Harold Davis's Blog, page 41

Happy and Healthy Holiday Wishes

Happy & Healthy Holiday wishes! This year 2020 almost past surely wins an award for year most wished to be in the rear-view mirror. As we head into 2021 we are looking for health, peace, and serenity. Best wishes from our family to you and yours!

 

Piles of Petals Are Performative

Piles of flower petals are performative (and alliterative). I’ve fallen into the habit of keeping piles of natural objects, specifically bowls of flower petals in my work area. Gradually, they curl, and ultimately obtain the patina and wrinkles of flower-petal senescence. 

Flowers are Multitudes Inversion © Harold Davis

To make these images, I started with a conventional structure (like a flower bed with a row of stems) in a garden. After this version was complete, I entered the “Jackson Pollack” phase: spreading dried petals to some extent randomly, and taking advantage of serendipity.

The version below on white is what came out of the camera in the original set of exposures, and the version above on black is an LAB L-channel inversion of the original, white version.

Flowers are Multitudes © Harold Davis

Watching a Mandala Video

I just watched the stop-motion videos that Phyllis made of making these two mandalas. How totally cool! Please consider joining us tomorrow, on Saturday December 12, 2020. We will (among other things) watch and talk about these videos of the making of the two mandala images shown below.

Mandala of Petals © Harold Davis

Stone Spiral Study Inversion © Harold Davis

Conversation about my photography with John Cornicello

Please consider joining me for a conversation about my photography with John Cornicello and Holger Mischke on Jan 7, 2021 at 10am PT. This is a free event. Click here for more information and the link to join.

Mandalas Simple and Complex

A mandala is a circular geometric pattern that symbolically can represent the entire universe. Sometimes, a mandala is meant to represent wholeness and life itself in relation to the infinite and the world that extends beyond and within minds and bodies.

In Eastern religions, a mandala may represent paradise, deities, sacred spaces, or simply be used as an aid to meditation.

These kinds of designs are also significant in Jungian analysis. Carl Jung thought that mandalas offered a “safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness,” and found that the act of creating a mandalas had a calming, focusing effect on his patients’ psychological states.

My Mandalas are primarily created using flower petals on a light box, although I sometimes use other materials as well, and other backgrounds besides the light box. I consider the mandala a fundamental design shape, and am most interested in the form as an issue of formal design.

Please consider joining us for an exciting webinar on Saturday December 12, 2020 at 11am PT as I present and discuss a number of my mandala light box images, and show the process of creating these shapes. Click here for more information, here for registration, and here for our schedule of upcoming webinars.

Lodestar © Harold Davis

Spiral of Flower Karma © Harold Davis

Lady Pink Apple Slices with Lemons © Harold Davis

Sunflowers on Blue Velvet

It’s nice to pair a bouquet of yellow sunflowers with lush, blue velvet. The sunflower petals have been touched slightly with the Photoshop Oil Painting filter to add a little “van Gogh.” Is the subject of the photo the sunflowers or the blue velvet background? As is often the case, both are important.

Sunflowers on Blue Velvet © Harold Davis

Webinars nouveau est arrivé (Please check out our new webinars!)

Please consider our new slate of webinars, now scheduled through March, 2021 on Saturday mornings (Pacific Time), with (we hope) something for everyone:

Harnessing the Power of Composition in Your Photography | Saturday December 5, 2020 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Mandalas and Patterns on the Light Box | Saturday December 12, 2020 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Models in Stop-Motion: the Multiple Exposure Series [Free Webinar] | Saturday January 2, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. This is a FREE webinar, but seats are limited, and preregistration is required 


Finding Meaning in Photography: Guy Tal and Michael Gordon [Benefits Project Coyote] | Saturday January 16, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. All proceeds from this webinar will benefit Project Coyote. Seats are limited, and preregistration is required 


Photographing Flowers for Transparency | Part I (Introduction) | Saturday January 23, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Creative LAB Color Essentials with Harold Davis | Saturday January 30, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Processing Black & White: Landscape and Architecture | Saturday February 6, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Fruits and Vegetables on the Light Box | Saturday February 13, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Processing Black & White: Landscape and Architecture #2 | Saturday February 20, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Photographing Flowers for Transparency | Composition and Photography | Saturday February 27, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


The Black & White Still Life with Harold Davis | Saturday March 6, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Creating Artist Books and Portfolios | Saturday March 13, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


The Black & White Still Life #2 | Saturday March 27, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 

Camellia Blossom © Harold Davis

Click here for our Workshops & Events page, and here for our past webinar video recordings on YouTube.

Harnessing the Power of Composition Webinar on Saturday

Harnessing the Power of Composition in Your Photography is scheduled for this coming Saturday, December 5, 2020 at 11am PT. In this unique webinar: “Harold Davis shares his work across numerous genres of photography, and explains how he applies compositional excellence to enhance his work. He will provide specific information about how he approaches composition in different contexts, and discuss tips, techniques, and exercises to help you improve composition in your own work.”

Click here for more information about this webinar, and here to register. Also check out our extensive new listings of live webinars for the next few months!

Cayucos Pier © Harold Davis

Velvet Backgrounds

Good photographic composition demands paying attention to backgrounds as well as foregrounds. It’s a truism among photographic educators that beginners neglect backgrounds in favor of foregrounds. This is particularly the case with street photography; but really, it cuts across all genres of photography.

Recently, Phyllis helped me pick out a small “library” of colored velvet fabrics to use as still life backgrounds. These came from an online source, Prism Silks. 

In starting to play with my new velvet backgrounds (I almost said “work” instead of “play,” but truly this is playing) I photographed and processed these images with the backgrounds in mind just as much as the flowers in the foregrounds. Instead of letting the velvet backgrounds be mostly unnoticeable, I intentionally accented the curves and folds in the drapery of the fabric.

What fun!

Lilies on Maroon Velvet © Harold Davis

Rose on Blue Velvet © Harold Davis

Creative Projects for Wintering in Place on Saturday Nov 21, 2020

This coming Saturday, November 21, 2020, at 11am PT we will be hosting Creative Projects for Wintering in Place via Zoom webinar.

My thinking behind presenting this webinar now is that the light is clearly at the end of the tunnel, with the wonderful news about the effectiveness of the vaccines. But there are some dark days ahead before we get there. Now is not the time to relax our vigilance. Creative Projects for Wintering in Place is intended to help bridge this gap.

The webinar is intended to address three tiers of making the best of this in-between time. First, what are the habits of mind and attitude that will best help you enhance your creativity and encourage you to stay productive?

Next, as we’ve said, sheltering-in-place offers the opportunity for creating your own, personal artist-in-residency program. But an artist-in-residency works best with ideas, structure, and an overarching theme. I can’t write the great American novel for you, but I can help point you to an approach that will help you make work you can be proud of.

Finally—and this may be the real “meat” of the webinar—Phyllis and I will show you a number of specific projects: fun, creative, with substance, but also nothing that is “pie in the sky.” Our idea is to present projects that you can do while sheltering-in-place, with materials you probably already have.

We can do this!

Click here for registration and here for more information. Our currently scheduled webinars are:

Creative Projects for Wintering in Place (First Session) | Saturday November 21, 2020 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Exploring the World with Harold Davis [Free Webinar] | Saturday November 28, 2020 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. FREE!


Harnessing the Power of Composition in Your Photography | Saturday December 5, 2020 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Mandalas and Patterns on the Light Box | Saturday December 12, 2020 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 


Photographing Flowers for Transparency | Part I (Introduction) | Saturday January 23, 2021 at 11am PT click here for registration. Click here for more info. Seats are limited. 

Saigon Fine Art Museum Stair © Harold Davis

We’re proud of superb panelists Anne Belmont and Bryan Peterson, and of all the registrants, because last week’s truly inspiring Master Photographer webinar raised a nice contribution to a good cause.

A number of folks gave been asking about the video recording of Patterns, Abstractions & Composition. It has now been posted on YouTube. Click here for Harold Davis Photography videos on YouTube.