Since the world is always changing, photography is largely about capturing states of things—scenes, objects, or people—in the process of change. A single image can intimate the before, and the after, and resonate with events to come. This sense of time is what gives many photographic images their power.

My process of working on photos after they’ve been taken is an intentional effort to up the ante on this kind of visual metamorphosis. One sequence started with this White Hellebore:

Starting with this straight photo, I began the process of transformation:

Green Variation, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

After taking the first photo, I let the hellebore flower soak for a couple of days in a sushi dish. The petals became extremely transparent, and I photographed the wet ensemble on a light box.

The green variation (above) and the blue variation (below) are further changes of state using Photoshop. These are LAB color space inversions with channels applied to the inversions in a variety of blending modes.

The blue version strikes me as very psychedelic, almost an emphatic presence in the flower, while the green variation is more concerned with textures. In the green transmogrification, the flower has become a textile.

Blue Variation, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Check out the recent Hannah Thiem interview with me on Photo.net and related discussion.

Some other post-hoc metamorphoses: Alstromedia Medley; From Architecture to Fantasy; Leaf Civilization; Oakland of My Mind.