Harold Davis's Blog, page 21

Video Games are Actually Good for Your Brain

A little more than fourteen years ago, my daughter Katie Rose was born very prematurely. Today, Katie’s Video Games are Actually Good for Your Brain has been selected to be showcased at the California STEAM Symposium in Anaheim, CA on October 1-2, 2022. Congratulations Katie!

Sleeping Angels © Harold Davis

Butterfly of Flowers

It’s fun to use flowers to create animistic shapes on the light box, like good-luck dragons and this “Butter-flower” shown below.

Butterfly of Flowers © Harold Davis

The Eternal City: Albumen Print Simulations

I’m excited to be headed back to Italy this autumn, and have been looking through my archives. What work have I done in Italy, and how can I make progress from there?

These digital simulations of albumen printing are based on images I made in Rome. I had forgotten this series, from 2016, but now as I revisit it I am pleased (if I say so myself!).

Rome from St Peter’s Dome © Harold Davis

I briefly mentioned the image above in a blog story about a workshop I gave: “The sepia image of the eternal city (Rome) shown above was a classroom demonstration, with the file drawn from my recent trip to Italy.” I think what happened is that I liked the in-class demo so much that I worked through the other images (shown below) using the same set of techniques, and style!

Forum of Rome © Harold Davis

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi © Harold Davis

Dancing with the Pasta Stars!

It’s amazing what one can do with pasta stars, a light box, and LAB color. Dancing with the Pasta Stars was created using LAB in Photoshop from the version of the pasta spiral photographed on my light box (below) and then inverted (bottom).

Dancing with the Pasta Stars © Harold Davis

Spiral Pasta Nebula © Harold Davis

Spiral Pasta Nebula Inversion © Harold Davis

Long Live Monochrome Memories!

Here are a few of my favorite monochromatic black and white images that I haven’t posted in a long time.

Bolinas Beach (2012) © Harold Davis

Apparently, despite its success as a large-sized print, Bolinas Beach has been resurrected from my files once before!

Reflections in a Maine Pond (2015) © Harold Davis

My original blog story on Reflections in a Maine Pond quoted the journals of Thoreau:

“To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . . So it is with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity!”

Chateau de Nazelles (2013) © Harold Davis

The Chateau de Nazelles was a really fun place to spend a few days in the heart of the Loire Valley; more about my thinking in making this image here.

Seize the Day

Having been occupied by family matters lately, it is hard to make the time for flower photography. Work on a light box does not respond well to impatience. The time to slowly understand the composition that the flowers themselves would like is required. 

Seize the Day © Harold Davis

In this work, not all the time is spent arranging or photographing. Sometimes I find myself in front of the light box staring into space—or, more politely, meditating. 

The flowers in Seize the Day (above) were among those that survived from the recent and very pleasurable Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop held here in Berkeley, California. Click here for upcoming workshops (they will be listed as they are scheduled).

Composition & Photography Workshop at Maine Media

Please consider joining me at Maine Media Workshops on mid-coast Maine in September as autumn has begun for a 5-day photography workshop. The dates are September 12, 2022 – September 16, 2022.

In this hands-on workshop we will approach composition as an instance of open-ended two-dimensional design. Photographic exercises will start with simple shapes, such as lines and circles, and proceed through patterns and repetitions, and onwards to spirals, fractals, and abstractions.

Field sessions will take advantage of the “target-rich” mid-coast Maine scenery. Classroom discussions will be intended to provoke thought about composition basics and continuing to enable individual integration of the process of composition into each participant’s creative practice.

Click here for more information and registration!

 

Tulip Pano © Harold Davis

Household Magic

When you look at everyday, household objects with fresh eyes, it is possible to see their magic. For example, someone told me the image below (Jaws Inversion) looks like a leg-hold trap. Actually, in non-magical life this is my daughter’s hair clip with the spring clip tied open. 

Jaws Inversion © Harold Davis

In this case, the non-living object has been imbued with a spirit, although possibly one that borders on the black hat rather than the white. The kitchen mixing bowls in the two images below are much more neutral.

Mixing Bowls © Harold Davis

Nesting Bowls and a Nautilus Slice © Harold Davis

Sometimes a shadow adds depth and purpose to the ordinary object, as in the Egg Yolk Separator shown below and Egg Slicer.

Egg Yolk Separator © Harold Davis

Egg Slicer © Harold Davis

Finally, domestic subjects can reverse the process of objectification. This approaches anthropomorphization: In Alter Ego, below, a squash becomes a dinosaur with a mystery about its shadow.

Alter Ego © Harold Davis

Related stories: Nesting Bowls and a Nautilus Slice; Egg Yolk Separator; Egg Slicer; and Alter Ego.

When Georgia O’Keeffe Met Gertrude Stein

In my fantasy, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) traveled shortly after the first world war from Texas where she taught drawing to bored college students to New York to meet with her mentor and future husband, the photographer and gallerist Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946). Steiglitz advised, “While you are an American original, your work needs the tapestry of historical confusion that only the old world can supply,” and provided her with letters of introduction, including one to writer and art collector Gertrude Stein (1874-1946).

Rose Is A © Harold Davis

Arriving in Paris, O’Keeffe, like so many other artists, beat a path to Stein’s duplex off the grand inner courtyard at 27 rue de Fleurus, in the 6th arrondissement a few blocks from the Luxembourg Garden. Stein, with her partner Alice B. Toklas, presided over a salon of lesbians, avant-garde artists and writers featuring the demimonde, bullfighters, macho bully boys like Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), and painters with an affinity for the bullfight like Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Stein was not particularly impressed with O’Keeffe, and vice versa.

Rose Study © Harold Davis

When O’Keeffe showed Stein her gentle watercolor with an intimate view of a rose, Stein famously declaimed, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” and dismissed the art and artist. O’Keeffe was through with Europe anyway, and found an early steamer back home. While she made many great paintings of flowers in the course of her magnificent career, she never again created an image of a rose. 

Related story: When is a Harold Davis rose a Georgia O’Keeffe?

Kiss from a Rose © Harold Davis

Dahlia Daze

As summer becomes full and the days of July rush by, the dahlias are in bloom. Each dalia is different, a unique world unto itself. Some of them remind me of deep sea creatures, strangely beached into the garden.

Do Flowers Come from the Sea? © Harold Davis

For me, the question with dahlias in their infinite variety and explosion of color is where to begin—and how can I ever stop photographing them?

Dahlia Daze © Harold Davis

Dahlias in a Tray © Harold Davis

Inversion: Do Flowers Come from the Sea? © Harold Davis

It seems there are many ways to create art with dahlias, starting with a photo (click here for a keyword search on my website). However you count the ways, I love them one and all! Dahlias have zest, and they give me zest for living.