the paywall, but note that a free trial subscription is available for one month. Alternatively, you can buy my course as a standalone.

Photographing Flowers with Harold Davis 

Click here to sign up for Photographing Flowers with Harold Davis on the Craftsy!

Red Tulip at Giverny © Harold Davis

Red Tulip at Giverny © Harold Davis

Course overview: Learn exposure, focus and creative techniques for photographing flowers in spectacular detail. Join top photographer and bestselling author Harold Davis to explore the many facets of successful macro photography, starting with expert tips on composition.

Delve into extension tubes and filters for an affordable way to master extreme close-ups, and navigate challenging lighting with ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Cultivate your artistic vision using selective focus, unexpected angles and depth of field to create imaginative, Impressionist-inspired shots.

Plus, learn how to execute an indoor shoot and present your photos in a strikingly unique portfolio.

Please check out the positive reviews of this course at the bottom of the registration page!

Visit Paris in the Spring with a small group of Photographers

September 16, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

Visit Paris in the Spring with Harold Davis and a small group of photographers. Click here for more information. Features after-hours artist access to Monet’s delicious gardens at Giverny!

Posted in Workshops

Leaving on a Jet Plane

April 7, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments
Fly Day © Harold Davis

Fly Day © Harold Davis

In about a week I’ll be leaving on a jet plane, and resuming the life of a peripatetic photographer after several months as a “homebody”. I am looking forward very much to my trip and new adventures, but also I will miss my family, home, and the great time I have photographing flowers (and weeds) in and around our garden. It’s all good!

On this voyage, I’ll first be headed to Madrid, then to the southwest of France, where I lead a group of friends who are photographers in the Lot River Valley. Next, I’ll be spending some time on my own hiking the world-famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail. Finally, I’ll join PhotoPills as an instructor for their annual camp in Menorca.

If you are interested in joining me on a photographic adventure, there is still space available in November’s Days and Knights of Malta. 

The early-bird discount for the 2019 Spring in Paris (with Monet’s garden at Giverny) ends June 1, 2018.

There is also some space availability in the following 2018 photography workshops I am leading:

You can find my upcoming Workshops & Events on this page. For reasons I explain in this blog story I am no longer on Facebook, but I’ll try to keep blogging—of course, my rate of posting will likely slow down when I am “on the road”!—and to post images on my Flickr and Instagram streams as I go.

May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks!

Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

Posted in Photography

Detailed Malta Day-by-Day Itinerary; Workshop Opportunities

March 9, 2018 by Harold Davis | 0 Comments

We’re delighted to have available the detailed itinerary for our November 2018 Destination Photography Workshop to Malta (as a PDF download). Making this visit especially timely: Valletta, Malta will be hosting the title of European Capital of Culture in 2018! This destination photography workshop includes many extras such as a Heritage Malta pass to most Maltese attractions for each participant. Click here for the detailed day-by-day itinerary (PDF) and here for the Reservation Form.

Other workshop notes: 

Long Exposure Wave Study 2 © Harold Davis

Posted in Workshops