Ginger Leaf
On a walk around the block with the kids yesterday I saw this translucent wild ginger leaf. I snipped it, brought it home, and shot it on my lightbox. This…
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March 4, 2012
Duet of Daffodils
Traditionally, when daffodils bloom it is a harbinger of spring. In a famous poem, William Wordsworth described a group of daffodils encountered on a walk with his sister in England's Lake District this…
March 1, 2012
Craft of Black & White in the Digital Era
Monochromatic photography looks back to the glorious aesthetics of the classical era of film photography. At the same time, the world has moved on and revolutionary advances in technology have made…
February 26, 2012
Flowering Quince on My “Bucket List”
Most photographers have bucket lists of things they'd like to photograph before they die. Flowering quince---because of the lushness of the blossoms contrasted with the sparseness of the stems--has long…
February 19, 2012
Workbenches
We've been making large prints with our new Epson 9900 printer. So far we are just getting to know what it can do, and are experimenting with unusual paper surfaces…
February 15, 2012
Crashing Waves
Many things crash. Property that is overvalued. Waves on a storm-tossed sea. Computers that have outlasted their normal lifespan. Thus it was that my old Windows computer died…
February 13, 2012
Floral Arrangements
I've had a little time lately to shoot more flowers on white. These two floral arrangements feature orchids---buying them for photography seemed a little expensive at the time, but in…
February 5, 2012
Our new Epson 9900 printer arrives
When our new Epson 9900 printer arrived we had to shut the street for the delivery truck. The printer weighes 275 pounds, and it took three strong movers to get…
February 3, 2012
Spruce Street House
The parents of one of Katie Rose's buddies at pre-school are architects who just bought a classical Berkeley shingle house from the early 1900s. In recent years this grand house…
January 30, 2012
Thistle While You Workshop
Arlington Avenue is a divided street that runs a block away from my home from Marin Circle in North Berkeley to downtown Kensington, California---a quaint low-key strip that hosts a…
January 25, 2012
Cherry Dance
Cherry Dance is manifestly a digital art creation. This collage combines a photo of blossoms on a cherry branch with two flat-bed scans of paper---using Photoshop to create a whole that resembles…
January 20, 2012
You Are What You Photograph
Are you what you photograph? They say, "You are what you eat." In a certain simplisitic sense this is obviously true. Therefore, if you photograph what you eat then you…
January 16, 2012
Getting Off Automatic
As a professional photographer I almost always use my camera in manual exposure mode. Most of the time I have no use for programmed automatic or semi-automatic modes---or, God forbid, one…
January 13, 2012
Floral Tapestries
To create these images, I arranged flowers on a lightbox that was proportionally much wider than it was tall. Next, I shot straight down with a macro lens, bracketing for…
January 8, 2012
Workbench
Over the winter holidays I took our boys on a "field trip" to Fort Ross State Historic Park. Fort Ross marks the furthest point south of the expansion of the…
January 6, 2012
Liz
This is a shot of professional model Liz Ashley. The lighting is from one strobe, hand-held to the left of the camera.
January 5, 2012
Agaves
In the dead of winter there's not much color, even in California's usually highly saturated gardens. The Tilden Park Botanic Garden emphasizes California native plants. It's always a wonderful place…
January 2, 2012
Sunset Koan
On Christmas Day I calculated that from the summit of Wildcat Peak the sun would set directly behind the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. This seemed like a great excuse…
December 28, 2011