Sean Duggan Blog

Sea Truk

Sea Truk  [d-SLR]
Port Clyde, Maine
September 26, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

Taken on Tuesday afternoon while on a class photo expedition. We also went to the more conventionally scenic location of Marshall Point Lighthouse, which is around the far spit of land on the left, but the Sea Truk was my favorite subject. I had first seen this when I taught here a year ago and this was one of the reasons to go back to Port Clyde. This used to be used as a U.S. Army landing craft and when standing next to the giant beast, my head only comes up to little more than the halfway mark on the tires. Here's a link to a shot with a person in it to get an idea of the size of the sea truk. The woman in the image is tall, close to six feet in height. And here's another image I found on the web that shows it from afar (note the size of the parked cars in realtion to the Truk).

Apparently it is used to ferry heavy loads of construction and landscaping materials out to the nearby islands (it has even, on occasion, taken dump trucks as cargo). I learned from one of the locals that Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts has a place on an island near Port Clyde and the Truk has been schlepping prodigious amounts of landscaping material over to his Honor's bungalow. At any rate, it is a most strange and curious vehicle. I am considering returning on Saturday afternoon with Holga and pinhole cameras.

The Open Trunk

Open Trunk [d-SLR]
Death Valley, Sept 9, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

On my way back into Death Valley after leaving Las Vegas, some beautiful pinkish/purple light on a mountain range made me stop the car and try for a photo. But by the time I had opened the trunk, got out the tripod, trotted over to a good vantage point and set up the camera, the beautiful light was gone. That's certainly a story that a lot of photographers know.

So I took this photo instead (among others). This is an HDR blend of three separate exposures.

I'm off to Maine again at zero dark thirty tomorrow morning (about as different from Death Valley as you can get). I'll be there all week teaching a digital photography class at the Maine Photographic Workshops. The ZeroImage pinhole and my trusty Holga are in the bag along with my Canon 5D. This is my last major trip of the year and I look forward to having the Fall and Winter to get a lot of writing done on a new book project and catch up on scanning some of the many Holga and pinhole negs that I shot this summer. Too many negatives, too little time...

After the Flood

After the Flood [d-SLR]
Death Valley, California
Sept 10, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

I passed through Death Valley the first time on Wednesday afternoon and evening, Sept 6th. On Thursday there was a big thunderstorm with lots of rain that caused a flash flood at Furnace Creek. Two cars were swept away (fortunately, no one was in the cars when the water came washing down from the high country). This is one of them, three days later, buried up to the tops of the tires, the windshield blown in and the interior full of mud and large rocks. The moral of the story is clear to anyone who has ever spent time in the desert: when it starts raining hard, get to high ground fast.

Joshua Tree & Approaching Storm

Joshua Tree and Approaching Storm [d-SLR]
Death Valley National Park, California
Sept. 6, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

Taken in Death Valley National Park last week...but not in the actual valley itself. This was in the high country before descending into the Panamint Valley, the "mini-Death Valley" you have to pass through before you reach the real thing.

I photographed this same tree on the return trip but the sky was blue with not a cloud in the sky and the image doesn't have the same wonderful mood and atmosphere that this one does. Moral of the story: Dark, ominous clouds are good thing...at least from a photographic perspective.

Moon Over the Desert

Moon Over the Desert [d-SLR]
Death Valley, CA Sept 6, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

From the same drive through Death Valley as seen in the previous two images. This is a single 26-second exposure at ISO 250. The moon was full, or nearly full, and I had my tripod set up in the middle of the highway for over 15 minutes and never had to move it for cars. The orange glow on the horizon on the left side of the image is a desert fire that was burning over 60 miles away. I eventually passed it as I drove towards Las Vegas.

The Long Road

The Long Road [d-SLR]
Death Valley, CA Sept 6, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

This image was taken a little bit later than the previosu susnet photo. Same road, heading east (towards Furnace Creek, for those of you who know the area), after the sun had gone down. Although this is a single RAW exposure, it has been processed in two different ways and the two versions combined with a gradient mask to create the final image. First, the overall version was processed, in which I adjusted the settings so the road, desert and mountains looked as I wanted them to. Then, I processed a second version that had darker clouds (the clouds looked a bit too washed out in the first version).

It was incredibly windy when I took this (you can see the foreground bushes on the right are blurred from the long exposure time) and I dared not take my hand off the tripod for fear the whole thing would be blown over.

Death Valley Sunset

Death Valley Sunset [d-SLR]
Sept. 6, 2006
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is an HDR (high dynamic range) blend of 5 different exposures all shot on a tripod at one f/stop apart (varying the shutter speed; the aperture stayed constant). The five RAW images were combined into a 32-bit file using Adobe Photoshop CS2's Merge to HDR feature. Final interpretive tweaking was done during the conversion back to a 16-bit file.

If you are not familiar with this technique, the reason to use it is when you are  photographing a scene that has far more contrast (the range of tonal values from the darkest to the brightest) than the camera can capture in a single exposure.  This image is a good example: in order to hold detail in the foreground of the desert and the road while still holding detail and color in the bright area where the sun has just set, a range of exposures had to be made. There was no way to capture this tonal and contrast range in one shot.

A few more Death Valley images are coming this week. These will be digital shots from my Canon 5D. I have also been doing some Holga work and pinhole photographs on this trip, but it is the nature of those images that it takes awhile before I can get to scanning them.

Owls Head Lighthouse, No. 2

Owls Head Lighthouse, No. 2, [pinhole photograph]
July 1, 2006, Maine
(click in the image for a larger version)

A different view of the same subject as in the previous post. It's hard to say, but I think I like this one better. I like the fact that the viewpoint and perspective are less pictoral and more subjective. Plus, this one has a slightly ominous feel to it that I find interesting.