Sean Duggan Blog

Machu Picchu Dawn

Machu Picchu Dawn [HDR Composite]
July, 2005
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is an HDR (high dynamic range) image of the sunrise at Machu Picchu, Peru, created from six tripod-mounted RAW exposures taken 1-stop apart. The aperture was consistent at f/8 and the shutter speeds ranged from 1/3200th of a second to 1/100th of a second.

(click in the image of the 6 exposures to see a larger version)

The six exposures were then used with the Merge to HDR feature in Photoshop CS2 to create a 32-bit image that used the best parts of each exposure.

The single exposure that I got after using Merge to HDR was not really what I was after with this image (possibly because the exposure range was so extreme from shooting directly into the rising sun). To arrive at the final image seen here, I made two separate HDR composites from the six original exposures, and then composited those two images together using layer masks and adjustment layers.

Corridor of Arches

Göltzschtalbrücke, Germany / Sept 2005

This beautiful arched bridge in eastern Germany was built in the mid-1800s and is the largest brick bridge in the world. Apparently it is constructed with over 26 million bricks (now there's an inventory job I would not like to have!)

Postings to this space will be coming less regularly in the weeks ahead as I am quite busy with two book projects that are taking up much of my time. My guess is that for the next couple of months once or twice a week will probably be the rate that new images will be appearing here.

Yuba River Triptych

Yuba River Triptych [Pinhole]
July, 2003
(best viewed larger: click in the image)

From the archives. I came across this last night as I was sorting through older files as part of the process of setting up a structured and cataloged image archive.

Taken on the South Fork of the Yuba River in the Sierra foothills of northern California at one of our favorite summer swimming spots. The tripod was in the water in the middle of the river for this shot and the water level was only about an inch from the bottom of the Holga pinhole camera. Interestingly enough, I did not take these shots with the idea of making a triptych or a panorama. It was not until I looked at these sequential negs that I realized how well they would work together. Photographed with BW film and digitally hand-tinted in Photoshop.

These were scanned on a less than stellar flatbed scanner. Since I have a much better scanner now I will probably start again and redo this with better and larger scans (in my "copious spare time"!).

To get an idea how the hand tinting and dodging and burning is applied, I have included a view of the layers palette for this image (I haven't opened this in 2.5 years, so not every layer is properly named).

Woman with Pots

Woman with Pots [Holga]
Pisac, Peru / July 2005