Harold Davis's Blog, page 83

Sunflower X-Ray Fusion

This is a fusion of an x-ray and a light box high-key HDR sequence, using a medical x-ray machine and photographed on a light box. My friend Dr Julian Koepke and I collaborated on making some of these images, and we will get to play with flowers, X-rays, and light boxes again tomorrow! 

Sunflower X-Ray Fusion © Harold Davis

Rockport Maine to New York City

Not so much in common. Maybe photography? Now onward, and across “The Pond.”

Rockport Harbor © Harold Davis

Empire State © Harold Davis

Times Square

From high above Times Square, New York does indeed seem to be the “city that never sleeps.” A pulsing light show of humanity whatever hour of the day or night, reflected in the world of glass and girders. 

Times Square, New York © Harold Davis

Buddha

My class and I found this wonderful Buddha in the extraordinary Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine.

Buddha © Harold Davis

Maine Flowers

This was an in-class light box demo, using flowers that my wonderful workshop participants scavenged from the grounds of Maine Media Workshops.

Maine Flowers © Harold Davis

Gardens of Maine

So far, this is a wonderful Garden Photography workshop despite the rather overpowering heat and humidity (a bit unexpected on the coast of Maine, even in August). There are fourteen participants, a very full house for this kind of workshop, but everyone is quite nice, and we don’t get in each other’s way. 

I have been doing classroom sessions, and we also have a full slate of field locations. These three are from the rather-wonderful-for-a-public-botanical-garden Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Garden Fence © Harold Davis

Unknown Flower © Harold Davis

Sunflower © Harold Davis

The Maine Thing

My main thing in Maine is to photograph flowers and gardens—after all, that is the course I am teaching.

But while here, certainly I am having some lobster. While I am using the present progressive, this is surely a case where it is better to have than to be had!

Lobstrosity © Harold Davis

Once upon a Tintype

Once upon a Tintype © Harold Davis

My uncle, at least I think he was my uncle, came back from far away places, India and beyond. He was footsore, and he wanted to rest for days, indeed weeks and months to recuperate. He brought with him iron-bound chests of rough-hewn wood. His caution to me not to open his luggage of course ignited my curiosity. One day when he went out on an errand to his man of business I rummaged through my uncle’s things. Amid old clothes and toiletries of the male persuasion, and statuary of unknown ancient deities, I found this hand-colored tintype, apparently ancient, but maybe more modern than I knew, wrapped in a tattered maroon cloth.

The model is A Nude Muse. The technique is a single in-camera exposure, overlaid in post-production with Daguerreotype and Tintype textures from Flypaper. For related images, see my Multiple Exposures series.

Mountains of the Mind

Distant Mountains © Harold Davis

Mist in the distant mountains is nature’s way of replacing clarity of sight with unspoken nuance. We do not know what lies beneath the layers of mist, but there is always the possibility that it is what we seek. Therefore, we peer and trudge onward through the mountains of the mind, always looking for that which transcends the literal that is before us.

Like Poem of the Road, this is another layer demonstration image from my course on Photoshop Backgrounds and Layers for LinkedIn Learning slash Lynda.com.

Poem of the Road

Poem of the Road © Harold Davis

The poem of the road is as old as the ages. The road beckons, tantalizes, leads us on. There are new vistas, new opportunities.

We flee from danger down the same road. Who know what lies beyond where the horizon meets the leading lines and curve of the road?

For good or for evil, the poem of the road is a siren nudging us ever onward, worrying us whether we are really satisfied, or whether there is more, better—or, here’s the real point, different—around the next bend in the road.

Yes, the poem of the road is seductive, dangerous, and powerful. Leaving the life you know for the unkowns of the road is always frightening. But ignore the pulsing of the possibility of adventure at your peril, for without time on the road, is it really life at all?

I have been in the Santa Barbara area making an online course about Photoshop Backgrounds and Textures for Linked In Learning a/k/a Lynda.com. A demonstration for my course called for the use of texture overlays in Photoshop.

Looking through the images I brought with me, I came across an image from the basins and ranges of Nevada in the haze of oncoming twilight. To take the photo, I had stepped in the middle of the road, not much of a risk as traffic is light in that part of the world. I liked the receding car, and snapped the photo.

The results pleased me as far as the road and telephone poles go, but not so much the sky, which was basically a light gray. I added a couple of textures, and in a few seconds in post-production made the image you see. This is part of my course since I was creating the image in real time, and it was being recording. So if you want to see exactly how I made this, it will be in my course!