Sean Duggan Blog

Ornaments

Ornaments  [Canon 5D]
December 26, 2007
(click in the image for a larger version)

In my brother's front yard is a liquid amber tree that offers up these very sculptural seed pods. When the tree is bare of leaves in the winter they make an irresistible subject and I am always photographing them whenever we visit. This image is the result of mirroring the initial photo to the left (the original image is shown below). The basic high contrast black and white treatment was applied in Lightroom. Further contrast adjustments, the digital "pruning" of some of the branches, and the mirror effect was done in Photoshop.

*Upcoming Workshops *

The Creative Digital Darkroom, March 17 -€“ 21 at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre in sunny south Florida. Based on my new book, this hands-on class is focused on exploring essential creative digital darkroom techniques for photographers. Short photo field sessions will also be featured on some days to practice critical exposure skills with digital SLR cameras. Click the course title above to learn more or to register for this class.

In mid April I'll be at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu teaching three short courses on Selections and Masking in Photoshop CS3 (April 11), Creative Collage in Photoshop CS3 (April 12-13), and Camera Raw Workflow (April 14). Click the links to see a description and more information on registering for these classes.

December Moon

December Moon  [Canon 10D + a Lensbaby]
December 17, 2004

This was taken 3 years ago in our front yard...a serendipitous alignment of a crescent moon and the top of a tall pine tree. This is a hand held shot at 1/13th of a second with a Lensbaby providing the uneven edge blurring.

Every Christmas I've meant to do something with this, but never got around to it. Finally, I resurrected it from the archives today. If you celebrate Christmas, then do have a good one. Gather round with those who are special to you and enjoy some good cheer, reflect on the things in your life you're grateful for, and hope for a better world.

September Moon, September Storm

Distant Lightning and Full Moon [Canon 5D]
Rockport, Maine -- September 26, 2007
(click in the image for a larger version)

Here's another shot of the incredible view from my friend Amy's house in Rockport, Maine. This was taken about an hour and a half after the photo from yesterdays post. This is a 69-second exposure  and the long exposure time really shows the cloud motion very well. The aperture was f/16, which is significant for this shot because the use of a small aperture created the "starburst" effect on the full moon.

I chose the small aperture for two reasons; One was to get that starburst effect on the moon, and the other was to force the use of a long shutter speed. By this time it was much darker than it was earlier in the evening, the storm clouds were rolling in.  I wanted the long exposure time to lighten up the areas of the sky that were still clear, and also to allow for more time to catch the elusive bolts of lightning in the distant storm. Most of the processing was done in Lightroom with some additional dodging, burning and contrast control applied in Photoshop.

Book News: I received my author copy of The Creative Digital Darkroom today and it looks wonderful! After all the work that goes into a book project like this, it's so satisfying to finally hold it in your hands. The fact that my copy has arrived means that online orders should start shipping and it should be appearing on bookstore shelves very soon.

*Upcoming Workshops *

My next workshop will be a 5-day class called, coincidentally, The Creative Digital Darkroom, March 17 -€“ 21 at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre in sunny south Florida. Based on the new book, this hands-on class is focused on exploring essential creative digital darkroom techniques for photographers. Short photo field sessions will also be featured on some days to practice critical exposure skills with digital SLR cameras. Click the course title above to learn more or to register for this class.

Moon Over Rockport

Moon Over Rockport  [Canon 5D]
September 26, 2007  Rockport, Maine
(click in the image to see a larger version)

This was taken last September when I was in Rockport teaching at the Maine Photographic Workshops, I had been invited over to dinner at the house of a former student who lives in Rockport (thanks, Amy!). The view from her back terrace was stunning. All the more so when the full moon rose above some low clouds on the horizon to put on a spectacular show.Photographer Brenda Tharp was also there and we both had our tripods out the minute we realized the moon was about to perform.

But as beautiful as this was, things got even more interesting a little later as a storm moved in farther up the coast and we had both a full moon, interesting clouds and lightning in the distance. I'll try and post one of the those shots tomorrow or the next day. This image is a 5-second exposure at 100 ISO. It was processed in Lightroom but I really didn't do much to it except for a little bit of a contrast adjustment and a slight increase to the Vibrance slider.

A big thank you to Scott Kelby, and also the good folks over at Photoshop News, who both mentioned The Creative Digital Darkroom on their respective blogs today.

*Upcoming Workshops *

My next workshop will be a 5-day class called The Creative Digital Darkroom, March 17 -€“ 21 at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre in sunny south Florida. Based on the new book, this hands-on class is focused on exploring essential creative digital darkroom techniques for photographers. Short photo field sessions will also be featured on some days to practice critical exposure skills with digital SLR cameras. Click the course title above to learn more or to register for this class.

At the Edge of Understanding

2 Seconds on a Fogbound Shore [Canon 5D]
Oct 3, 2007 -- Acadia National Park, Maine
(click in the image for a larger and foggier version)

As the title suggests, this is a 2-second exposure taken in heavy fog. Most of the processing was done in Photoshop Lightroom with some minimal tonal and contrast tweaking in Photoshop. The original raw exposure with no processing is below:

*Upcoming Workshops *

My next workshop will be a 5-day class called  Digital Black and White at the Lepp Institute along the beautiful central California coast February 18-22. Click the link for a course description.

Letters from the Forest

Letters from the Forest  [Canon 5D]
Maine, Oct. 3, 2007
(click in the image to see a larger version)

This still life was taken on my last trip to Maine in Acadia National Park. I had found the old letters at the garage sale of an antique dealer on my trip to Maine earlier in the summer and brought them with for my late September trip. In terms of image processing, this is pretty much a "straight" image.  The raw file was processed in Photoshop Lightroom and some minor edge burning was applied via a Curves adjustment layer in Photoshop.

I was photographing the letters as subjects for some pinhole photographs using my ZeroImage 6x9 camera. Since this camera has a very wide field of view, I realized when I was setting it up on the tripod facing straight down at the letters on the ground, that it was very likely that the front tripod legs would be in the shot. Of course, I could have just made the photos anyway and then retouched the tripod legs in Photoshop, but I am a bit of a purist where my pinhole images are concerned and since I print these full frame with no cropping and showing the actual edges of the negative, I really didn't want to have to retouch the tripod legs if I could figure another way of working the problem. The old mantra again: get it as right as possible in the camera and that means there's less work to do in Photoshop.

Fortunately, I had a special flexible tripod with me that I had purchased earlier in the spring but had not yet used. The Joby Gorillapod is a very cool design with bendable segmented legs that allow you to wrap them around other objects and mount the camera in all sorts of otherwise tricky locations such as tree limbs, fence posts, etc. I mounted the pinhole camera to the Gorillapod and then molded it's flexible legs around a Bogen Super Clamp which I had mounted on the head my tripod.  The Super Clamp was used to create additional extension as well as to provide more surface area to wrap the Gorillapods legs around. The combination of the Gorillapod and the SuperClamp provided enough forward extension so that the camera could be pointed straight down at the still life setup without the tripod legs showing in the shot. Fortunately, the wooden pinhole camera is very lightweight and is easily supported by the Gorillapod. The model that I purchased can support 1.75 lbs (800g). They have a more robust version designed for heavier SLRs with zoom lenses that will support 6.6 lbs (3 kg) Below are a couple of photos showing the setup in action.

The ZeroImage pinhole camera mounted on the Gorillapod, which in turn is attached to a Bogen Super Clamp mounted to the tripod head. I'll try and scan one of the pinhole negatives of this scene this week and post that either towards the end of this week or early next week.

*Upcoming Workshops *

My next workshop will be a 5-day class called  Digital Black and White at the Lepp Institute along the beautiful central California coast February 18-22. Click the link for a course description.

1,177 Names

Contemplation, USS Arizona Memorial
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
April 18, 2007
(click in the image for a slightly larger version)

War memorials of any sort are always a sobering experience (for me, at least). Especially ones that show a list of names. I look at all those names, pick out one or two,  and try to imagine the person that once answered to that name, or the people left behind who loved them, mourned their death and remembered that person. War memorials compel us to remember these people. And even if we did not know anyone in the long list of names, we probably knew someone like them, Or perhaps we are like them. And, of course, everyone has a mother and a father, and many of us have brothers and sisters, daughters and sons.

Historically Pearl Harbor is a significant date for this country. And the Arizona memorial is especially moving because as you gaze at the columns of names, you are standing above the sunken wreck where many of the dead are still entombed. But there have been worse losses. And other countries have suffered far greater war dead than we have. And in addition to the combatants, there are always the innocents, often uncounted,  who are invariably ground up in the carnage. But the specifics of the numbers are not important. We should remember all battles and all wars, any time when people died as a result of organized armed conflict. We should try and envision a world without war, if such a thing is possible, given the history of our species. A world without smooth polished walls with long lists of names carved on their surfaces.

The Creative Digital Darkroom

This is the cover of the new book that Katrin Eismann and I have written. We have been working on this for quite a while and it feels great to finally see the finished product. Well, almost, that is. The book is at the printer now and any time now (perhaps even as I type) ink will be hitting the paper and the sheets will be rolling off the press. I cannot say exactly when it will be on store shelves, but based on what information I have been able to gather, it should be by Dec. 18th or 19th. Here's a link to the book's page at Amazon.

Katrin and I have been teaching digital imaging to photographers for quite a while and in this book our goal is to present a clear guide for working in the digital darkroom that explains not only the How and the When, but also the Why. The book covers Photoshop CS3 and as well as some of the development module capabilities of Photoshop Lightroom. But in addition to teaching what I like to call the Photoshop "dance steps", we also go into some of the more conceptual reasons behind why you might choose to lighten or darken specific areas of an image, and how to identify the basic visual components in an image in order to decide how those areas might be treated in order to enhance the whole photograph.

Katrin and I were both photographers long before there was Photoshop and our respect for the history of photography and the integrity of the photographic image as a creative medium is a big part of this book. We're also honored that Stephen Johnson, a pioneer in the field of large format digital fine art photography, has contributed his thoughts and perspective in the Foreword for the book.

Here's a list of the chapters:

1.  Silver to Silicon

2.  Digital Nuts and Bolts

3.  Scan, Develop and Organize

4.  File Preparation

5.  Tone and Contrast

6.  Dodging, Burning and Exposure Control

7.  Color Correction

8.  Creative Color

9.  Creative Enhancements

10. Enhancing Focus

By the time the book hits the store shelves, a companion web site will be posted where you can download most of the tutorial images featured in the book.

*Upcoming Workshops *

My next workshop will be a 5-day class called  Digital Black and White at the Lepp Institute along the beautiful central California coast February 18-22. Click the link for a course description.

Andes Explorer

Andes Explorer [Holga]
Machu Picchu, Peru  • July 12, 2005

*Upcoming Workshops *

My next workshop will be a 5-day class called  Digital Black and White at the Lepp Institute along the beautiful central California coast February 18-22. Click the link for a course description.