Sean Duggan Blog

Harbor Light

Harbor Light  [Canon 5D]
Camden, Maine  June 23, 2007
(click in the image to see it larger)

It's great to be back in Maine! I took this last night while strolling around Camden harbor after a particularly fine bowl of clam chowder.

I'm here for the week teaching a Real World Digital Photography class at the Maine Photographic Workshops. This is the 34th year that they have been offering excellent photography workshops. It's a great place to get away from your every day life and concentrate on photography and creativity. If you've never been out here for a workshop but have considered it, I would enthusiastically recommend it. And if some place with more of a southwestern feel sounds more appealing, then consider the Santa Fe Workshops in New Mexico. I'll be there July 29 through August 4th teaching a Creative Digital Darkroom workshop. Click the class title for more information on that workshop.

Spur

Spur [Canon 5D]
Santa Fe, New Mexico  August 6, 2006
(click in the image to see a larger view)

Continuing with the cowboy boot theme introduced in the previous post, this is from last year when I was in New Mexico teaching at the at the Santa Fe Workshops (see below for information on my next class there coming up in about a month).

Tomorrow at zero-dark-thirty I am heading east to teach a workshop at the Maine Photographic Workshops. Expect to see some coastal New England images showing up here next week. The class is full and I am looking forward to meeting everyone and having a fun week of grooving on digital photography, creative exploration and learning new Photoshop CS3 and digital workflow techniques.

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Featured Workshop

The Creative Digital Darkroom
July 29 – August 4, 2007 Santa Fe Workshops

If you're interested in a week of creative Photoshop and digital photography (including panoramas, HDR, multiple image composites, and more), then consider joining me in Santa Fe, New Mexico this summer for my Creative Digital Darkroom workshop.The workshop is based on concepts, philosophies and techniques that are covered the book I am currently finishing up with Katrin Eismann, The Creative Digital Darkroom, due out this fall from O'Reilly Media, Inc. The digital darkroom lab at the Santa Fe Workshops is one of the best I have ever taught in. Each student has a G5 Mac with a cinema display with access to an HP Designjet pigment printer. We'll be exploring all the cool new features in Adobe Photoshop CS3 as well as Photoshop Lightroom. We'll also have some photo excursions during the week for practicing creative camera and exposure techniques, including a foray into the magic of night photography. If you're interested in attending, register soon as the available spaces are filling up fast.

Boots

Boots  [Canon 5D]
August 5, 2006  Santa Fe, New Mexico

Taken last summer during my one week workshop at the Santa Fe Workshops (see below for more details).

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Featured Workshop

The Creative Digital Darkroom
July 29 – August 4, 2007 Santa Fe Workshops

If you're interested in a week of creative Photoshop and digital photography (including panoramas, HDR, multiple image composites, and more), then consider joining me in Santa Fe, New Mexico this summer for my Creative Digital Darkroom workshop.The workshop is based on concepts, philosophies and techniques that are covered the book I am currently finishing up with Katrin Eismann, The Creative Digital Darkroom, due out this fall from O'Reilly Media, Inc. The digital darkroom lab at the Santa Fe Workshops is one of the best I have ever taught in. Each student has a G5 Mac with a cinema display with access to an HP Designjet pigment printer. We'll be exploring all the cool new features in Adobe Photoshop CS3 as well as Photoshop Lightroom. We'll also have some photo excursions during the week for practicing creative camera and exposure techniques, including a foray into the magic of night photography. If you're interested in attending, register soon as the available spaces are filling up fast.

The Organ Grinder of Berlin

Organ Grinder, Berlin 1994
(click in the image to see it larger)

One from the archives. My current book project has taken me back into my neg files in search of specific image examples. Along the way I ran across this image, taken with a Bronica at the Brandenburg Gate 13 years ago.

Polyphemus Moth

Polyphemus Moth  [Canon 10D]
May 5, 2004
(click in the image to see it larger)

Every once in awhile I post what I call "anniversary" images: photos taken on the same date a year or more previously. I haven't done this for a while and so today I was prowling through my archives looking for a an image to use for a book prooject when I came upon this photo. Technically it's not a true anniversary image since it is not from today's date (June 5th), but at three years and one month from today's date, it's pretty close.

I found this moth on our deck. While still alive, it was certainly not feeling very chipper. I placed it in a shallow, open box and put it out of the way in case it decided to fly off. After some research on the web, I was pretty sure that I had it positively identified it as a male Polyphemus Moth, also known as the North American Silk Moth. In the course of this research I found out about the unusual life cycle off these insects. They emerge from their cocoon and find a mate on their first night on the wing (they use their large antenna to "sniff" out a potential date). Then, after accomplishing their reproductive imperative, they wait around to die. They don't even have a mouth with which to eat. So, they can't even have a snack after a night of moth romance!

Once I realized that this moth was on the way out of this world, I decided that it certainly warranted some photographs. This is not a Photoshop composite, by the way. It was a pretty a large moth and this is a straight shot (apart from some interpretive sepia toning). To get an idea of just how large it is, consider the photo below. That is a standard-sized CD the moth is resting on! This image is also more representative of the moth's actual color (click in the image to see it larger).

The Blue Wonder

The Blue Wonder, Dresden, Germany
August 31, 2004  [Canon 10D]
(much better larger: click in the image for a bigger version)

This view of Das Blaues Wunder bridge in Dresden, Germany is from late summer 2004. I took three different photos with the intention of assembling them into a single view and now almost three years later, I finally start playing around with it. I originally put it together as a Photomerge but decided that I liked the obvious "pieced together" look of separate photos better. Sometimes smooth and seamless is not always better. I customized the image with a Washed Out Vintage action that I created (even though it took away any hint of the fact that the bridge is painted blue).

Adobe Bridge CS3 2.1 Update

And, speaking of bridges (how's that for a shameless segue?), today Adobe announced a free update to the latest version of Adobe Bridge. If you're using a CS3 product, such as Photoshop CS3, then this is a recommended update, which includes the following critical fixes and enhancements:

• New multilevel keywords support
• Ability to import tab-delimited keyword format
• New multilevel keywords support
• Ability to import tab-delimited keyword format
• Better control over video and audio file previews
• New cache management functionality
• Improved scrolling and renaming performance
• Usability improvements to custom workspaces

You can download the Macintosh update here, and the Windows update here.

Have a great weekend!