DelawareScene: Coastal Camera Club Present Harold Davis “Creating Compelling Compositions” Working with Photography Using Design Concepts”

Coastal Camera Club Present Harold Davis “Creating Compelling Compositions” Working with Photography Using Design Concepts”

Wednesday, February 11, 2026 @ 6:30 pm

Speakers: Harold Davis

Title: " Creating Compelling Compositions” Working with Photography Using Design Concepts

Please email info@coastalcameraclub.com for a FREE Zoom link

Description:

Summary: Good composition is a fundamental building block of good photography. It is easy to recognize, but hard to achieve. This webinar well help guide photographers at any level to improve their work by creating compelling compositions.

Description: Of all the magical elixirs that make up a successful photograph, composition is perhaps the most fundamental, and at the same time the most elusive. What makes a composition "good"? It’s hard to define exactly, but we instinctively recognize good composition when we see it. There is an undeniable emotional response when a composition resonates with and complements the subject matter of an image.

But traditional attempts to define "good composition" and to pass on rules for good compositional construction are often doomed to failure. The truth is, there are no hard and fast rules. Rules eliminate experimentation and spontaneity, which are crucial for creating compelling, dynamic, and exciting compositions. The best compositions contain an element of the unexpected. "Expect the unexpected!" is perhaps the only viable "rule" of composition. To create exciting compositions, you must have a willingness to embrace serendipity and change as part of your artistic practice. After all, composition is a process, not a result.

Edward Weston once wrote in his Daybooks that "to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk." To this, Ansel Adams added that "You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved."

This webinar will consist of an extensive presentation by Harold Davis simplifying many aspects of photographic composition, followed by a wide-ranging discussion.

In this webinar, you will learn to:

• Work with shapes such as lines, circles, and rectangles

• Understand directionality, entering, and exiting in composition

• Work with patterns and repetition

• Recognize and use positive and negative space

• Use the various kinds of abstraction in your own work

Bios:

Harold Davis is a world-class artist and photographer who has expanded the parameters of his field with imagery, new techniques, and as an author and educator.

Honored with the prestigious Photographic Society of America Progress award in 2022 for his development of a unique technique for photographing flowers for transparency, these works have been described as "ethereal" and having "a purity and translucence that borders on spiritual" (Popular Photo Magazine). Previous Progress award honorees include Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Walt Disney, and Ken Burns.

Davis's most recent books include Composition & Photography, Creative Garden Photography, and Creative Black & White, all from Rocky Nook. In February 2023, the PSA Journal reviewed Composition & Photography, noting that "While the text is compelling, the photographs are stunning and invite the reader to read even more."

He is also recognized as a master of black and white. The Seattle Times put it this way: "Harold Davis is the digital black and white equal of Ansel Adams’s traditional wet photography."

In 2022, two of Davis's floral images, "Tulip Panorama" and "Sunflower and Friends," were produced as United States postage stamps. Five additional Harold Davis United States postage stamps have recently been released, with the first day of issue July 18, 2024 in Berkeley, California.

Translucent Flora: Photographs by Harold Davis was exhibited at the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture at the San Francisco Botanic Garden in 2023.

Harold is a sought-after workshop leader, who has led groups all over the world and taught and lectured at many institutions including the School of Visual Arts, New York, Google, Maine Photographic Workshops, and the Heidelberg Summer School of Photography in Germany.

Harold’s website is digitalfieldguide.com.

Web site: http://www.digitalfieldguide.com