Sean Duggan Blog

Heading Back to Santa Fe

Tent Rocks, New Mexico  [Canon 5D]
(click in the image for a larger version)

I'm off to New Mexico this morning to teach my  Creative Digital Darkroom class at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Some posts from there may show up next week, but often the pace of the workshop prevents daily updates to this space. In any case, I'm looking forward to going back. New Mexico is always a great place to visit and the operation at the Santa Fe Workshops is first rate. This image was taken during one of the class field trips last year. We'll be heading back to this interesting canyon next week.

Alignment

Alignment  [Canon 5D]
June 26, 2007  Rockland, Maine
(click in the image for a larger version)

Taken along the same causeway seen in the previous photo, and on the same day,too, but a few hours before the cool clouds arrived.

Mirror of the Earth and Sky

Mirror of the Earth and Sky  [Canon 5D]
Rockland, Maine  June 26, 2007
(click in the image to see a larger version)

Here's another view of the cool clouds shown in the previous post, this time with the landscape included. In answer to the obvious question that this image may raise...yes, that amazing sky really was above this causeway when I took the photo. This is a collage of two shots taken sequentially, but I took the two shots merely to increase the number of pixels so that I would end up with a larger file from which I could make a larger print. In the spirit of the interpretive landscape image, I have obviously done some fairly significant dodging and burning here as well as some selective sepia toning, but the sky is not imported from another scene.

It was an amazing and wonderful moment, as I can never recall being in a place where a triangular shape in the landscape was echoed so perfectly by a triangular shape in the clouds.Another aspect of this image that I find intriguing is the fact that the water on the left is rippled and unsettled, while the water on the right is calm. This is all the more noteworthy since the water on the right is the side that faces the open ocean, while the water on the left is the protected harbor side.

Delta

Triangular Clouds  [Canon 5D]
Rockland, Maine
(click in the image for a larger view)

One of the photographic outings for my "Real World Digital Photography" class at the Maine Photographic Workshops in late June took us to the causeway leading to the Rockland lighthouse. The day started out with bright, hazy light that gradually morphed into some truly intriguing cloud formations. As I walked back along the nearly mile-long causeway with some of the students from the class, I noticed a strange, triangular formation of clouds directly over the peninsula at the end of the rock walkway.

Cliff with a View

Incoming Tide, Front Row Seat [Canon 5D]
Maine, July 1, 2007
(click in the image for a larger version)

The day before I was due to leave Maine, I happened upon a yard sale and went shopping for photo props. For less than $10 I bought this old wooden chair, 2 old books (Best Known Works of Oscar Wilde and The Poetical Works of John Milton), some old sheet music and two old clocks dating from the 1940s and 50s. I wanted to work on an ongoing pinhole series called Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin but had brought nothing with me. As often happens in these situations, the photo gods and goddesses provided.

Early the next morning I set out to a rocky, cliff-lined shore and spent about 3 hours making photos, digital, pinhole and Diana, and moving up the shoreline as the tide crept higher and higher. I almost lost my 5-in-1 Photoflex multi-reflector but fortunately found it before the sea took it away. It was floating within reach...the dangers of leaving black bagged items on black rocks when the tide is coming in!

This is one of the shots that I liked from that day. The ones for the pinhole series are of a different setup. I should get the film back this week, but it will take me a few weeks before I have time to make any scans.

And, in case you're wondering...yes, the chair did get purposefully wet that morning.

Peeling Sky

Marshall Point Light, Maine  [Canon 5D]
June 28, 2007
(click in the image for a larger version)

Another image from last week when I was teaching at the Maine Photographic Workshops. This was taken on the same day as the previous two photos. Actually, all three were pretty much taken in the same area. For the slow shutter speed seascapes my tripod was set up down on the rocks in the left side of this photo.

This is a blend of two photos...the shot of the Marshall Point Light (Tom Hanks ran out to the end of the walkway in one of the running across the country scenes in "Forrest Gump"), and a detail photo of some peeling paint. The peeling texture was added to the sky courtesy of the magic of layer blend modes (Multiply in this case) and the always useful layer masks. We'll be playing around with cool stuff like this, as well as lots of other creative explorations in my next workshop, The Creative Digital Darkroom, which runs from July 29th through August 4th at the Santa Fe Workshops.

Conversing with the Incoming Tide

Seascape, Maine  [Canon 5D]
June 28, 2007
(click in the image to see it larger)

Another from the same series as yesterday's photo. 1.6 seconds

10 Seconds at the Continent's Edge

Seascape, Maine  [Canon 5D]
June 28, 2007
(click in the image to see a larger version)

This is a 10-second exposure taken in the full light of mid morning. I used two solid neutral density filters that cut back 8 stops of light, combined with an ISO setting of 100 and an aperture of f/16 to achieve the long daylight exposure that was needed in order to blur the water. The split-toning effect was applied in Photoshop Lightroom.

This image was taken on one of the class photo excursions during my Real World Digital Photography workshop last week at the Maine Photo Workshops. It was such a full week that I never was able to find the time to make daily posts as I had intended. I'll make up for that by posting Maine images all this week. I was fortunate to have a great group of people in my class who were really enthusiastic about learning more about digital photography and processing their images in the digital darkroom. So, thanks to all of you who took the class! I had a great time last week and all of your enthusiasm, boundless curiosity, energy and fine sense of humor really helped to make it another wonderful experience at the Maine Workshops.

Now I have a month to take a breather from travel before heading off to the equally magical Santa Fe Workshops to teach The Creative Digital Darkroom. That class is filling up, so if you're interested, be sure to click on the link to find out more about the workshop.