Sean Duggan Blog

The Arrival

The Arrival  [Canon 10D]
Kressbronn, Germany
August 22, 2005
(click in the image for a larger version)

Here's one from the archives, two and a half years ago. I've been looking through older image folders and working with some files that have been neglected for a while. This photograph is one that has joined an ongoing series that will be featured on my new web site. As for when  that new web site will launch: hopefully within the next two weeks.

I was on this dock on the Lake of Constance in southern Germany with my daughter when this man came by with this little girl on the bike. She had the front tire right up to the edge of the dock, and even though he did have a hand on the hood of her jacket, I was still relieved when they finally moved away from the edge.

This image has been enhanced and "seasoned" quite a bit through custom dodging and burning and blends of uneven sepia washes. Here's what the original raw capture looks like:

My weekend collage lass in Monterey has been re-scheduled to April 26, 27, so if you are interested in signing up, here's the link. I'll still be making the trip from the foothills down to the Bay Area, however, as I have some consulting clients to meet with.

If you live in the Sacramento, San Francisco Bay, or south bay regions (or anywhere in between) and you're interested in one-on-one digital photography or digital darkroom consulting, drop me a line at sean@seanduggan.com.

Have a good weekend!

Leviathan

Leviathan

This is a collage (obviously) created from a mirrored image of the tail of a DC-3 airplane and two photos of the ocean. I added the dark circular vignette to suggest a view through a telescope. The steel "whale tail" has been finished for awhile but I hadn't found the right ocean image for it yet. Just a digital doodle, really...I find that making collages is a good way to relax and get the creative juices flowing just for the fun of it.

And, speaking of collage (how's that for a segue?)...

Creative Collage Workshop Next Weekend:

If you live in California near Monterey, Santa Cruz, or the San Francisco Bay Area, then you may be interested in a class that I'll be teaching next weekend, March 1st and 2nd:  Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop at the Monterey Adult School.There's still about 6 spaces left so sign up soon if you want to attend (click the class title for a link to a page with all the info). This class is being offered for the incredible price of only $200!

I'll also be teaching this same workshop at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu on April 12 - 13. A 5-day version will be offered June 2 - 6 at the at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo.

Coloma Cemetery

Coloma Cemetery  [Canon 5D, HDR)
Coloma, California  February 10, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

Here's another image from the Gold Rush-era cemetery at Coloma. This is an HDR merge of two hand held exposures . If I had a tripod with me, then I would have used it, of course, but as I did not, I took advantage of the auto-bracketing feature on my camera to quickly take the two shots (see below).

The two exposures were merged into a 32-bit HDR file in Photoshop CS3 and then imported into HDRSoft's Photomatix for most of the HDR tonemappng. Then it was back to Photoshop for some final dodge and burn and contrast adjustment layers.I'm still playing around with this image and trying out lower color saturation and even moody black and white versions.

Unfortunately, the small JPEG version does not do justice to the high-frequency of all the intricate details such as the leaves on the ground, the rough stone, the lichen and and lacy tree branches overhead.

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Workshop News

I'm pleased to announce that on May 3 – 4 I will be offering a new 2-day hands-on workshop on Photoshop for Photographers: The Basics at the Stephen Johnson Photography Studio in Pacifica, California. This class is designed for photographers who are new to Photoshop and who want to learn the most important fundamentals for using this powerful software to work with their photographs. The class will take place in the new state-of-the-art digital lab at Stephen's studio and enrollment is limited to only 10 students. Click the class title for registration details and more information about the class.

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On June 2 - 6 I'll be teaching Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop CS3, at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo.  These classes tend to fill fast, especially at that time of year, so if you are interested in participating, click the class title for a link to the workshop's page at the Lepp Institute site. The computer lab at the Lepp Institute is really first rate, with fast Windows computers kitted out with dual monitors and Canon 5100 printers (as well as larger format printers adjacent to the main lab area). Tiered stadium seating ensures that everyone has a clear view of the main screen. I've taught there several times over the past five years and I always look forward to going back. It is truly one of the best digital lab facilities I've taught at.

For a complete listing of other upcoming workshops, including classes in Florida, Hawaii and Monterey and Pacifica, California, click on over to the Workshops Page at my web site.

The Rose

The Rose  [Canon 5D]
Coloma, California February 10, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

Last Sunday my wife, daughter and I drove down Highway 49 to Coloma, California for the afternoon. Coloma is about an hour's drive from our house and these days, it is a quiet little place, more a state park than a town in the way we normally think of towns. It is nestled in a pretty valley on the banks of the south fork of the American River. Coloma's place in California's, and the world's, history is a significant one. It was here on January 24, 1848 that James Marshall discovered gold in the tailrace of John Sutter's sawmill.

This event set in motion the California Gold Rush, and, according to the official web site of the park, as gold fever spread across the world, it resulted in "the greatest mass movement of people in the western hemisphere and was the spark that ignited the spectacular growth of the West during the ensuing decades". The ramifications of this sudden growth explosion are too numerous to list here, but Coloma is a fascinating place and if you ever are in the area, it's worth a stop. This photo was taken shortly before sunset in the original cemetery that is located on a shaded hilltop a short drive from the main road that runs through the park. I love the details on the gravestones that you find in old cemeteries. The processing on this image is fairly minimal...basic adjustments in Lightroom and some slight seasoning in Photoshop with my Sepiaesque toning.

Creative Collage Workshop in June

On June 2 - 6 at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo, I'll be teaching a 5-day class on Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop CS3.  These classes tend to fill fast, especially at that time of year, so if you are interested in participating, click the class title for a link to the workshop's page at the Lepp Institute site. The computer lab at the Lepp Institute is really first rate, with fast Windows computers kitted out with dual monitors and Canon 5100 printers (as well as larger format printers adjacent to the main lab area). Tiered stadium seating ensures that everyone has a clear view of the main screen. I've taught there several times over the past five years and I always look forward to going back. It is truly one of the best digital lab facilities I've taught at.

For a complete listing of other upcoming workshops, including classes in Florida, Hawaii and Monterey and Pacifica, California, click on over to the Workshops Page at my web site.

The Clocks

The Clocks  [pinhole photograph]
January 31, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

This was taken in a snow storm a little over a week ago (see the previous post). It is part of an on-going series of pinhole photographs I am working on called Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin. I do not have the entire series (15 images at the moment) posted in one place, but you can view several of them in the Pinhole section of this blog. The previous six posts are all from this series, too. I am in the midst of redesigning my main web site and the full series will be posted there once I get that done (hopefully in another week).

The Journey of the Clocks
I purchased these clocks at a garage sale in Maine in late June 2007 and I first photographed them for this series on July 1st at the base of a cliff. They were on rocks and the incoming tide swirled around them.

But I was never really pleased with those photos because I could not get the camera close enough to the clocks. One of the pleasures and compositional strengths of a wide angle pinhole camera is the fact that you can place objects very close to the pinhole to create some interesting foreground/background relationships. In the photos by the sea the clocks were just a bit too far away for my tastes.

So, I brought them back home to California (along with the old letters and the ledger) and put them on a shelf in my studio and waited until the muse would speak to me again. In the week of snow we had at the end of January, the muse rang me up and the clocks went for another journey into the forest around my home. Close to water once again, but this time frozen water in the form of snow. And I finally got the image that I had in my mind's eye when I first worked with them along the rocky Maine coast. Of course, I didn't imagine the snowy setting, but this is the general positioning of the clocks that I was thinking of. The wintry landscape is just an unexpected bonus.

Sometimes, you have to wait for a good photo. Even it is one that you set up, like this arranged still life in nature. For this image, I waited 7 months, but it paid off.

Upcoming Creative Collage Workshop

If you live in California near Monterey, Santa Cruz, or the San Francisco Bay Area, then you may be interested in a new weekend class that has just been added to my schedule. I'll be teaching a 2-day version of my Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop workshop at the Monterey Adult School on March 1st and 2nd.

For a complete listing of other upcoming workshops, click on over to the Workshops Page at my web site.

Pinhole Photo Setup

January 31, 2008 [Canon 5D]
(click in the image to see it larger)

We had a lot of new snow up in the Sierra foothills last week. Of course, this is quite relative and the 18 to 20 inches that we received is nothing compared to what they get in some parts of the country. Still, it was enough to make things interesting and for me it served as a creative muse to get out my ZeroImage 6x9 pinhole camera and work on the Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series (see the previous 5 posts for images from this series).

In the image above you see the camera setup for photographing two clocks half buried in the snow. It was snowing heavily during this photo session and you can see the layer of snow that has accumulated on top of the camera at left. After an hour and a half out in the snow and freezing temperatures, it was a great relief to come in and warm up in front of a blazing fire.

Yours truly...suffering for my art.

The negatives from this session should be back from the lab sometime this week, but it will take me a couple of weeks before I get time to work with the images. The final version will find its way here eventually.

Upcoming Creative Collage Workshops

If you live in California near Monterey, Santa Cruz, or the San Francisco Bay Area, then you may be interested in a new weekend class that has just been added to my schedule. I'll be teaching a 2-day version of my Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop workshop at the Monterey Adult School on March 1st and 2nd.

For a more in-depth exploration of this subject, with plenty of time to work on your own images, I have a 5-day version of this same workshop that I'll be teaching June 2 - 6 at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo.  These classes tend to fill fast, especially at that time of year, so if you are interested in participating, click the class title for a link to the workshop's page at the Lepp Institute site. The computer lab at the Lepp Institute is really first rate, with fast Windows computers kitted out with dual monitors and Canon 5100 printers (as well as larger format printers adjacent to the main lab area). Tiered stadium seating ensures that everyone has a clear view of the main screen. I've taught there several times over the past five years and I always look forward to going back. It is truly one of the best digital lab facilities I've taught at.

For a complete listing of other upcoming workshops, click on over to the Workshops Page at my web site.

The Valise

The Valise  [pinhole photograph]
early October 2007, Maine
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is the last image (for awhile, anyway) from an ongoing series called Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin. All the images in this series are pinhole photographs made with a ZeroImage 6x9 multi-format camera. The selective sepia toning is all done in Photoshop. Click the Pinhole link on the right in the Categories section to see more from this series. I have photographed a couple of new ones in the past several days but it will be a few weeks at least before the negs are developed and I have time to get to them.

Behind the Scenes

When I was in Maine in late September/early October, I purchased two old valises in a huge, crammed-to-the-rafters three level junk and antique shop with the specific intention of using them for this series. The one in this photo was designated to be the "stunt valise" since it was very musty and dusty. It probably had mold spores hiding in it and was not the place where you'd want to pack anything good. This, and the price ($10) made it a perfect candidate for getting wet which was the idea I had in mind since I knew that I would be heading north to Acadia National Park where picuresque, easily accessible shorelines abound. The second valise that I purchased was much nicer and was never subjected to being submerged in a tide pool or sloshed by the incoming waves of the rising sea.

Once on location in Acadia, I discovered that the valise floated much more readily than I had anticipated (now there's craftsmanship for you!), so to get it to stay put in the tide pool and also to prevent it from being washed away once the more vigorous waves began rushing in, I filled it with about 30 pounds of large rocks. And, to address an obvious question that this image may raise: yes, my feet did get a little wet during this photo session, but the camera was always whisked away just before the surging surf reached it.

When I was done with the photo, my original plan was to throw it out in a dumpster, but it was still in pretty decent shape, in spite of its ocean voyage, and I kept thinking that a stunt valise might just come in handy for future photo projects. You just never know. So I packed it up in a box and had it shipped home to California. I was a little leery of the fact that it had gotten wet and might sprout mold during the cross-country journey in a stuffy truck. When it arrived, my suspicions proved correct and the parts that had been in the water sported the furry coat of an active mold community. Fortunately, it cleaned up well enough and ever since it has been designated as an outdoor valise (with its mold history I'm not about to bring it inside). The dry weather of our autumn and now the freezing temperatures of a snowy winter have kept the mold from returning. One of these days it just may end up in another photograph. Or perhaps play a supporting role in a surreal garden tableau.

Upcoming Creative Collage Workshops

If you live in California near Monterey, Santa Cruz, or the San Francisco Bay Area, then you may be interested in a new weekend class that has just been added to my schedule. I'll be teaching a 2-day version of my Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop workshop at the Monterey Adult School on March 1st and 2nd.

For a more in-depth exploration of this subject, with plenty of time to work on your own images, I have a 5-day version of this same workshop that I'll be teaching June 2 - 6 at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo.  These classes tend to fill fast, especially at that time of year, so if you are interested in participating, click the class title for a link to the workshop's page at the Lepp Institute site. The computer lab at the Lepp Institute is really first rate, with fast Windows computers kitted out with dual monitors and Canon 5100 printers (as well as larger format printers adjacent to the main lab area). Tiered stadium seating ensures that everyone has a clear view of the main screen. I've taught there several times over the past five years and I always look forward to going back. It is truly one of the best digital lab facilities I've taught at.

The Letters in the Forest

The Letters in the Forest  [pinhole photograph]
early October, 2007, Maine
(click in the image for a larger version)

This was photographed in early October in Acadia National Park in Maine, but I just got around to scanning it, as well as others from this series, last week. This is from an ongoing series called Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin. All the images in this series are pinhole photographs made with a ZeroImage 6x9 multi-format camera. The selective sepia toning is all done in Photoshop. Click the Pinhole link on the right in the Categories section to see more from this series.

New Workshop, March 1-2:

If you live in California near Monterey, Santa Cruz, or the San Francisco Bay Area, then you may be interested in a new weekend class that has just been added to my schedule. I'll be teaching a 2-day version of my Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop workshop at the Monterey Adult School on March 1st and 2nd.

For a more in-depth exploration of this subject, with plenty of time to work on your own images, I have a 5-day version of this same workshop that I'll be teaching June 2 - 6 at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo.  These classes tend to fill fast, especially at that time of year, so if you are interested in participating, click the class title for a link to the workshop's page at the Lepp Institute site. The computer lab at the Lepp Institute is really first rate, with fast Windows computers kitted out with dual monitors and Canon 5100 printers (as well as larger format printers adjacent to the main lab area). Tiered stadium seating ensures that everyone has a clear view of the main screen. I've taught there several times over the past five years and I always look forward to going back. It is truly one of the best digital lab facilities I've taught at.

Other upcoming workshops will be offered in Delray Beach, Florida and Honolulu, Hawaii. Check my Workshop page for a full schedule.