Harold Davis: Photographing Flowers For Transparency

Photographer Harold Davis photographs many subjects, but he is possibly best known for his technique of ‘Photographing Flowers for Translucency’. He usually teaches this technique at workshops, but with Covid- 19 interfering with his schedule, he taught it as a 5 part webinar and then, graciously, posted the entire five part webinar for free viewing on YouTube! I will put a link to the first video in the series at the bottom of this post. From there it should be easy to find the other four if you are interested.

I have always found this look that he developed intriguing but had never tried it myself, mostly because I had never had a source of instruction as to how to accomplish it. Now I do. Thank you Harold!

Below is my first attempt at the technique (I actually deviated from his instructions slightly by changing blending modes and duplicating some layers) and I don’t think it came out too badly. However, I chose to use white flowers, which makes it somewhat difficult to blend the image with a texture as the subject isn’t very different from the background. I was able to do it, but not to my complete satisfaction, so I am just going to show the unblended image here for this first attempt. I plan to try with some purple flowers I have available and will see how that comes out. Overall, it’s a look that I find appealing, giving the illusion that the flower petals are translucent.

Translucent Daisies © Howard Grill

Here is the first video of the series if you have an interest in learning how this effect is accomplished (though, if I remember correctly, its not until Session 2 that he really gets down to business).

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