Harold Davis's Blog, page 189

Kate Rose is doing fine!

From time to time I get asked for a follow up on the story of Katie Rose from people—both strangers and those I know—who remember how she was born. Katie Rose is doing just fine, which counts as a major miracle in my book, considering that she was born at one pound with complete cardiac and lung failure. She’s shown here via a recent iPhone capture in the playground.

Katie Rose in the playground via iPhone © Harold Davis

For me, whenever things seem hard in the world or I am unhappy, I remember that miracles do indeed happen in real life—and Katie Rose is here to prove it!

Related: The Story of Katie Rose book; Katie Rose category on my blog.

Special Edition Print: Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po

What better time to consider the spiritual side of things than at the beginning of a new year?

Hiking the ancient Kumano kodo trail on the Kii peninsula in Wakayama prefecture in Japan, involves a spiritual quest where walking itself is part of the pilgrimage. And the views themselves represent a spiritual and dreamlike landscape.

Weather on the Kumano kodo

During a short break in the very wet weather, from Hyakken-gura—a lookout high on the trail—I shot this panorama of the Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po—which translates to “view of 3,600 peaks of Kumano.” When the wind gusted, rain splattered my face and my camera lens and tripod, so it was pretty hard to make notes to keep track of the positioning of the frames in the panorama. It was wet and cold. I had to work hard to keep myself—and more importantly—my camera dry. But I realized that the weather was a part of the spiritual scenery that makes the Kumano kodo so special. And as Ansel Adams put it, “You can’t capture a clearing storm without being out in the weather.”

Peaks and Panoramas

I don’t think there are actually 3,600 peaks—it’s important to remember the role of metaphor in life, particularly when you are on a pilgrimage—but as you can see there are certainly quite a few mountains. You can click here, or click on the image, to view it wider than it is shown here.

Panorama of the Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis—Click here to view larger

This is a high-resolution panorama, shot in 10 separate sections with my 36MP Nikon D800. The final, full-size processed file measures 12,256 x 4,747 pixels at 300 ppi.

A Fusion of Old and New

This special edition panoramic archival pigment print is presented on the fantastic Kozo washi made by Awagami on Shikoku Island. The Awagami Mill has been making this paper for generations.

The print measures 24″ wide by 11 3/4″ high (the image size is 20″ X 7 3/4″) with generous 2″ margins. It is hand-signed and inscribed in pencil on the bottom margin. This is an elegant collectible print, handcrafted in my studio, that will add the spiritual essence of the Kumano kodo landscape to any environment.

For a limited time, we will ship one of these unique prints to you, packed flat and insured, for the special price of $675.00.

To order your Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po panoramic print, or for more information, please click here to contact my studio. Larger sizes are also available, please inquire.

You KNOW You’ve Always Wanted to Photograph Paris

Wanted: A few good photographers! 

Can you handle photographing Paris in April? Are you serious about your photography and looking to have fun with it in an environment that has nurtured artists over the centuries? Are you ready for a great learning experience in the company of a master photographer and educator in a group of dedicated colleagues? Are you ready to have fun with your photography??

I am looking for a few photographers to join me and my wonderful group in Paris this year from

April 26 – May 4, 2014. Click here to register now!

Photography begins with the medium of light, which the artist captures and applies to the canvas in endlessly surprising ways. And what better place to explore this medium than in Paris, the City of Light, and one of the birthplaces of photography?

Paris City of Light © Harold Davis

When we work together to photograph Paris, you’ll experience firsthand the places and sights that have inspired artists for centuries, and find new creative and unusual ways to make photos of the City of Light!

We’ll focus our lenses on Paris in bloom, Paris at night, and Paris in black & white, reinterpreting for ourselves some of the images that have been captured in paint and on film by many great artists, including Daguerre, Monet, Atget, Picasso, and Erwitt. We’ll have a grand time photographing and we’ll return home with many priceless shots to treasure!

Giverny © Harold Davis

We’ve included many of the highlights from previous workshops, such as the visit to Monet’s garden at Giverny with after hours access (a personal favorite!), as well as new places to explore.

If you check out the itinerary, I think you’ll find many wonderful locations, such as the view from the top of the Tour Montparnasse at night, Père Lachaise, and Vaux-le-Vicomte.

As one of the participants in last year’s workshop said, “Put Paris on your bucket list ‘cause you may not see this in Heaven.” Another workshop participant added, “I already admired Harold Davis, and had confidence that he would lead us to fantastic places – and he did!”

The workshop cost is $5,639.00, excluding airfare. The workshop fee includes eight nights in a delightful 4-star hotel as well as numerous excursions and extras. We’ve got great deals on the hotel and excursions—if you reserved these on your own you’d pay more—even without Harold’s teaching fee for eight days and nights!

Click here for the complete itinerary, terms and conditions, and online registration.

Bonus offer: Sign up to be part of the Paris photography group before Friday, January 10, and I will spend a private hour with you in Paris, coaching you on any photographic topic that interests you. You decide how to spend the time–it is my way to say “thanks for photographing Paris with us!”

Learn Photoshop this year

Make this the year that you finally learn Photoshop!

It’s time to bend Photoshop to your creative will. Whether you want to enhance your existing digital workflow, create black and white images with high tonal range, or composite incredible and fantastic landscapes from disparate elements, stop fighting Photoshop—and make Photoshop your creative ally and partner!

Kick off this resolution by reading Harold Davis’s acclaimed books about Photoshop’s creative side: Monochromatic HDR Photography, The Way of the Digital Photographer, The Photoshop Darkroom, Creative Black & White, and other titles.

And if you’re really ready to go for it, bring your creative Photoshop ideas to Harold’s unique seminar in January, Mastering Creative Photoshop: The Way of the Digital Photographer. There will be plenty of time for individual attention. Guaranteed: you will learn Photoshop. And your photography will never be the same!

So enough dithering! Make your Photoshop resolutions come true! If not now, when?

Workshop Description: Mastering Creative Photoshop: The Way of the Digital Photographer—This workshop covers developing a personal digital Photoshop workflow. Topics explained in detail include archiving and checkpoints, RAW processing, multi-RAW processing, HDR, hand-HDR, stacking, LAB color creative effects, monochromatic conversions, using backgrounds and textures, layers, layers masks, working with channels, Photoshop filters, and plugins from Nik Software, onOne Software, and Topaz. If you’ve ever wondered how Harold does it, or wanted to learn how to incorporate his techniques in your own digital workflow, this is the workshop for you!

Dates: Saturday January 25 – Sunday 26, 2014

Location: Berkeley, California

Space Availability: We have some current openings, but to avoid disappointment please do not delay, as class size is strictly limited to permit individual attention.

Tuition: $695.00 per person for the entire weekend.

Registration: Click here for more information and to register.

Church at Auvers © Harold Davis

About this image: One of my heros, the great painter Vincent van Gogh, spent his last days in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise outside Paris, France, where he painted many of his great works. Wandering the streets of Auvers-sur-Oise, now a suburb of Paris, I found many signs reproducing a van Gogh painting in front of the literal scene that he painted.

It seemed to me that it would be fun to create an image that showed an impressionistic image like the ones that van Gogh created on one side of the frame, along with a photographic capture of the signage showing the image. To implement this thought, I created a bracketed sequence of exposures, which I combined and manipulated using Photoshop and plugins from Nik Software and Topaz.

About Harold Davis: Harold Davis is an internationally-known digital artist and award-winning professional photographer. He is the author of many photography books. His most recent titles are The Way of the Digital Photographer (Peachpit) and Monochromatic HDR Photography (Focal Press).

In addition to his activity as a bestselling book author, Harold Davis is a Moab Master printmaker and a Zeiss Lens Ambassador. Harold Davis’s work is widely collected, licensed by art publishers, and has appeared in numerous magazines and other publications. His black and white prints are described as “hauntingly beautiful” [Fine Art Printer] and his floral prints have been called “ethereal,” with a “a purity and translucence that borders on spiritual” [Popular Photography].

Harold Davis leads popular technique and destination photography workshops to many locations including Paris, France; Heidelberg, Germany; and the ancient Bristlecone Pines of the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Monochromatic HDR Photography

The two images shown in this blog story are both examples of monochromatic HDR photography. Each was shot using a bracketed exposure sequence. The exposures in each of the bracketed sequences were combined using various HDR and RAW processing techniques, and the resulting composite image was processed and converted to monochrome to extend the grayscale and tonal range of the final monochromatic (black and white) image.

Post Auto © Harold Davis

As you can see from the two images that accompany this story, monochromatic HDR techniques can be effective with a wide range of subject matter. For example, the image above was created from a bracketed image sequence shot peering down into the abandoned span of San Francisco’s old Bay Bridge from the walkway of the new bridge. Below, I shot a bracketed image sequence to capture the massive and ancient moss covered tree roots and stone work on the grounds of a temple in Kyoto, Japan in the early evening light of an autumn day.

I’m pleased to see several new reviews begin to recognize the extended context of the techniques I explain in my new book Monochromatic HDR Photography. On Amazon, reviewer Larry Goldfarb notes that “while the title invokes the world of HDR photography, this book is really bigger than that, it’s about light and tonal depth. Other than subject matter, that’s photography. The author presents a variety of methods for exploring and expanding your ability to adjust both.” (Click here to read the full review.)

I am also pleased with a new book review in the January 2014 issue of Fine Art Printer Magazine. Fine Art Printer is a prestigious German publication primarily devoted to high-end photographic printing. The review says in part that Harold Davis’s photos are bought by collectors around the world. …We can highly recommend this book due to the very high image quality and the excellent text. The subject of the book is the combination of two photographic trends: HDR photography and black and white….These insights are illustrated by hauntingly beautiful black and white images (click here to download the full review in PDF format).

Old Tree Roots in a Temple Yard © Harold Davis

Related stories:

Out with the Old (Bay Bridge coming down)
Kyoto: Getting to Know Kyoto; Noriko tries to poison me; Hidden glimpses of the beautiful; Wandering through gardens and temples; Getting lost is good; Sayonara Kyoto
Monochrome: Monochromatic HDR Photography on Amazon; Monochromatic HDR Photography publication announced; signing the Monochromatic Visions portfolio; Monochromatic Visions portfolio; Fine Art Printer Magazine book review (in German, click here to download the PDF).

Out with the Old

As the new year approaches I am reminded of the saying “Out with the old, in with the new.” As an immigrant to California, this truly resonates for me because—as has often been pointed out—the spirit of California is one of self-reinvention.

Old Bay Bridge Pylons © Harold Davis

What applies to people can also apply to structures. The massive, depression-era pylons of the old Bay Bridge are shown here, photographed from the pedestrian walkway of the white, futuristic new Bay Bridge structure. Sometime in the next few years the old Bay Bridge is coming down, and the Oakland-to-Treasure-Island passage will be spanned by the spanking, brand-new structure alone!

Samadhi Mudra

The hand gestures of representations of Budhha are significant, and have specific meanings. The Dhyana mudra (hand gesture of Buddha), also called the Samadhi mudra, is shown in the photo below. This hand gesture invites meditation and a sense of deep involvement with the universe.

Dhyana Mudra © Harold Davis

I photographed this statue of Buddha in the garden outside Senso-ji, the oldest temple in Tokyo. Click here to read my story about having my fortune told at this temple!

White Chrysanthemums at Giverny

At a casual glance, this is a fairly simple selective focus image of lush white flowers in an autumn garden. Actually, there’s more to it photographically than meets the eye. (Knowing me, this probably won’t surprise you!) Let me explain.

White Chrysanthemums Japonicum at Giverny © Harold Davis

First, and somewhat unusually, this is a close-up of a flower using an extreme wide-angle lens (my Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 on a full-frame DSLR). This means that the front element of my lens was only two inches from the flower that is in focus (and central to the image).

Next, I created the slight blurring in the out-of-focus blossoms by intentionally creating motion in the flowers. I had my camera on a tripod, manually located the point I wanted to focus on, and outside of the frame I pushed the flowering plant with my free hand. When the flower entered my in-focus zone I snapped the exposure using a remote release at a shutter speed fast enough to stop some of the motion but still render the attractive blur. The settings were 1/125 of a second at f/5.6 and ISO 200.

It takes a bit of doing to pull off this partial motion blur and selective focus technique. You can find some more information in my online Photographing Flowers course.

By the way, the chrysanthemum—particularly white chrysanthemums—are important symbolic flowers in Japan. I feel there is some significance in photographing this very Japanese flower in Giverny, the garden of Claude Monet (whose work was so influenced by Japanese art), shortly before my own trip to Japan.

Check out photos of Japan on my blog.

Check out photos of France on my blog.

Negative Space

Negative space is often defined as the space around and between the subject of an image. From a formal design perspective, learning to see negative space helps one to visualize the impact of the positive, or actual, subject of a photo. Taking this towards its limit, in some imagery the design and composition can become more about the formalism of the negative space than the positive subject matter depicted. In a black and white photo, depending upon the context, negative space is generally rendered as either all-black or all-white.

Final Tier © Harold Davis

It’s possible to walk up to the second deck (about 65 floors up) on the Eiffel Tower. From there, if you want to go to the very top, you need to buy a supplemental ticket and ride the elevator. Walking up as far as one can has some visual interest, and of course avoids the lines at the bottom for the elevators.

Looking up from the second deck, I composed this off-center composition. Exposing to render detail in the structure of the Eiffel Tower made the sky on this overcast day become essentially white. It was clear to me that I was looking at a photo where interaction between positive space (presumably the Eiffel Tower) and negative space (preemptively the all-white background) would be crucial (see image above).

Negative Space © Harold Davis

But wait! Which space is actually negative, and which is positive? White space—the sky—seems like the absence of the subject and should therefore be the negative space. It’s easy to test this presumption by swapping the L-channel values using the LAB color space. Black becomes white and white becomes black, as you can see in the version of the image immediately above.

Clearly, the inverted Eiffel Tower is spread out against the sky, which still seems like the negative space, even though it is black rather than white. But also newly made black are elements such as the night lights of the Eiffel Tower, appearing as small “chocolate-kiss” structures on many of the girders. In addition, the underbelly of the top platform now shows details as opposed to the stark negative space aspect of this underside in the original image.

These image variations show the interplay of positive and negative space—and are a good illustration of both the usefulness of looking at the world with negative space in mind, and also of how complex this interrelationship can be in the real world.

Happy Holidays!