Sean Duggan Blog

Looking Into the New Year

Looking Into the New Year  [Canon 5D; 17 seconds]
December 31, 2009
(click in the image for a larger version)

Happy New Year to You!

This is my last image of 2009. It was taken on New Year's Eve, just past 11pm. The subject is my favorite old oak tree on our property. I had gone out to take photos of the Blue Moon, but in the time between deciding to take the photos and getting the camera and tripod set up, the scattered cloud cover had become pretty much constant cloud cover (though it did move through the sky is a very atmospheric manner).

With the moon taken off the menu as a reliable subject, I concentrated instead on the silhouettes of the oak trees around our property. For some shots the upward camera angle was so pronounced that the 24-105mm zoom lens would not stay zoomed in. So after taking a few standard shots holding it in place, I began playing around with slowly zooming from 105 to 24 during the exposure and I liked those interpretations much better. Although it looks like the moon is behind this tree, it is not. It was actually behind me. The "light beam" effect is created by the zooming of the lens during the shot. This exposure is 17 seconds.

The Recent Blog Hiatus

My last update here was back on November 22nd. I think that must be a record in terms of my own blog inactivity, or close to it. An incredibly busy, deadline-heavy schedule is the reason, as well as the fact that I just felt like it was a good time to take a break. Of course, since we have just passed into the New Year, one resolution is to bring that hiatus to a close and resume more regular posting. My schedule is still slammed for the next several weeks, so I won’t be making daily posts, but at least two or three per week is my goal at the moment.

Newsletter News

The Creative Digital Darkroom Newsletter has also been on hiatus since late September and that break will also be coming to an end sometime this month. So, if you have signed up since last September and are wondering when the newsletter would show up, it will be back in action soon.

Upcoming Appearances

I will be giving a presentation, doing some portfolio reviews and teaching a couple of hands-on computer sessions at FOTOfusion in West Palm Beach, Florida coming up January 19th through the 23rd . My sessions are as follows:

Wednesday Jan 20 10:30am – 12pm– Lightworks & Shadowplay (Presentation)
Thursday Jan 21 10:20am – 12:45pm– Portfolio Reviews
Friday Jan 22  4:30pm – 6:00pm – Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop (computer lab)
Saturday Jan 23 2:30pm – 4pm – Painting with Light, Shadow & Color (computer lab)

April Hawaii Workshops

I’ll be in Honolulu teaching 4 short workshops April 22nd through the 25th. Here’s a link for more info on those classes.

2010 Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin Calendar

My 2010 calendar featuring 12 selectively sepia toned pinhole photographs from my Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series will be on sale through mid March. Follow the link to preview the images and get more information.

Bicycle and Red Awnings

Bicycle and Red Awnings  [Canon 5D]
July 27, 2009  Dresden, Germany
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is another image from my nocturnal walkabout in Dresden last summer

Coming Up in 10 Days...

There's still room left in my workshop that starts late next week in southern New Mexico:

Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop
November 5 - 8, 2009, Mesilla Digital Imaging Workshops
Mesilla, New Mexico
Click here for more info

10 Seconds on the Bridge

Passing Streetcar  [Canon 5D]
Dresden, Germany • July 28, 2009
(click in the image for a larger version)

While in Dresden this past summer, I spent two evenings wandering around with camera and tripod. Our hotel was right in the middle of the restored old town part of the city, around the corner from the re-built Frauenkirche, and this made it perfect for just stepping outside and having many interesting locations quite close by. This is one of my favorite shots from those excursions. Ten seconds as a streetcar passed over one of the bridges on the Elbe.

Next Workshop Fast Approaching!

Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop
November 5 - 8, 2009, Mesilla Digital Imaging Workshops
Mesilla, New Mexico
Click here for more info

Just a little over two weeks until this 4-day workshop in southern New Mexico. If you are interested in learning some of the most essential Photoshop techniques for creating multiple-image collages, sign up soon!

Red Curtain

Red Curtain  [Canon 5D]
San Francisco - Jan 15, 2009
(click in the image for a larger version)

I was in San Francisco last week and found this image while enjoying an evening stroll. A shopkeeper was putting up a new window display and making final adjustments to this red curtain. I was intrigued that just her hand was visible, and the bright red paired with the yellow wall in the background made for a pleasing color scheme. This is a good example that night photography can also include tight detail-oriented compositions such as this, as well as those that take in the larger scene. For the technically curious, this was shot using an ISO of 1250 hand held at 1/40th of a second (with an image-stabilized lens).

Best Photo Book of the Year Nominee
My co-author Katrin Eismann and I were honored that our book The Creative Digital Darkroom was included as one of the nominees for Best Photo Book of the Year for 2008 over at The Online Photographer (ours is the 3rd down from the top).

Workshops
My next workshop will be in Sacramento on February 7 & 8th. Other upcoming workshops will be offered in Monterey, California, South Florida, Hawaii, Morro Bay, California and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Check out my workshops page for a full listing of 2009 workshops.

Drakes Bay Twilight

Drakes Bay  [Canon 5D]
Point Reyes, California
June 26, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

This is a 10-second exposure taken on the same day as the previous two images (though chronologically it fits between them). The actual light level at the time I took this was much darker than in this image, and I have even darkened it down a bit from the original raw exposure. As I was taking these exposures a sea lion or elephant seal was swimming slowly through the shallow water near the shore and in the still twilight the sound of its breathing carried easily to my position on the hillside above. Although it was too dark to make a positive identification, it was definitely a large marine mammal and as there was an elephant seal viewing area a short hike from here, I am guessing that it might have been an elephant seal.

*****************
Newsletter News

I've been dividing my time between the coast and the Sierra foothills for the past two weeks due to all the bad, smoky air from the nearby forest fires that have been raging in our area. The next issue of my free newsletter has been delayed by all the back and forth travel but should be out by this coming Sunday.

Real World Digital Photography in Maine - August 17 - 21

Night Road

Night Road  [Canon 5D]
Point Reyes National Seashore
June 26, 2008
(Click in the image for a larger version)

On the drive out of Point Reyes, I stopped to take a few night shots looking back along the two-lane road. The foreground light on the road is from my car's tail lights. I left my car idling with the lights on so I wouldn't be totally invisible on the road and also to provide some needed illumination for the foreground. With night photography, all manner of things can serve as a light source to bring a little lighting to areas of the scene, including tail lights.

Of course, since tail lights are red, the light on the road was red, too. I corrected this in Lightroom by initially processing the image to have a cooler color cast. Then in Photoshop I did some further work to remove the remaining traces of the reddish color cast. Although I felt the reddish color cast on the road combined with a yellowish cast in the clouds in the sky (due to the smoky air and the light that was shining over the far hills) looked interesting, I wanted to create more of a classic night feel and with less color and a cooler color balance.

*************
Real World Digital Photography Workshops

My next major workshop takes place in mid-August along the New England coast at the world renown Maine Photographic Workshops. Real World Digital Photography I is the perfect class if you want to get a jump start on truly understanding the controls on your digital SLR, learning good exposure technique, shooting in raw, special exposure situations (like the night photography featured in the image above) and making the most of your exposures back in the digital darkroom using Lightroom and Photoshop CS3. It's already filling up so if you're interested in taking this class, don't wait until the last minute to sign up! Click the class title to learn more about this class.

A second level version of this class will be offered at the Maine Photographic Workshops Oct 5-11.

For a complete listing of my upcoming workshops, click here.

McCormick House

McCormick House  [Canon 5D, 53 second exposure]
Pescadero, California  June 12, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

Last week we spent a relaxing family vacation in Pescadero, California. Pescadero is a small farming and ranching community located near the coast between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. It is about two miles inland from one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in northern California.

We were very fortunate that my wife discovered a wonderful country inn for us to stay at. The McCormick House is a lovely old home built in the 1880s. We had the two upstairs rooms to ourselves and it was the perfect place from which to explore the many beautiful beaches along the coast just a few miles away, and also as a base for day trips to Santa Cruz or San Francisco. One of the best things about the McCormick House were the innkeepers, Lisa and Mauro. Their kindness, generosity and good cheer made our visit a very special one and we look forward to a return trip, not only to enjoy the beauty of that part of the coast, but also to visit with them! In addition to being wonderfully hospitable innkeepers, they also create lovely assemblage sculptures of small houses from old pieces of recycled and weathered wood. You can see more of their charming "wee wood" house sculptures here.

The photograph above is a composite of two different interpretations of a single raw exposure (about 1 minute on a tripod). The lighting is a combination of moonlight, ambient spill form nearby street lights, the interior lights and a single pop from my flash unit. In order to get the sky looking the way I wanted, the bright windows became too washed out. So I processed a second copy of the file that was much darker and used a layer mask to brush in some of the darker exposure in the areas of the windows and under the balcony. As I was taking this photo (and others) barn owls flew back and forth above me, screeching and chattering in the moonlight.

*************
Real World Digital Photography Workshops

My next major workshop takes place in mid-August along the New England coast at the world renown Maine Photographic Workshops. Real World Digital Photography I is the perfect class if you want to get a jump start on truly understanding the controls on your digital SLR, learning good exposure technique, shooting in raw, special exposure situations (like the night photography featured in the image of the McCormick House) and making the most of your exposures back in the digital darkroom using Lightroom and Photoshop CS3. It's already filling up and is now half full so if you're interested in taking this class, don't wait until the last minute to sign up! Click the class title to learn more about this class.

A second level version of this class will be offered at the Maine Photographic Workshops Oct 5-11.

For a complete listing of my upcoming workshops, click here.

Breakwater

Breakwater [Canon 5D]
Honolulu, Hawai'i
April 13, 2008
(click in the image to see a  larger view)

This is a blend of two 30-second exposures of one of the breakwaters at Waikiki Beach. The waves sloshed over my feet and the bottom of my tripod a couple of times while making this image.

The reason I took two shots is that even with 30 seconds and all the ambient light of the hotels behind me, the rocks on the breakwater were much darker than I wanted them to be. I didn't do a longer exposure because I didn't want the sky to wash out. So I used my Canon 580EX speedlite to flash the foreground three or four times during one of the 30-second exposures and then combined the two shots in Photoshop using a layer mask. There were also some adjustment layers added that further darkened the sky and lightened the water and modified the color balance a bit.You can see the Layers palette for the finished image below.

**************************
5-Day Creative Collage Workshop

I'll be teaching a 5-day version of my Creative Collage class at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California June 2 - 6, 2008. The extended time frame of this class allows for more time to explore personal collage projects, not to mention enjoying the beautiful natural surroundings on the coast near Morro Bay. More about this class.

25 Seconds on Waikiki Beach

Watching the Twilight [Canon 5D]
Honolulu, Hawai'i
April 16, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

This man kept remarkably still for 25 seconds! Grooving on the twilight Hawaiian surf can have that effect on you.

**************************

I'm off to the Bay Area for some private consulting and then down to Monterey to teach my 2-day Creative Collage with Photoshop class. I just got word that the class is full, but if you're interested in this topic, I will be teaching a longer version near San Luis Obispo in central California in early June. See below for more details.

If you want to be kept up to date on my upcoming workshops, as well as receive digital darkroom tips and tutorials, I invite you to sign up for my free newsletter. There's a sign-up form above in the left column and you can also see more details here.

**************************
5-Day Creative Collage Workshop

I'll be teaching a 5-day version of my Creative Collage class at the excellent Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California June 2 - 6, 2008. The extended time frame of this class allows for more time to explore personal collage projects, not to mention enjoying the beautiful natural surroundings on the coast near Morro Bay. More about this class.

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.