Harold Davis's Blog, page 190

Harold Davis Photography Workshops in 2014

I hope to see you at a photography workshop in 2014. I have the following workshops scheduled for 2014:

2014.01.25—2014.01.26—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!—Click here for info and to register.

2014.02.22—2014.02.23—Photographing Flowers for Transparency: Two Day Workshop with Harold Davis—a unique opportunity to learn Harold’s techniques, workshop location is Berkeley, California (Click here for information and registration).

Tulip © Harold Davis

2014.03.15—Achieving Your Potential As a Digital Photographer: A Multi-Modal Ongoing Six Month Workshop

This workshop provides a platform for ongoing mentoring in the context of a supportive group environment. Customized individual assignments will be given. After the initial intensive two-day in-person session, we will keep in touch with monthly private group online webinars and individual phone or email consultations. A final dinner to review work and celebrate our progress will be provided at the conclusion of the workshop. Limited to 12 photographers. A portfolio review is required—Click here for info and instructions on how to apply.

2014.04.26-2014.05.04—Photograph Paris with Harold Davis featuring Paris at night, the gardens at Giverny, black & white, and more. Click here for detailed information and itinerary, and click here for online registration. Here’s what one participant in a previous Harold Davis Photograph Paris workshop had to say: “Had an awesome time with Harold, Mark, and the workshop participants.  Itching to go back.  If you’re a photographer, Paris at night is a ‘Must Do!’.  Put it on your bucket list ‘cause you may not see this in Heaven.”

2014.6.27-2014.6.30—Creative Flower Photography, in Heidelberg, Germany. An on-line registration link will be available soon.

2014.7.04-2014.7.07—Creative Black & White Photography and Monochromatic HDR, in Heidelberg, German. On-line registrations link will be available soon.

Also of note: We’ve had many requests for information regarding the Bristlecone Pine workshop. This workshop will not be given in 2014, but we hope to be able to hold a Dark of the Moon Bristlecone Pine workshop in the summer of 2015. Please check out the linked discussion thread to learn more about the status of this event.

Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

What folks have said about Harold Davis workshops and events:

 “A great artist and speaker!”—W. Anglin
 “Harold is genuine, generous, and gracious – He has a world of knowledge and expertise that he loves to share – his wonderful books show his monumental talents and skill set- his workshops shows the depth of his connecting with others in a very real and personal way.”—P. Borrelli
“Awesome! He patiently addressed questions from the audience which contained photographers of all levels , molding his answers to the level of understanding for each of us. His presentations covered a wonderful range of technical knowledge as well as emphasizing the need for images to have an emotional quality. The images he shares are breathtaking and he is generous in sharing many facets of how he captures such beauty.”—J. Phillips
“Not all photographers are good verbal communicators. Harold is someone who can DO and TEACH. A rare combination of talents.”—B. Sawyer
“Inspiring!”
“He was very giving of his talents and time. The course was very organized and thorough. Loved it! Learned so much! … I also wanted to let you know that I have more than paid the cost of the workshops I’ve done with you by selling some photos! I have sold three prints already.”—L. Beck
“Very creative and a marvelous instructor.”—Kay S.

Nautilus in Black & White © Harold Davis

Photographing the Unusual in Paris

I am looking for a few select photographic souls who are Parisian at heart to join my wonderful group of  photographers in Paris in April and May of 2014. Click here for details, or drop me an email.

La Basilique du Sacré Cœur © Harold Davis

One of my goals in traveling with my camera is to seek out views that are off-beat and seldom photographed, such as this somewhat unusual image of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica dominating Montmartre, the highest hill in Paris.

Click here to see more photos of Paris!

A studio is a frame of mind

A studio is a frame of mind, not a place. When I tell people that I am in my studio, it means to me that I am working as an artist—and not where I am doing that work. By now, it is pretty generally understood that cameras don’t make photos and people do. A physical room doesn’t make a photo, either. Having a creative eye is always more important than having the coolest gear, and the best photographers improvise using the space they have, rather than the studio they wished they had.

Red Tulips in a Glass Vase © Harold Davis—Click here or on the image to view it larger

The tulips looked great in their glass vase, extended and drooping. But when I positioned the tulips in front of my light box there was a clear problem as you can see in the frame below: the composition extended above, below and to the right of the single frame.

To build this image, I shot a left panel and a right panel, using my high-key technique for creating transparent floral images. Each panel was shot at 62mm at f/13 and ISO 100, with five exposures ranging from 1/30 of a second to 4/5 of a second. In Photoshop, I painted with a white brush on the lightest exposure of each bracketed set to remove the unwanted background areas. I then used layers and layer masks to finish each panel, and composited the finished panels together.

With the combined image on a white background, I added some filter effects for a painterly quality, then placed the image on a scanned background with a light texture overlay.

Red red rose

As many times as I photograph roses I never have enough! There is always a different way to approach a rose, or any other flower for that matter. Verily, there is a world and a universe in a single bloom if you look hard enough.

Rose center curves © Harold Davis

With this red rose, it came home with me following the December Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop I just gave. This was a great workshop, with good participants and I had a lot of fun. (By the way, there’s still some room in the February 2014 session of Photographing Flowers for Transparency.)

So essentially, the decision to photograph this particular rose was a bit random. But when I saw the internal curves of this specimen I could not resist. Let’s face it, roses are just so sexy.

To make this image, I put the rose in a vase in a shaft of sunlight. I used a small silver reflector to bounce some light back into the center of the flower.

With my camera on a tripod, I then used my Zeiss 100mm f/2 macro lens to make a bracketed sequence of exposures at f/22 and ISO 100. To make the final image, I used two exposures, one shot at 2 seconds and the other at 4 seconds, combined in Photoshop using layers, layer masks, and the Brush Tool.

If you are interested in my approach to flower photography, please consider my online Photographing Flowers course. This is an ongoing course that you can take on your own time. Click here to register for my course.

My book The Way of the Digital Photographer contains a great deal of information about how to work with flower photos in Photoshop.  I am excited that my book has recently been named a best photography book of the year. Click here to read the press release, click here to purchase my book on Amazon, and click here to purchase it directly from the publisher (Peachpit).

As time goes by

At first glance, this image has been mistaken for an iPhone shot (after the pattern of the special effects iPhone photos in my iPhonographie de Paris). The banks of the Seine River are shown just after sunset. Selective lamplight shines downward, illuminating the river and a couple in the distance embracing (it is Paris, after all!).

As Time Goes By © Harold Davis

Look closer, and you will see that this is really a high resolution image. It was shot with my Nikon D800 with its 36MP sensor. I used my top-of-the-line Zeiss 35mm f/1.4 lens. The impressionism of the image comes from the handheld long exposure (4 seconds at f/11 and ISO 50) and deliberate up-and-down camera motion.

Distant Japanese Landscape

About half a mile before reaching Hyakken-gura, I paused in the steady rain. Peering out from beneath my umbrella, I could see through the pine trees to a distant landscape in which the cloud cover seemed to be breaking up. The view seemed to call for a panorama, so I mounted by camera on my tripod. Holding the umbrella over the camera, and ignoring the cold rain splashing on me, I panned from forest edge to forest edge, encompassing the entire view spread out below me. I knew there would be time enough later to warm myself in a hot communal bath, and to clean my camera lens from the drops of rain that were inevitably falling on it.

Distant Japanese Landscape © Harold Davis—Click here to view larger

You can click here, or on the image, to view it wider than it is possible to see it on one of my vertically-oriented blog pages.

Related story: 3,600 Peaks of Kumano

Islands in the Seine

I woke to a foggy autumn morning in Paris. No matter what the weather, there is always something to photograph in Paris—so I headed out to the islands in the Seine to photograph the mood of the day.

Ile de la Cite from Ile St-Louis © Harold Davis

Please consider joining me on the 2014 Photograph Paris with Harold Davis Workshop, from April 26-May 4, 2014. Click here for the complete itinerary, terms and conditions, and online registration.

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 Paris, the City of Light, and one of the birthplaces of photography?

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!

We’ve included many of the highlights from previous workshops, such as the visit to Monet’s garden at Giverny with after hours access (one of my personal favorites), 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!”

3,600 Peaks of Kumano

During a short break in the very wet weather, from Hyakken-gura, a lookout high on the Kumano kodo, 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, but fortunately Photoshop is pretty good for sorting this kind of thing out!

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 on the image, to view it wider than it is possible to see it on one of my vertically-oriented blog pages.

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

This is a high resolution panorama, shot in separate sections with my 36MP Nikon D800. The final processed archived original file measures 12,256 X 4,747 pixels (about 40″ X 16″) at 300 ppi (before any interpolation and enlargement). So I can’t wait to print it on a long (but not very tall) strip of Moenkopi Kozo washi made by Awagami on Shikoku Island. It might even make a good scroll.

Related image: Misty Mountains.

Playing with my boys on Point Reyes

On the Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend I drove out with my boys—Julian, Nicky and Mathew—to Point Reyes. Nicky’s friend Tamen came along too. It was a balmy, almost summer-like day. As I told people on my recent trip to Japan, we are lucky to live so near such a beautiful, spacious and wild park as Point Reyes National Seashore (many of them couldn’t believe my description in terms of the sheer amount of wild land with so few people near a major city like San Francisco).

Waves on Drakes Beach © Harold Davis

We parked at Drake’s Bay, and walked along the beach under towering bluffs at extreme low tide until we reached the Drakes Estoro inlet to the Pacific. We rested a while, built a fort, and the boys splashed in the cold waters of the ocean.

On the way back, at sunset, I stopped to make the images of waves, camera on tripod for long, slow exposures. Meanwhile, I kept a weather eye out to make sure the boys didn’t kill themselves trying to climb the unstable cliffs, or whack each other too hard with driftwood from the beach.

In other words, a good time was had by all, each of us in our own way!

If you are interested in Point Reyes, you might like the Point Reyes category on my blog and Point Reyes and the Marin Headlands, my postcard book. The postcards in this book show scenes from Point Reyes, Drakes Bay, Mount Tamalpais, the Marin Headlands, the Golden Gate, and more.

Along the Kumano Kodo

Along the ancient Kumano kodo pilgrimage trail there is mostly the silence of the weather. Wind whistles through the trees and a fine mist falls drop by drop. It wasn’t always this way.

When nobles from Kyoto made the pilgrimage they would often travel with many retainers—sometimes as many as a hundred people. You see the remains of those days all along the trail, from the damp and moss-covered stone stairs to the remains of small settlements and tea houses. The tea houses would wait until they saw a party of pilgrims coming, then fire up the tea kettles and rice pots so they would have refreshments to offer.

Along the Kumano kodo © Harold Davis

But today the world of the Kumano kodo is an empty world, alone with its ghosts—and so different from the hustle and bustle of Japanese cities like Tokyo. There were almost no Japanese people on the trail, but one man from Tokyo I did meet was wearing a business suit, business shoes, and a winter fur-lined coat.

He was staring about him wildly at the emptiness of solitude, wide-eyed and obviously fearful and upset by the unfamiliar surroundings of wilderness without people. I wish I could have spoken enough Japanese to have learned his story, but this was not possible.

What brought him to the Kumano kodo pilgrimage, so far from his usual haunts? Tokyo Station with its acres of platforms, trains and levels sees fourteen million passengers a day. For someone used to this volume of people, their absence must be terrifying. Why was he here? I have never seen anyone look so obviously and physically afraid. As Phyllis said when I told her about meeting this man in the wilderness along the Kumano kodo, “He must have done something wrong, very wrong, and is atoning. Probably, he will never do it—whatever it was—again!”