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....
When I sat down with Albert Watson in New York, I knew what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to hear how the industry has changed over the course of his 250 Vogue covers. I wanted to know how he prepared for the only wedding he's ever shot: Prince Andrew's royal marriage. And I wanted to understand the difference...
Just back from my first experience of PhotoPlus, and so glad I have been procrastinating on submitting my 2008 travel/conference budget. Now I know that this one goes to the top of the priority list. It seems everyone brings their A game to the Javitz Center for this show, and the result is an ambiance of enthusiasm, professionalism, collegiality, and...
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...
As we get set to do the final push on Mikkel's Photoshop CS3 RAW book, this news via Adobe's John Nack is certainly timely. Although the ubiquitous Lightroom vs. Aperture debate rages on (and sometimes clouds our perception), turns out most professional photographers polled by Infotrends still use the classic Adobe Camera Raw/Bridge/Photoshop combo for their RAW workflow. No surprise...
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...
I met with Mark Dahm, Adobe Senior Product Manager for Photoshop Elements 6, last week at Adobe HQ in San Jose, CA. If you've been following the product cycle, Elements 6 for Windows was recently released, with the Mac version coming early next year. I had a lot of questions for Mark. Down one path, it appears to me that...
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...
