Harold Davis's Blog, page 58

Echinacea Seed Pod X-Ray

Echinacea Seed Pod on Black © Harold Davis

Very special thanks to the scientists in the Photon Science group at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs who used the Beamline when it was in maintenance mode to help with this capture.

Check out more x-ray photos of mine here.

Echinacea Seed Pod – Sepia © Harold Davis

Under the Dumbarton Bridge

In 1982, a new Dumbarton Bridge replaced the old, cast-iron cantilevered span across San Francisco Bay from Hayward to Palo Alto. The hardest part of the construction was the giant cast iron footings deep down into the muck and mud of the Bay. This location was close to the first bridge crossing the Bay, an abandoned train bridge finished just after the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Under the Dumbarton Bridge © Harold Davis

Climbing down the side of the bridge to get under it reminded me a bit of an earlier adventure with Berkeley Municipal Pier. The footing was treacherous in stagnant salt water, mud, and detritus, and I made my way carefully around and through a bend in the dilapidated barbed-wire fencing. 

Once under the bridge, I found myself on a confronting the colossus of the cement footings of the bridge. These underpinnings were reflected in the inter-tidal zone mud flats. 

I put my camera (a Nikon D850) on the tripod and added a polarizing filter to amplify the reflections of the underbelly of the bridge. I made eight exposures using my 28-300mm Nikkor lens at 58mm. Each exposure was stopped down (at f/29) because I needed maximum depth-of-field to render sharply both the nearby reflections and the recession of pillars through the opening in the columns. The sensitivity was ISO 64. My exposure speeds were from 1/20 of a second to 6 seconds. 

I combined and processed the exposures using Adobe Bridge, Adobe Photoshop, Nik HDR Efex Pro, Nik Color Efex, Nik Silver Efex, Topaz Adjust, and Topaz Simplify.

I like to photograph the naked underbelly of bridges. Here’s another one of mine that has had considerable play: Under the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

Flower Magic

This is a light box image of sunflowers, tulips, and irises, with bamboo cut from the neighborhood. Click here for an FAQ about my techniques for photographing flowers for transparency, and here for the next session of my Photographing Flowers for Transparency workshop in June. My workshop is end-to-end, starting with floral arrangement, continuing to individual hands-on photography, and explaining the post-production techniques I use in these images.

Flower Magic © Harold Davis

The image shown here was photographed on a light box; the resulting image on white was then added to a scanned paper background, using the techniques I teach in my online Photoshop Backgrounds & Textures course.

Mandala with Starfish

I’ve been experimenting with creating light box mandalas that include seemingly unlikely objects, particularly as the central element. Last week I built the mandala around a succulent plant. Along with the autumn leaves this helped to create an effect like a seasonal wreath.

The mandala below is “anchored” using a starfish.

Mandala with Starfish © Harold Davis

Black Friday Workshop Discounts

In honor of the great tradition of Black Friday, we are offering special discounts (through Sunday December 1) this week for workshop registrations, as follows:

Photographing Flowers for Transparency , June 21-22, 2020 in Berkeley, CA: Take $50 Off.


Exploring Tokyo for Photographers with Harold Davis and Mark Brokering , October 24 – November 1, 2020: Take $100 Off.


Patagonia Photography Adventure , March 21-31, 2021, with optional extension to Iguazu Falls (March 31 – April 4, 2021): Take $100 Off.


Paris in the Spring , April 24 – May 2, 2021: Take $100 Off.

The “Black Friday” discounts are by way of saying thanks for early registration, which makes planning easier for us, and is in addition to those early-bird discounts that already are applicable.

With Photographing Flowers for Transparency, if registering through Meetup, deduct $50 from the Paypal amount to pay (or contact us for direct registration). With Tokyo, Patagonia, or Paris, please drop us an email to say you’d like to come, and note the Black Friday deduction on your Reservation Form. 

Learn about LAB Color          Backgrounds & Textures in Photoshop     Creative Black & White [Use code HDAVIS40 at checkout for discount]

Pale Garden on Black © Harold Davis

Untitled In-Camera Multiple Exposure

Untitled In-Camera Multiple Exposure © Harold Davis

I’m back at the in-camera Multiple Exposures. This one can be visually interpreted in a number of ways if you don’t look too closely, as is the case for many of the Multiple Exposures on my blog.

To create this image, there were ten individual exposures, combined in the camera. The model was the talented and somewhat incredible (in a very good way) PoppySeed Dancer (click here for her Instagram).

My life story in and out of photography along my road less traveled

Self Portrait with Moustache © Harold Davis

In Guest Blog Post: Photographer as Poet Harold Davis I write that selfies are silly and that photography is poetry. I also tell some of my life story in and out of photography along my road less traveled. Check it out!

Road Less Traveled © Harold Davis

Wreath

A good time of year for wreaths, this is a not-quite-Thanksgiving wreath slash mandala in California style with a succulent in the center and autumn grasses arranged symmetrically around the edges, photographed on my light box.

Wreath © Harold Davis

Trio of Prints Sold: Sometimes Simplicity Is Best

Bench © Harold Davis

I’m very happy to have sold a trio of lightly sepia-toned monochromatic prints on Moab Juniper Baryta to a collector.

In garden photography, sometimes simplicity is the point. I made the images shown in these prints in August while teaching a week-long garden photograph course at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine. The first image shows a wooden bench just outside the front gate to the well-known and spectacular Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine. You can see the bench in this wide-angle view of the garden gate!

The stone arrangement and patterned shakes in the two images below were taken at Shleppinghurst, a unique garden built into the landscape of an abandoned Maine quarry over 40 years by Ken Cleaves.

Stones and Lichen © Harold Davis

Shakes © Harold Davis

Tracking the Curls

I don’t know how to keep track of the curls any more. Maybe the best way is to run a train track through the curls in the two-dimensional substrate. Any train on these tracks can pass through a green defile on to fly across a sunset sky with distant mountains, and, curving onward, steam back again through a distant green land. Ah, the malleability of pixels!

Trouble with Tracks © Harold Davis