Imagine photographing stars and star trails under the clear night skies of the Eastern Sierras with the guidance of two masters of night photography! Under the auspices of Star Circle Academy, www.StarCircleAcademy.com , the Alabama Hills Star Circle Workshop will be a chance to hone your night photography skills, learn new skills both behind the camera [...]

Low Tide at Dusk, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. This is an image taken in the China Beach area of San Francisco Bay as dusk was fading into night. The scene shows mud flats at extreme low tide, facing northwest on an overcast mid-winter evening. I shot bracketed originals and combined six [...]

Annette, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Briefly noted: The reddish light in this portrait of the beautiful model Annette comes from a parasol she was holding while in a swimming pool. I used a fill flat on the left to add light to her face, and a polarizing filter both to cut [...]

Romance of the Dandelion, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I created this composite image in Photoshop to illustrate a book, Lane Von Herzen’s The Unfastened Heart. Here’s my description of how the image relates to the book: Mariela waits and wonders when Addison will return, or if he will return. In Anna’s [...]

KT Cover, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. My new book Creative Portraits: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques is now shipping. Amazon will get it to you anywhere, even if you don’t plan to read it like Katie Rose while sitting on top of an egg. It’s a family tradition to photograph Katie [...]

No Yolk, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. It’s not often you see a green wasp the size of a hen’s egg. If you do, it is certainly no yolk.

Sunny Side Up, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. This is a post about technology. Mostly, I like to write about photography and Photoshop in my blog—but sometimes in this modern world you got to get down and hands-dirty. It’s a rotten job, but someone has to write about the mechanics of what [...]

First Blush Variation, photo by Harold Davis. Photoshop’s Image Apply Image command is one of its least understood—and most powerful. In my latest Photo.net column, I explain how to use a duplicate LAB color Lightness channel to auto-generate a powerful layer mask—a powerful technique that you won’t find explained anywhere else. Here’s the article description: [...]

Rose, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. This is a grab shot of a backlit rose, found along the street—as much as anything with a 200mm telephoto macro mounted via collar on a tripod can be a grab shot.

Portal, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. According to Bruno Ernst, M.C. Escher contemplated creating a “fascinating” fairy tale landscape in which a magic ornamental gate in our normal world opens to reveal a magical and different world. Escher took this conceit a little further in his plans, intending the magical world within [...]

Apple, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Half of an apple. Simple, basic—to the core! However, an image of this apparent simplicity is often not as easy to make as one might think. It usually takes a fair amount of artifice to create an image that seems very simple.

Alarm Permits: If you are operating an alarm system in EDC you most likely need to obtain an Alarm Permit, but again it is not required right away and in most cases you need the alarm installed before you get the license.

Find Online Form Here:
http://www.edcgov.us/sheriff/forms/ALARM_PERMIT_APP.pdf

EL DORADO COUNTY
ALARM PERMIT APPLICATION
1
Sheriff’s Office
Central Dispatch

Forest Light, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Driving back from giving a weekend night photography workshop last year I took the back roads on the Big Sur peninsula. I stopped at this forest view and shot five exposures at roughly 2 f-stop intervals on tripod down in the dark forest with light [...]

Faking Star Trails, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I faked these star trails. Meaning that this image is not based on an exposure, or combined composites of exposures, long enough to produce the star trails shown. The simulated star trails are an effect created in Photoshop from a single, relatively short exposure. [...]

On October 21, the third annual poker tournament fundraiser will take place, and this year it’s pirate-themed. Texas Hold ‘em is the game, and dinner will be provided.

Becoming a Dream, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Creativity is very important to me, in photography and in life. I do not think that being creative is a “tame lion”: there are no rules about how to be creative. Creativity is fluid and wave-like; it is not rigid, mechanical, or about repetitive [...]

I just wanted to share with you some comments made by one of our Little Brother’s regarding his match. He and his Big Brother have been matched for just over 4 years now. The “Little” is in high school, and just started his first job. He told me that having a Big Brother has made a HUGE impact in his life.

Cycle of Life, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. Spring turns to summer, the precise demarcation of the season change lost for me in a haze of books to write, photography in the studio, new Photoshop features to play with, and family matters. Not to mention the oddities of the Pacific weather system [...]

Alien Fresh Jerky, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger. I used this photo in a demonstration for our new Photoshop Darkroom 2: Creative Digital Transformations. The point was to show Photoshop CS5′s new content-aware fill feature. I used content-aware fill to automatically remove the power wires from the original photo. As I noted [...]