Sean Duggan Blog

Modern Cowboy

Alternative Transportation  [Canon 5D]
Santa Fe, New Mexico  May 1, 2009
(click in the image for a larger version)

On the final day of my Santa Fe workshop last month I was driving out Cerrillos Avenue to pick up some supplies for my drive south when I saw this cowboy and his dog riding into town. At first I continued on my way, which was in the opposite direction, but after stopping to photograph an old motel sign, I realized that this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. So I turned around and headed back until I caught up with the cowboy. I drove some ways ahead, found a spot to park my car and then waited until he arrived at my position. I followed him on foot for a bit, taking photos as he passed by new backgrounds. As he approached the gas station I saw the scene as a perfect juxtaposition of the old and the new, as well as a subtle commentary on our dependence on gasoline and the rising cost of fossil fuels.

Here's anotehr view of him and his faithful dog crossing an intersection:

I am in Maine at the moment and will be here for a few more days. Images from this trip will begin to appear on the blog in the next couple of days.

Upcoming Workshop in Connecticut

The Creative Digital Darkroom
July 5 — 11, 2009
CT Media/Photography Institute
Farmington, Connecticut

Madame Fortune Teller

Fortune Teller  [Canon 5D]
New Mexico  April 26, 2009
(click in the image for a larger version)

From the 'Famous Last Words" Division...

In my previous post, written the day before I left for Santa Fe, I wrote:
"My aim is to try and post an image each day of the workshop (Monday through Friday), but sometimes during a workshop week the days are very full and we'll see how successful I am at keeping to that goal."

Well, since it has been twelve days since that last post, obviously the answer is not very successful at all! A typical workshop week is full from morning until night and that's one of the things that makes them such a great, creative experience.  And a full workshop week, combined with some other pressing deadlines I had to attend to, left a noticeable energy deficit in the evenings and little time for blog updates. Perhaps if I had consulted with Madame Fortune Teller above (more on her later), she would have foretold this.

Still, it was a worthwhile goal. And one I shall still try for on my next week long workshop in Maine next month. And speaking of that workshop...

Real World Digital Photography I
Maine Media Workshops, Rockport, Maine
June 7 — 13, 2009  Click Here for More Info

There's still some room left in this class, one that I have been teaching at the Maine Media Workshops for the past 4 years. We'll spend five and a half days in beautiful coastal Maine exploring how to get the most from your digital SLRs and how to make your images look great in the digital darkroom. Camera work on field trips to nearby scenic locations will be balanced with time in the digital lab learning workflow, image management and creative development techniques in Lightroom and Photoshop. Click the link above to learn more about this class and feel free to contact me if you need additional information. The Maine Media Workshops is a great place to immerse yourself in photography and creative imaging. I always look forward to going back to Maine!

Meanwhile, in New Mexico...

The workshop in Santa Fe was a great success and I enjoyed getting to know everyone in class and sharing 5 days of creativity and photography with them. The glorious scenery of northern New Mexico provided a wonderful backdrop for our activities. For the next week or so, I will re-visit my 10 days in New Mexico and post a few photos from each day of the trip.

My first afternoon in New Mexico was spent driving from Albuquerque to Santa Fe along Highway 14, also known as the "Turquoise Trail". Along the way I spotted a sign that pointed to a place called Tinkertown. This sounded intriguing so I turned off and a mile or so down a side road I came to a small, privately owned museum that houses the life work of Ross Ward, who spent years carving, painting and tinkering to create an amazing folk art collection of thousands of figures that people entire small towns, a big top circus and more. In describing his prodigious accomplishment, Ross noted, "I did all this while you were watching TV".

(click in any of the images below to see a larger version)

One of the intricate western town scenes at Tinkertown.

The building that is Tinkertown is a whimsical construction with walls made from thousands of discarded bottles of all shapes and sizes. A winding path leads through the small, but jam-packed museum with new discoveries awaiting you in each room. In addition to the many carvings made by Mr. Ward, there are collections of other curios and artifacts, including an impressive array of vintage wedding figurines, old toys, a boat that sailed around the world and Madam Fortune Teller above.

If you are passing through this area of New Mexico, Tinkertown is not far from Albuquerque and well worth a stop. I spent an enjoyable hour here perusing the vast collection and I can definitely agree with the saying painted on some of the metal sculpture that soars above the place:
"Live Life as the Pursuit of Happiness".

You can find out more information at the Tinkertown web site.

Africa Behind Glass

Africa Behind Glass [Canon 5D]
San Francisco  October 24, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

It's been about twelve days since my last blog post, which is either downright scandalous, or no big deal, depending on how you look at it. I could never be one of those bloggers who post every single day simply because there's too many other things to do in life, or things just get too busy and hectic. Such has been the case with this reporter for the past few weeks; a simple case of too much to do, and not enough hours in the day.

The image above is from almost one week ago from a visit to the newly rennovated California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. It had been closed for two or three years undergoing a total makeover and rebirth and the results are really wonderful. One of the things that they left from the old museum was the Africa Hall, where this image was taken. As a child, I can remmber visiting this museum and I loved to wander in the North America Hall and the Africa Hall. These were long galleries with meticulously recreated dioramas featuring stuffed animal specimens from those regions.

From what I have read, in natural history museum circles this type of static display is considered very old school these days (it's so 19th century!) and many museums are phasing them out in favor of more interactive and educationally richer exhibits. But as an offering to all of those who have fond childhood memories of visiting this museum, the Academy of Sciences has kept the venerable Africa Hall.The one thing that struck me when I visited here, was that it seemed so much smaller than I remember. In the memory book of my young boy self, the Africa Hall was always really long with vast, lofty ceilings far above my head.

Workshop News

I'll be heading down to Morro Bay on the central California coast next week to teach a 5-day workshop on Creative Digtial Black & White at the Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging.  This class will be a combination of photography in the field with digital SLRs and digital darkroom explorations in the excellent classroom facilities at the Lepp Institute. I have taught at many workshop venues around the country, and the digital classroom at the Lepp Institute is one of the best (and it is the only place I have ever taught at that has stadium seating to ensure that everyone has a great view of the screen). There's still room, so if you're interested, click on the link below to learn more about this class and to sign up.

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

James and Spike

James and Spike  [Canon 5D]
Union, Maine  August 19, 2008
(Click in the image for a larger view)

This is from the same county fair in Union, Maine as the previous image. For only five dollars you could get a Polaroid photo taken with Spike the python draped around your neck and shoulders. Business was pretty slow at this booth, though I did see two giggling teenage girls spring for some reptilian photo memorabilia.

After making this image I showed it to James on the camera's LCD screen and offered to send him a copy, but he was not interested. I had assumed it was his snake, but as it turns out, he was just a hired gun with no emotional attachments to Spike.

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Workshop Discount!

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

There are still spaces left in my Secrets of the Mask workshop coming up next weekend in the beautiful seaside town of Santa Cruz, California.

NAPP members and subscribers to my newsletter receive a special discount for this workshop.
Click here for a description of this class and registration info.

The Red Dress and the Sea

The Red Dress and the Sea  [Canon 5D]
January, 2008

Today's image is a blend of three photographs: the red dress is from a shop window in Honolulu; the coastal photo is from Acadia National Park in Maine; and the top part of the sky above the hook is from another Maine image. This is a recent collage created specifically for a short session on Creative Collage that I taught at FOTOfusion last week in Delray Beach, Florida. I really like how this one turned out. I feel it has just the right amount of quiet surrealism that is necessary in a collage.

If you want to learn more about the technical and aesthetic considerations involved in creating multiple image collages, then I have a couple of workshops coming up this year that may be of interest to you:

For an in-depth exploration with plenty of time to work on your own images, the ideal class is a 5-day workshop called The Creative Collage with Adobe Photoshop CS3 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.

If a shorter version of that class will fit your schedule better (or if you're hankering for an excuse to make a trip to Hawaii), then I'll be teaching a 2-day version at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in Honolulu on April 12 - 13. I'm re-working the syllabus for both versions of this class with new material that takes advantage of new features in Photoshop CS3. When I have that finished I'll post a link to it here. Stay tuned!

Domestic Science

Domestic Science  [Diana Camera]
Maine...June 28, 2007
(click in the image to see it larger)

We interrupt our program of New Mexico images to bring you some Diana camera photographs from Maine. More New Mexico scenes are scheduled for next week.

Places like this are so perfect for toy cameras.

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.

Polyphemus Moth

Polyphemus Moth  [Canon 10D]
May 5, 2004
(click in the image to see it larger)

Every once in awhile I post what I call "anniversary" images: photos taken on the same date a year or more previously. I haven't done this for a while and so today I was prowling through my archives looking for a an image to use for a book prooject when I came upon this photo. Technically it's not a true anniversary image since it is not from today's date (June 5th), but at three years and one month from today's date, it's pretty close.

I found this moth on our deck. While still alive, it was certainly not feeling very chipper. I placed it in a shallow, open box and put it out of the way in case it decided to fly off. After some research on the web, I was pretty sure that I had it positively identified it as a male Polyphemus Moth, also known as the North American Silk Moth. In the course of this research I found out about the unusual life cycle off these insects. They emerge from their cocoon and find a mate on their first night on the wing (they use their large antenna to "sniff" out a potential date). Then, after accomplishing their reproductive imperative, they wait around to die. They don't even have a mouth with which to eat. So, they can't even have a snack after a night of moth romance!

Once I realized that this moth was on the way out of this world, I decided that it certainly warranted some photographs. This is not a Photoshop composite, by the way. It was a pretty a large moth and this is a straight shot (apart from some interpretive sepia toning). To get an idea of just how large it is, consider the photo below. That is a standard-sized CD the moth is resting on! This image is also more representative of the moth's actual color (click in the image to see it larger).

Chimayo Holy Chile

Chimayo Holy Chile [Canon 5D]
Chimayo, New Mexico
(click in the image to see it larger)

Today's image is from the tiny village of Chimayo, north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was taken last summer during my workshop at the Santa Fe Workshops. In addition to a very famous old adobe church known the world over for the healing qualities of the soil (the last time I was there a priest was giving a small ziplock baggie to a Dutch family so they could take some home),  Chimayo is also home to this very picturesque chile stand, where you can purchase bona fide "Holy Chile".

Not only is the chile holy, but it's also very, very good. So good, in fact, that I am really looking forward to returning to Santa Fe to teach another workshop in late July and early August (see below for details). I've already burned through the supply I picked up last July and I have a powerful need for more of the good stuff!

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Featured Workshop

The Creative Digital Darkroom
July 29 – August 4, 2007 Santa Fe Workshops

This week's featured workshop is still a ways off, but if you're interested in a week of creative Photoshop and digital photography (including panoramas, HDR, multiple image composites, diptychs, triptychs and more), then consider joining me in Santa Fe, New Mexico this summer for my Creative Digital Darkroom workshop.The workshop is based on concepts, philosophies and techniques that are covered the book I am currently finishing up with Katrin Eismann, The Creative Digital Darkroom, due out this fall from O'Reilly Media, Inc. The digital darkroom lab at the Santa Fe Workshops is one of the best I have ever taught in. Each student has a G5 Mac with a cinema display with access to an HP Designjet pigment printer. We'll be exploring all the cool new features in Adobe Photoshop CS3 as well as Photoshop Lightroom. We'll also have some photo excursions during the week for practicing creative camera and exposure techniques, including a foray into the magic of night photography.

The Amazing Thurston!

Mannequin Magic [Diana Camera]
March 26, 2007  Las Vegas
(click in the image for a larger version)

Taken with a plastic Diana camera just about a month ago during my second March sojourn to Las Vegas. I just love kitschy displays like this.

At the moment I have the mother of all backlogs in terms of Holga, Diana and pinhole negatives that need scanning (and 6 more processed rolls from the Hawaii trip are due to arrive this week). Work, work and more work is keeping me from setting aside quality time with the scanner. Hopefully my schedule will lighten up in another month or so and I can delve into the stack of tempting negatives.

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Featured Workshop

Real World Digital Photography I:June 24 – June 30, 2007
The Maine Photographic Workshops

This week's featured workshop is two months away and there are only 3 spaces left. If you're interested in a week of learning creative digital photography, digital darkroom workflow and Photoshop techniques, then consider joining me on the beautiful coast of Maine for my Real World Digital Photography I workshop (there is also a level II version in late September that builds on what is covered in the first class).The workshop draws on concepts and techniques, both photographic and those in the digital darkroom, that are covered the book Real World Digital Photography that I co-authored with Katrin Eismann and Tim Grey. Additionally, we'll be covering new developments, such as Photoshop Lightroom. In the  digital lab each student will have a Macintosh computer loaded with Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In addition to our time exploring digital workflow and creative image enhancement techniques, we'll also have photo excursions during the week for practicing creative camera and exposure techniques at interesting nearby locations. Click the class title above to register.