Sean Duggan Blog

Leaping into Digital

Leaping into Kung Foo Digital Photography  [Canon 5D]
August 10, 2008 -- Rockport, Maine
(click in the image for a larger version)

My final workshop week in Maine was another blur of full days, both in the classroom and in the field, wonderful scenery, good people and lots of learning and laughter. The week was so full and rushed by so fast, in fact, that I soon gave up the idea of trying to post here every day. So now that I'm back home in California I'm playing catch up and will be posting images from Maine foir the next week or so.

Amy, one of the students in the "Leaping into Digital" class, had motored up from Cape Cod on her 40 foot boat, the Banyan. On the afternoon of the last day, after the class had formally concluded, Amy invited a few other people from the class and myself to go out for a short cruise. The fog was so thick, however, that we only ventured a short distance into the outer harbor before deciding to come back and have a party at the dock, where there was no shortage of cameras, pixels or silliness.

The photo above shows Frank and Sue practicing the ancient art of Kung Foo Photography on the dock. The fresh sea air also inspired Bridget to perform a spontaneous display of dockside gymnastics, a traditional skill revered by sailors and sea-faring folk the world over. Having already lept enthusiastically into digital the previous week, Frank and Sue were there to make sure the event was thoroughly documented from a variety of angles.

Click here to see a gallery of the photographs from the "Leaping into Digital" class

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Next Workshop

Secrets of the Mask:
Selections and Masking in Adobe Photoshop CS3
September 27 - 28, Santa Cruz, California

NAPP members and subscribers to my newsletter receive a special discount for this class.
Click here for more information about this class.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

Arranging the Lighthouse  [Canon 5D]
Marshall Point, Maine  August 13, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

A bit of silliness from the field trip my class took to Port Clyde and the Marshall Point Lighthouse. Of course, this image is straight out of a "Fun with Photography" book, but having a good time is definitely one of the qualities you should work towards in your photography!

It's Friday now and as usual, the week has gone by in a blur and a busy schedule and less than reliable wireless connections have made updating the blog more of a challenge than usual. Class ends tomorrow and then I have a day and a half of down time until my "Real World Digital Photography" class starts on Sunday night.

Onward!

Saw Blades

Saw Blades  [Canon 5D]
Coopers Mill, Maine
August 10, 2008
(Click in the image for a larger version)

It's a rainy day in Maine today. Fortunately my class has a Lightroom session in the morning and then an indoor photo shoot scheduled at Elmer's Barn, the mother of all antique and junk emporiums. The saw blades above were photographed there on Sunday.

Greetings from Maine

Opera House  [Canon10D]
Rockport, Maine  October 2, 2005
(click in the image for a larger version)

I'm at the Maine Media Workshops and today is the first day of my "Leaping into Digital" class. The image above is actually from three years ago since I haven't yet downloaded the shots I took yesterday. I'll try and post daily this week with an overview of what's happening in the class.

I have another class here next week ("Real World Digital Photography"), so there'll be plenty of Maine images for the next two weeks.

After Maine, my next workshops are in September in California and include classes on processing the raw image (Berkeley) and selections and masking (Santa Cruz). Check out my Workshops Schedule for more info.

Pyramid and Fog

Pyramid and Fog   [Canon 5D]
San Francisco   August 4, 2008

I was down in the San Francisco area earlier this week for some one-on-one training and spotted this image in Chinatown while I was waiting to meet a friend. As it was nearly a monochromatic scene to begin with, I took it all the way into grayscale in Lightroom 2.

Whenever I see the Trans America pyramid building I am reminded of something that happened to me in a junior high school art class in the mid 1970s. I had recently moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Boise, Idaho and in a drawing and painting class I created a silhouette rendering of the San Francisco skyline against an orange sunset sky. The pyramid building was part of that skyline and the teacher took issue with the shape of this particular structure, saying that buildings don't look like that. I tried to explain that there was, indeed, such a building in San Francisco, but he did not believe me. In those days there was no internet to quickly look something up, so I had to bide my time until I managed to locate a photograph of the pyramid building and prove him wrong (and what a sweet moment that was!).

Upcoming Digital Black and White Class
Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging
November 3 – 7, 2008
Los Osos, California

Lightroom 2 and Camera Raw 4.5

The Speaker  [Diana Camera]
October, 2007
(click in the image for a larger version)

Camera Raw 4.5 Update & Lightroom 2

Along with the release of Lightroom 2 this week, there is also a free update to the Camera Raw plug-in, version 4.5. If you are upgrading to Lightroom 2 you should also update Camera Raw for any other programs that use that technology. This includes Photoshop CS3, Photoshop Elements 6 (Mac & Win) and Premiere Elements 4.0 for Windows. This is the first step to ensure that any edits you make to images in Lightroom 2 will be visible in those other applications. There is also one other thing to do, which I'll cover below.

Here's a link to the Mac version of Camera Raw 4.5
And here's a link to the Windows version of Camera Raw 4.5

Making Lightroom edits Visible in Camera Raw 4.5

Any edits you make to images in Lightroom are stored in the Lightroom database and will not be immediately visible to Camera Raw. In order to share these edits so that Camera Raw sees them, you have to save them to an XMP sidecar file that is stored in the same folder as the images, or directly to the DNG file if you are using that format for your raw files (this is the case no matter what version of Lightroom you are using). Fortunately this is a very quick and easy step of using the keyboard shortcut of Command-S on Mac or Control-S on PC (the menu path for this is found in the Library module and is Metadata > Save Metadata to File).

Leaping Into Digital & Real World Digital Photography

There's still a few spots left in my two upcoming classes at the Maine Media Workshops:

Leaping into Digital  Aug 10 – 16

Real World Digital Photography  Aug 17 – 23

You can see my complete Workshop Schedule here.