Harold Davis's Blog, page 11

Attending the Special Event for Martin Davis Remotely

If you would like to attend the special event remembering my father Martin Davis remotely via Zoom, please register using this link. 

The event is scheduled for Friday, January 26, 2024 in New York, and sponsored by New York University. The scientific portion of the event begins at 1pm ET (10am PT), followed by Memories of Martin & Virginia Davis at 2:45pm ET (11:45am PT).

May their memory be a blessing!

Curtain Study © Harold Davis

Contribution to Doctors without Borders

Thank you to everyone who contributed, attended, and helped get the word out about today’s Photographing Flowers for Transparency webinar benefiting Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Phyllis and I are proud to have donated $1300.00 on your behalf. 

Mandala (White) © Harold Davis

Tree Shadow

The Grand Shrine of Ise is dedicated to the sun goddess Amaterasu. One of Shinto’s most sacred shrines, this complex of shrines, inner shrines, and sub-shrines covers a larger land area than the city of Paris.

Wandering in the complex I found myself overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place. It wasn’t clear to me how I could make a meaningful image. So instead of trying too hard I just followed the crowds and explored. Every spot seemed curated, and no doubt the paths had been trod for years without count.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the sun hitting the side of an old tree for an instant, with shadows from foliage projected on the ancient trunk. Perhaps in the past at this time of year and day others had watched this brief illumination. I snapped my photo, and the sunlight was gone.

Tree Shadow © Harold Davis

Realms of Gold

The base photograph in this image captured a reflection of a radio tower in the moat of Hiroshima Castle—a factoid that may be irrelevant to the image. I added a gold texture overlay to the photograph, creating the semi-abstract image you see below. I think it looks a bit like a pagoda.

In the Realms of Gold © Harold Davis

Mandala

Yesterday I spent most of my day building a mandala from flower petals on my light box. I used petals from alstroemeria, chrysanthemum, gerbera, some lobelia from the garden, and a few ilex berries.

Putting together a composition like this requires an almost Zen level of concentration, not to mention holding one’s breath and nimble fingers. As opposed to my method in some previous compositions, I used “just-in-time” petal plucking rather than first creating a library of plucked petals.

Here’s my Mandala as photographed on my light box.

Mandala (White) © Harold Davis

As those of you have followed my LAB color techniques know, it is simple to invert the L-channel in LAB color to present a white composition on black, as you can see below.

Mandala (Black) © Harold Davis

It was good for me to spend a day essentially in quiet contemplation of flower petals, as opposed to travel coordination, emails, printmaking, and all the other myriad details that often consume my life. I am thankful for so many things—family and friends are high on that list—and also for the inclination, time, passion, and skill to spend my time making beautiful things.

Photographing Flowers for Transparency with Harold Davis | Benefits Doctors without Borders

What: Photographing Flowers for Transparency is a benefit webinar with Harold Davis. Proceeds will be donated to Doctors without Borders. Tuition (not tax deductible) is $29.95. Advance registration via Zoom is required. Click here to register!

When: Saturday December 9, 2023, at 11am PT

Where: On your computer via Zoom anywhere. Advance registration is required. The advance registration link is https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iZP0bmtkTSOcO-m9kbbTQw

Details: In this presentation, Harold Davis shows his stunning floral imagery and explains in detail his process for light box photography. Botanical composition, exposure, and post-production are explained.

Pale Garden © Harold Davis

Harold says: “Light box photography is a joy in and of itself, and is a great form of photography to practice at home with relatively minimal investment in equipment. Techniques that can be learned from light box photography cut across myriad aspects of photography, and will enrich all aspects of your photographic practice.”

The presentation will include an actual example of post-production processing using Harold’s techniques for which he was awarded the 2022 Progress Award by the Photographic Society of America.

There will be ample time for Q&A. Phyllis Davis will moderate this webinar.

Registration: This is a benefit webinar and advance registration is required. Click here to register!

Glory of the Garden © Harold Davis

Vases from Japan

While in Kyoto I stopped by the Official Shop of the Kyoto Ceramic Art Association. There are 210 members of the association, and the works on display range from one-of-a-kind pieces by dedicated artisans to work that seems more manufactured (but still beautiful). 

Lilies in a Vase © Harold Davis

I looked for vases. My budget was certainly not unlimited. I took my time, placed the pieces I was interested in on a table and studied them for a while. My criteria was mostly whether I liked the piece, and also suitability for photography.

Ilex in a Vase © Harold Davis (Vase by Junji Setsu)

When my purchases arrived back home in the States after I got back it was like Christmas in November! As you’d expect from Japan, my vases were wrapped well, with each in an individual presentation box of its own.

Blue Vase in Morning Light © Harold Davis

I set up some white seamless paper, made a few flower arrangements, and started taking pictures. I’m sure there is more to come, but for now I am taking a breather: living with the ceramics, letting them sink in, and waiting for the time to be right to experiment more! 

Vase with Proteus © Harold Davis Red Gerbera in a Vase © Harold Davis (Vase by Mitsuo Nishikawa) Gerbera in a Vase © Harold Davis White Porcelain Vase with Campanulas © Harold Davis

Design Pattern: Criss-Cross Stairs

Understanding design patterns is a crucial part of construction of almost anything from buildings to object-oriented software. Visual design patterns originally derived from architecture, and are bedrock to composition; both in terms of replication and repetition within an image, and in using pattern recognition as an effective method for recognizing compositional organization across a universe of captures.

Stairs, Hiroshima © Harold Davis

As a devotee of design-pattern gazing, I am particularly drawn to stairs. Stairs can definitely pull me down the rabbit hole!

As architecture, they hark back to the intuitive roots of design-pattern theory. Function is involved as well as form—we use stairs to ascend and descend, to state the obvious—although some stairs get quite fanciful, with spirals within spirals, and so forth.

One stair patterns that calls to me is the “criss-cross.” The criss-cross has an element of practicality: it can reach more landings in a relatively compact space. However, at times the crossings are ornamental because both stairs rise to the same plateaus.

I find criss-cross stair examples almost everywhere in the world. The criss-cross back stairs of an office building, shown above, were photographed in Hiroshima, Japan. The criss-cross public lower stairs, shown below, are at the end of a small street in Trieste, Italy.

Stairs, Trieste © Harold Davis

Special Event in Honor of Martin Davis

If you are in the New York area, please consider attending a special event in honor of my father, Martin Davis, who died earlier this year. The event is hosted by New York University’s Courant Institute, where Martin taught for much of his professional life. You can read a brief obituary of Martin here.

When: Afternoon of Friday, January 27, 2024, starting at 1pm, with reception to follow.

Where: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, 251 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012.

Registration: Please preregister for the event (registration is free), as this is required for access to the building. The registration form can be found by following the link on the Information page.

More Info & Program: Click here for the Information page. The schedule is as follows:

1:00PM – 2:30PM     Lectures on Martin’s work. Click here for the program and details. 

2:45PM – 3:45PM     Memories of Martin and Virginia Davis. Click here for details. Note that it is permissible to just attend the Memories, although preregistration is still required even if you do not attend the lectures.

4:00PM – 6:00PM    Reception (13th floor lounge).

Livestream: I am expecting the event to be livestreamed, and will post the link when it is available.

Martin and Virginia Davis © Harold Davis

Bamboo Woods near Kyoto

For the image of Bamboo Woods near Kyoto, I made seven exposures on my tripod at shutter speeds ranging from 1/2 a second to 20 seconds, varying each exposure by about one EV.

Each exposure was at f/22 and ISO 64; the goal of this kind of exposure sequence is to capture all values of light and dark in front of the camera. In this case, there was quite a dynamic range in the subject, going from bright sunlight at the top to dark shade below the bamboos. It is fair to say that the range of light and darks was greater than the human eye could encompass in a single glance; hence, the scene before me “looked” nothing like the final image.

Bamboo Woods near Kyoto © Harold Davis

After finishing my exposure sequence, with the camera still on the tripod, I indulged in a little controlled ICM (in-camera motion), moving the camera up and down in the vertical direction. For these exposures I used my best guess at a normative exposure (about 8 seconds at f/64 and ISO 64).

To make the blend that became the final image, I ran my seven original exposures through Nik HDR Efex. Next, I added in about 50% of the 10 second exposure. Finally, I emphasized some of the more impressionistic areas (mostly in the sky) by blending in a bit of one of the ICM images.

As I said, the final image looked like nothing I could see on the spot, so this kind of photography really does require a fair amount of experience in order to previsualize the final possibilities with clarity.