Living at the border of immensity
I looked out over the vast Arizona plateau leading to the great canyon made by the Colorado Rover. The late autumn sun was setting quickly, creating shadows in the undulating…
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April 2, 2013
New Harold Davis Workshops, Events, and Webinars Too!
Full Moon Golden Gate Workshops in June 2013 I'm pleased to announce two new June sessions of our Full Moon Workshop: Photograph the Golden Gate Bridge Like You Never Have…
March 31, 2013
Smoking Gun
There's one somewhat discordant element in this tableau of a metallurgic assayer's desk, shot at Laws Railroad Museum near Bishop, California. What is the gun doing in the image? According to…
March 29, 2013
Shell Spiral
This is a photo of a very small shell sometimes called a "Sundial" (of the architectonica genus). It is less than an inch across, and shown elsewhere on my blog…
March 26, 2013
Remembering Jack Tasoff
Recently, my friend and photography student Jack Tasoff died in a four-wheel-drive accident in a remote area of the Anza-Borrego desert. I first met Jack a number of years ago.…
March 23, 2013
Botanique on the Moab Paper blog
In "Botanique": Harold Davis's Origami in a Box on the Moab Paper blog you'll find a story about a mystery package. Here's how the story begins: "A mysterious package arrived in our…
March 23, 2013
Making Tracks
There's an almost infinite appeal to me in photographing railroad tracks---appropriately, because the visual metaphor of the railroad track is to show rails that are parallel and never touch. They…
March 23, 2013
Dragon Dawn
In the Anza Borrego desert the hard-scrabble town of Borrego Springs, California loses most of its population in the summer, when temperatures soar and stay above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. One part…
March 22, 2013
Gnarled wood in the desert
In the desert life is harsh, and the intensity of light reflects the harshness of conditions. Photography is best at the fringes of the day---the "golden hour" leading up to…
March 19, 2013
Cayucos Pier
On a wet, sloppy evening with the tide coming in it was fun to photograph the old wooden pier in Cayucos, California. The sky darkened and the storm moved landward---it…
March 7, 2013
What some Botanique collectors have said
Acclaimed as “origami in a box” and said to be “destined for major museums,” Botanique is an innovative artist project that astutely blends old craft and cutting edge new technologies…
March 4, 2013
Creative Effects in the Camera
I guess by now I am notorious for using Photoshop as part of my digital photography. After all, I've described my work as "painting using digital photographs as my medium."…
March 3, 2013
Tulip Wabi-Sabi
Wabi-sabi is a name for a Japanese philosophical and aesthetic movement with a key tenet of acceptance of the transient nature of all things. According to wabi-sabi, everything passes, and…
March 2, 2013
Tiptoe through the tulip
The tulips that I found last week at the North Berkeley Farmers Market have transmogrified into fantastical shapes and forms as they age and illustrate wabi-sabi in action. Like the…
February 27, 2013
Steel Wool
Sometimes you don't have to go far to find something exotic to shoot, like this close-up portrait of industrial-grade steel wool, purchased at Costco. Exposure data: 85mm tilt-shift macro, 1.3…
February 26, 2013
Photographing your kids
Pity the poor children of the shoemaker---who go around perpetually down at their heels. Although photographic projects, clients, flowers and more beckon, such is not the case for my kids when it comes…
February 23, 2013
Floral Sunset
It's hard to imagine two subjects that are more over-photographed than sunsets and flowers. Of course, there's a reason that something is a popular subject for photography. It's wonderful to…
February 21, 2013
The Bristlecone Pines Endure
Above 10,000 feet in the arid White Mountains in eastern California the ancient Bristlecone Pines thrive. In this extreme environment wood decomposes slowly, and these trees can look more dead…
February 19, 2013