The Back Side, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I underexposed this image so I could bring out the human form and shapes in post-processing against a very dark background.

The Front Side, photo by Harold Davis. This is a photo about lines, textures, and the contrast between smooth white and dark black. Really, this is true.

Cathedral Spires and Bridalveil Falls, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. This is a view of Bridalveil Falls and Cathedral Spires in Yosemite Valley processed to simulate a pinhole camera: vignetting at the edges, softness, brightness in the center, high depth-of-field, and an overall antique look. Digital simulations of “looks” from the back [...]

Kimi Solarization, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Speaking of solarization—we were talking about solarization, right?—here’s a black and white photo of the model Kimi treated to virtual solarization.

Life Is Full of Beauty, photo by Harold Davis. In David Lynch’s wonderfully creepy classic film Blue Velvet you know you’ve entered an alternative and not altogether wholesame nether world when severed body parts start appearing at macro level in the grass. In the Blue Velvet spirit, I am offering a prize to the first person [...]

Web Solarization, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I shot this beautiful wet spider web by the early light of dawn on a foggy morning, then solarized it in Photoshop—more accurately, simulated a solarization effect—followed by a monochrome conversion.

Pink Rose 2, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I forgot to blog this pink rose from about a month ago; better late than never. Particularly when I am coming in on the end of a major project with deadlines—as I am now—sometimes things get away from me. Here’s the first Pink Rose. Enjoy!

Solarized Hellebore, photo by Harold Davis. Solarization in photography reverses blacks and whites. Also called the Sabattier effect, in the chemical darkroom solarization was achieved by exposing an already exposed negative or print to light before development was finalized. In the Photoshop darkroom, there are of course a number of ways to achieve a simulated [...]

Hellebore Curves, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Flowers are beautiful—although why they seem so beautiful to us humans is an interesting question. But when I photograph flowers close-up, like this tiny Hellebore, I am not looking to document that beauty. Instead, I am trying to create an interesting abstract composition that uses [...]

Mare Island Infrared, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. While on the topic of infrared captures, this is an IR photo of a drydock at the old Mare Island naval shipyard. I particularly noticed the way the infrared capture increased the contrast and drama in the sky.

Infrared Alice, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. This is a capture of Alice using a camera retrofitted to only shoot IR. Rendition of colors (or black and whites in this case) is quite odd using IR and seems to depend on the light source—studio strobe lighting in this capture. If you look [...]

Alice, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I photographed Alice, a model from Italy, the other night in a studio in San Jose. Alice is show in color (above) and converted to black & white below. View this image larger.

Lenten Cross, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Phyllis arranged the hellebore medley I photographed earlier into a regular pattern, with the results you see. The Lenten Rose is a variety of hellebore, Helleborus Orientalis. It turns out that some of the Lenten Rose genome is present in most modern hellebore hybrids, so I’ve [...]

Winter Vista, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. To enhance this monochromatic winter vista of Yosemite, I used a split toning effect. I added a deeper sepia tone to the darker tones, and lighter sepia to the brighter areas of the image. In the analog darkroom, toning was a function of paper, processing and [...]

justsusan updated gallery 'Images at Placerville, CA '

Hellebore Medley, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Like Flower Medley, I photographed these Hellebores looking straight down. The Hellebore blossoms from my garden were floating in a pan of water. The pan was lined with black vinyl. Exposure data: 100m macro, 1/10 of a second at f/16 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Hood Ornament, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I don’t think I’d want one of these in my belly button, but on this model it creates a pretty interesting landscape.

This article is reprinted from the fall 2009 issue of The Dispatch, the official newsletter of the El Dorado Western Railway Foundation.

Steaming toward El Dorado
County Supervisors approve concept plan for El Dorado County railroad park
By Keith Berry, President

justsusan updated gallery 'Xatem '