Back in October, 2011 we featured the article, HDR is technique, not style, and The Role of the Artist because we like Harold Davis on multiple levels. His photography is really what made this Miamiartexchange.com article possible. Harold Davis is an award-winning professional photographer and widely recognized as one of the leading contemporary photographers. He is also the author of more than 30 books (listed below).
He is one of two very prolific photographers from the San Francisco Bay area that I friended through Flickr.com several years ago. The above image is typical of what attracted me to his work, the patterns and textures of nature. They are rich and thick with oscillating shades of grey, being both richly refined and dizzyingly abstract.
In some ways Davis’ images saturated with texture and enveloped in pattern seem transcendant and bathed in mysterious light. We need to remember that the desire for form is also the desire for meaning. We cannot, however, let utopian ideals cloud the reality in front of us that even though visually represented through the lens of a camera, and output by a computer onto paper, or chemically prepared and output, the real natural world remind us that design and pattern are deduced in a variety of ways, both seen and unseen.
(If you have never been to the Southern California desert at night, you are missing something truly amazing.)
Harold Davis was raised in an environment where art was part of everyday living. His mother, Virginia Davis, is a well known and respected fiber artists. “Within their deceptive simplicity, [Virginia] Davis’s works synthesize issues relevant to contemporary art and art history. Idioms of formalist art converge with those of traditional textiles,” states Patricia Malarcher. Her woven textiles are exhibit similar concerns with texture and pattern.
About Harold Davis: Harold writes the popular Photoblog 2.0, and is a popular presenter on many digital photography topics. He is a gifted teacher, and his workshops are usually sold out well in advance. Photographic adventures and assignments have taken him across the Brooks Range, the northernmost mountains in Alaska. He has photographed the World Trade Towers, hanging out of a small plane, followed in the footsteps of Seneca Ray Stoddard, a 19th-century photographer of the Adirondacks, and created human interest photo stories about the residents of Love Canal, an environmental disaster area. Harold’s work has been published in books and magazines, and as posters and greeting cards. His prints are widely collected. Harold is well-known for his night photography and experimental ultra-long exposure techniques, use of vibrant, saturated colors in landscape compositions, and beautiful creative floral imagery. He is inspired by the flowers in his garden, hiking in the wilderness, and the work of great artists and photographers including Ansel Adams, M.C. Escher, Monet, van Gogh, and Edward Weston. Harold frequently collaborates with his wife, Phyllis Davis, on book projects. They live in Berkeley, California with their four children.
Harold Davis has authored the following books: Creating HDR Photos: The Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Photography (Amphoto), Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Worlds with Harold Davis (Focal Press), The Photoshop Darkroom 2: Creative Digital Transformations (Focal Press), The Photoshop Darkroom: Creative Digital Post-Processing (Focal Press), Creative Landscapes: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley), Creative Lighting: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley), Creative Portraits: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley), Creative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley), Creative Composition: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley), Creative Night: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley), and Creative Close-Ups: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques (Wiley)