From my rocky perch jutting out into the ocean near Sculptured Beach, I played with photographing the waves as the sun set. This tripod-mounted 1/4 of a second exposure caught the abstract expression of a wave crashing, while retaining some literal relationship to the play of warm light on the wave against the cool blue of the surrounding ocean. Wave,...

On a balmy afternoon in late October I studied the topographic map of the USGS San Francisco North Quadrant. This map shows (among other areas) the hills above Fort Baker outside Sausalito, and the northern side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It seemed to me that there was a ridge that could be climbed going up from above Fort Baker....

I thought it would be interesting to see my image of Church Towers from the Yosemite Valley floor in winter as it might have looked as a palladium or platinum toned print. Here it is: Beyond the Forest: Toned, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. First I converted the image to black and white in Photoshop, using the...

This photo shows a translucent Dahlia petal with water drops resting on the petal and refecting a peony bush in California's moderate autumn. The petal was blowing slightly in the wind. In order to get the depth of field I needed at a fast enough shutter speed to stop the motion (1/40 of a second), I boosted my sensitivity setting...

How high can you go? How low can you go? At least when the question is ISO...the answer depends on your hardware. In the case of my Nikon D200, high ISO (shown below) means ISO 1600. Low ISO (far below) means ISO 100, so there's a 16 times difference in the amount of light being captured due to the sensitivity...

The fishing trawler was returning to port through the Golden Gate. As the boat headed for the channel of moonlight, I realized that a long time exposure just wouldn't do. I wanted to capture the trawler in the moonlight, not an abstraction of the boat rendered into colored lines of motion over the exposure duration. So I boosted the ISO...

It's remarkable what you can do in post-processing. Compare my original conversion from the RAW of my Yosemite Dreams (far below) with a more recent version (immediately below) I created in Photoshop for a special project. (There's actually no comparison to either version with the far duller look of the original RAW file that appeared when I first looked at...

Walking along the Marin Headlands cliffs between Rodeo Beach and Tennessee Beach, I was struck by the brightness of the breaking waves in the sunset light against the darkness of the shore in shadow: Breaking Wave, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Depth of field was not an issue. I spot metered for the brightness of the waves,...

The smaller the aperture (opening in the lens), the greater the depth of field (the distance in front and behind a subject that is apparently in focus). The aperture designated by the very small f-stop f/64 provides much greater depth of field than the far larger aperture of f/1.4. Small apertures with great depth of field are used to create...

I shot these two photos of a dahlia to illustrate the impact of aperture on depth of field. The photo immediately below, with a large aperture of f/4, has minimal depth of field, while the photo far below with a small aperture of f/32 has much more depth of field. The flower is in focus in both photos. In the...