Sean Duggan Blog

Lightroom 4 Public Beta / My eBook is on Sale

Bear River Rocks  [Canon 5D]
January 2, 2010
(click in the image for a larger view)

It's been awhile since I've posted an image for Time Machine Tuesday, so here's one from two years ago (well, two years and one week ago, to be exact). This was taken along one of my favorite trails that is quite close to my house. An 8-minute drive gets you to the river and then after a 10 to 15-minute hike you will arrive at this spot. I've always liked the arrangement of these two rocks. There's a good balance between them. Finding balance, arrangments and designs in the landscape is one of the pleasures of photographing the natural world.

Real World Digital Photography eBook on Sale!

The eBook version of my book Real World Digital Photography is the official eBook Deal of the Week at Peachpit Press and you can snag a copy for only $9.99! This is a really good price, so if you're interested, head on over to Peachpit Press and place your order before the end of day Saturday (PST) January 14th.

Lightroom 4 Public Beta

Adobe announced the Public Beta for Lightroom 4 late last night (download the beta here). This has been all over the blogosphere and social media landscape, shared and re-shared by seemingly everyone, but on the slim chance that you may have missed it, I am mentioning it here.The 4th version of Lightroom has some exciting new features and improvements. There are good overviews and short demo videos posted at a number of places. Here are a few of them:

Lightroom 4 Videos from Adobe's Julieanne Kost

NAPP Lightroom 4 Launch Center

Photoshop Cafe Lightroom 4 Learning Site

Terry White's "What's New in Lightroom 4 (Public Beta)?"

Upcoming Workshops

I am still in the process of scheduling workshops for 2012 but I wanted to mention three that I am really looking forward to:

The Creative Digital Darkroom: Photoshop Beyond the Basics
February 11 — 12, Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, CA

Creative Transformations with Photoshop
June 18 — 22, Madeline Island School of the Arts
Madeline Island, Wisconsin

True North: Photographing the Interpretive Landscape in Iceland
August 12 — 18, with Focus on Nature in Iceland

I also have a half-day iPhoneography workshop coming up in northern California on June 9th. More details coming soon!

 

 

Holiday Mirrors

Ornament  [Canon 5D]
December 15, 2008
(click in the image for a larger version)

Today's photograph is from 3 years ago on December 15, 2008. We awoke that day to find everything covered in about 8 inches of snow. That much snow in December is a rarity for us; typically our major snows don't show up until January. This is a double-mirror interpretation of a large snow-covered oak tree in our back yard (you can see the original image at then end of this post).

I love to play around with image mirrors because they can transform a scene into something unexpected and delightfully abstract. Natural forms and architectural subjects work particularly well with this technique. Even if you have a general idea how an image might turn out when the mirror effect is applied, the results are often surprising. For black and white interpretations of bold, graphic subjects on white, such as this oak tree, inverting the image also creates an interesting result.

I thought that the mirrored version of this snowy oak tree looked like a delicate Christmas Tree ornament or a snowflake. Of course, the case could also be made that it also looks a bit like a strange insect, or a neural network in the brain (and nothing says "Christmas" like a neural network in the brain!).

 

The original snowy oak tree photo

 

The Nature of Your Own Lens

The Lens  [pinhole photograph]
January, 2011 
(click in the image to see a larger version)

This is one of the new images I have been working on for my Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series. I photographed it last January in the Florida Keys, but only began to work with the negative a few days ago. It will be included in the Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin 2012 calendar, which should be ready to order in a couple of days. This and one other one from the Florida Keys, are the most recent images I have photographed for this long running series. After an 11-month hiatus, it feels really good to be working with it again. I have several ideas for new images and am eager to follow those paths to see where they lead.

I am often asked what this series is about, which is not an easy question to answer, since there is more than one answer. Each image is different and can lead in a a variety of directions, just as different doors will open into different rooms and passages. These photographs are a bit like doorways. What you find once you enter them depends on who you are and what you see. Apropos that thought, and the concept of seeing, here are some musings on The Lens...

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As photographers, lenses are important to us. We see the world through the lenses of our eyes and we create our images with the lens on our camera (the irony in this photograph is that it was made with a wooden pinhole camera that does not have a lens!).

But the idea of a lens is significant beyond the purely photographic associations. A lens focuses light, bringing our attention to specific areas, magnifying some parts while blurring others. Lenses help us see better, farther, and more clearly. A lens can reveal to us that which is hidden beyond the horizon of natural vision, showing us things we cannot see with our own eyes. Our perception of the world and our journey through it is shaped by the lens of our past experiences, deeply held beliefs, future hopes, dreams, and the river of emotions that courses through us.

One of the most significant concepts that influences my experience with photography, both in creating and viewing images, was expressed perfectly by the photographer and philosopher MInor White when he wrote that "One should not only photograph things for what they are, but for what else they are".

At the most basic level, this image is both a still life and a landscape, a photograph of a lens at the edge of the sea. But beyond that there are other levels. What you see, in this photograph or in any photograph, will depend upon who you are and the nature of your own lens.

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See more of the Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin

 

The Call of the Black & White Landscape

Afternoon Thunder Shower  •  [Canon 5D]
August 29, 2010  •  Mono Lake, California
(click in the image for a larger version)

This image was made about 15 months ago during a drive down Highway 395 along the eastern Sierras. It was actually made on the same afternoon as the previous image of the Sawtooth Ridge. There is so much to see along that drive! The vistas of the mountains, Mono Lake, the Owens Valley, and the Alabama Hills are a visual playground for landscape photographers. It's one of my favorite California drives and I'm hoping to return that way for more photo exploration in the near future.

Exploring the landscape doesn't end when the physical journey ends. Revisiting your images in the digital darkroom is an entirely different part of the photographic journey that can be just as creative as the time you spent on the road or trail in search of photographs to make.  One of the most fundamental questions that arises with any photograph is whether to treat it as a color or a black and white image. You may know how you will interpret the scene based on your own style and whether or not the photo is part of an existing series, but some images present tantilizing creative directions in both color or monochrome. With certain scenes, the answer is clear, but with others, you could go either way. This image of the thunder shower over Mono Lake works well as a color shot, but there is something about it that is more powerful when it is presented in black and white. Perhaps it is the visual association with the long and venerable tradition of black and white landscape photography. That was not on my mind when I took the photo, but it became an obvious connection once I began working with it in Lightroom. There was just something more to the scene when it was rendered in the stark, grayscale tonal values of a black and white image.

I'm looking forward to exploring the landscapes of Iceland next August during my "True North: Photographing the Interpretive Landscape" workshop with Focus on Nature. We'll be spending the week of August 12 – 18 chasing the sweet light all across that beautiful arctic island, focusing 100% on creative photography in a way that is only possible when you set aside time to escape from the regular routine of your life. It is shaping up to be a fantastic trip. I hope that you'll consider joining me for what is certain to be a once in a lifetime photographic experience.

Mountains on my Mind

Matterhorn Peak and the Sawtooth Ridge  [Canon 5D]
August 29, 2010  •  Eastern Sierras, California
(click in the image for a larger version)

Lately I've had mountains on my mind, and my thoughts have been drawn to a location that is less than a four hour drive from where I live: the jagged peaks of the Sawtooth Ridge on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. I took this photo a little over a year ago, as I was driving down to Death Valley, another of my favorite photo destinations .  It shows the Sawtooth Ridge as seen from Highway 395 near Bridgeport, California. The ridge line is the northeast border of Yosemite National Park. The peak on the far left is Matterhorn Peak, which at 12,279 feet (3,743m) is the tallest peak in that ridge and the most northerly 12,000' peak in the Sierras. Jack Kerouac incorporated a fictionalized account of his attempted ascent of the peak in his 1958 novel, "The Dharma Bums". Some of the other peaks in the ridge are Dragtooth, Doodad, the Three Teeth, and Blacksmith Peak. Below Blacksmith is the ominously named Avalanche Lake.

Sawtooth Ridge from the Northeast, from A Climber's Guide to the High Sierra, edited by Hervey H. Voge (click in the image for a larger version).

The reason this particular group of peaks has been on my mind is that I've been thinking of a photograph I'd like to make that requires high, jagged mountain peaks and this area would be perfect. Actually, there are several images I can see making in this location, but one in particular has been driving this train of thought; a new addition to my Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series of pinhole photographs.

Since the wooden camera I use for that series has no lens, just a tiny pinhole (the approximate  aperture is f/235) with a wide-angle field of view, things that are far away tend to look even farther away in the photographs it makes. So if I want to have a jagged mountain peak in the shot and have it look good, it means getting up close and personal with the peak. The mountain I'm thinking of focusing on (pun intended) is Matterhorn Peak, the one on the far left. I'm not really interested in summiting this peak as I am in having it figure prominently in the background of the photograph (though apparently you can reach the summit without special equipment).

 

Photographing with the ZeroImage pinhole camera on the western side of the Sierras in April of 2010. (click in the image for a larger version). You can see the image I made at this location here.

This excursion will likely last several days, to accommodate backpacking the roughly five miles up to the ridge and having plenty of time for scouting the best locations, waiting for good weather and light and also just enjoying being in such an amazing place. I feel very fortunate to live in a place where such locations are only a short drive away, and sInce the area is relatively close, I may even make more than one trip. In the image I am planning, I would like to have a fair amount of snow on the peaks and good cloud action is a must. In terms of summer or fall, I'm still pondering the best time to go and more research will help answer that question, but it's definitely on my photo destination list for next year.

Finding the time for such creative projects can sometimes be challenging and it's easy to get distracted and caught up in all of the other aspects of our busy lives. I am continually battling those forces of distraction! But planning ahead and visualizing making certain images, or traveling to specific places,  make it much more likely to realize those visions. Writing about it (as I have done here), is another way to make something seem more real and attainable. To that end I also made a print of this image this morning and am hanging it in my studio so I can see it every day and be inspired by the idea of that future trip. 

Speaking of inspiration, I was reminded of this location by an excellent photo of Matterhorn Peak that Gary Crabbe posted to his Google+ stream a few days ago. Seeing his image prompted me to look in my Lightroom archive where I found the photo you see above. Thanks Gary!
  

Revisiting Locations

Coastal Rocks and Evening Fog  [Canon 5D]
Acadia National Park, Maine  • October 2, 2007
(click in the image to see a larger version)

In keeping with my recent theme of revisiting photos from Maine as I prepare for my upcoming September workshops there, here's another shot from a past trip, this one from just about four years ago. After my workshop was over I took a drive up the coast from Rockport and spent three days exploring Acadia National Park. This photograph was used as the lower half of the cover for The Creative Digital Darkroom, which I co-authored with Katrin Eismann (you can see an image of the cover of that book in the left column).

This was taken right by Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse (you can see a photo of the lighthouse in the HDR workshop image in the right column.) It is a 20 second exposure and was taken as the evening fog was about to completely oscure the island that is just off the coast. I used a solid neutral density filter and stopped the lens down to f/22 in order to force the slowest possible shutter speed so that the motion of the water was totally blurred.

Revisiting places where you've already photographed is an important part of the creative journey. Often you see them differently and with more clarity. The obvious photographs were most likely made on your first visit and a return trip can lead to new visual interpretations, as well as fresh insights into the location and your relationship to it. This is one of the reasons why I always try to find time to review my past images of a place when I know I will be returning there. Not only does it help me immerse myself in the visual feel of a location before I return, but it starts a subconscious process that helps to fine tune my eye and awareness of the possibilities that await at a particualr location. Since I will be in Maine for two weeks, I'm hoping to find time between my classes (or maybe even as a class trip) to revisit Acadia National Park. It's a wonderful place for appreciating a beautiful landscape, both with and without a camera.

Here are a few more photographs from Acadia. All were taken on the same day (click in the images to see a larger version):

 

 

 

 

Take Me to the River

Bridgeport Reflections  [iPhone]
August 26, 2011  •  Bridgeport, California
(click in the image to see a larger version)

 

"It is not what you look at that maters, it's what you see."
– Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday afternoon was all about cooling off at the river, family time, swimming, watching fish under the water, receiving an invigorating river rapid massage while braced in a narrow channel, and a chance encounter that made me appreciate seeing the world with a photographer's eye. But more on that epiphany in a bit. 

With a picnic lunch in the cooler, my wife and I picked up our daughter from school at midday and headed straight for our usual swimming spot at Bridgeport (the one in Nevada County, not the one in Mono County). It's a great place to go swimming in the summer, with beautiful clear water, deep rock-lined pools, gentle "rapids", and quiet shallow areas for the little ones. It’s also a great place to go because when I am there in the water, I find it nearly impossible to be distracted by thoughts of work and deadlines. They just can’t get a grip on my mind in that environment, so it’s a wonderful place to unplug for a while and just drift along. Normally we can start swimming there by July 4th, but the record snow levels in the Sierras this winter meant extra high, cold, and fast waters well into July and our first day at the river this year was not until August 1st.

There is no town at Bridgeport, just this bridge and a small visitor center, which is part of the South Yuba River State park (its status is still uncertain with possible closure looming due to state budget cuts). It was built in 1862 and at 251 feet in length along its ridge top it is the longest single span wooden covered bridge in the United States. It is beautifully made with a graceful arch that is visible on both the inside and outside of the structure.

I left my DSLR at home because I just didn't feel like lugging it. The only camera I had was my iPhone 4. But, I was photographically prepared in other ways and I brought along my river tripod, a small aluminum model that I frequently set up in the water. It’s a bit lightweight for my big camera, but it works great for my wooden pinhole camera and the iPhone. For this shot I used a wooden tripod mount for the iPhone that I cobbled together myself using materials that cost me about two dollars. It's a prototype and total quickie hack job that’s a bit funky looking, but it works great, which is all I care about. With it the phone can be mounted both vertically and horizontally. The tripod was necessary for this scene because I was making iPhone HDR images. The image above was one part of a two-exposure HDR sequence but for this photo I ended up using only one shot. In terms of post-capture processing there’s not much; just some minor lightening of the lower half in Filterstorm 3 and the addition of the frame in Nik Snapseed.

 

The tripod was set up in the shallows of a still area near the shore and was down quite low near the surface of the water, so I could get a nice reflection of the bridge (TIP: When you're shooting reflections, the lower you get, the closer the reflection will be to the object that is casting the reflection; this approach allows for tighter compositions and less empty space between the object and its reflection). I suppose that the sight of someone crouching in the water with an iPhone on a tripod might look a bit curious to some and after a while a man slowly approached me, obviously quite interested in my activities.

"Hi there", he greeted me. " Whatcha doing?"

"Making a photograph of the bridge", I replied, but I could tell that this did not entirely satisfy him.

"Is that a phone camera?"

 I nodded.

He studied my setup for a few seconds. "Why do you have it on that tripod?"

“Well, for the type of picture that I am making it works best if the camera is not moving".

"But why are you down so low?"

If you were standing up, as he was, you would not see any reflection of the bridge in the water that was immediately in front of us. I explained that by getting down very low, almost to the surface of the water, I could get a composition of the bridge and also a really nice reflection of the bridge. He crouched down low so he could see what I meant. That's when he had his epiphany.

"Wow! That's really cool!" His face lit up and he smiled. Then he bent down to look again, gazing intently at it like it was a magic pool that only revealed its secrets to a chosen few.

"Thanks for showing me!" he said. Then he called over to his wife and a few friends, "Hey guys, you should come check this out! There's a reflection of the bridge in the water!"

I finished taking my shots and moved farther out to photograph the moving water. It was as I was watching him and his companions checking out the newfound visual discovery of the bridge reflection that I had my epiphany. Well, not really an epiphany, in the true sense of the word, because I already knew this, but it was a reminder.

It made me think of the quote by Henry David Thoreau that I referenced at the beginning of this post: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”. How very true this is! The man and I were both looking at the same thing, but we were seeing them differently. As a photographer, I know to look for reflections because they can make for very interesting images, and this was a reflection I had seen many times before. But for him it was something new and exciting and it only took a slight adjustment of his angle of view for him to see so much more. That’s a good thing to remember, because I think we can all benefit now and then from adjusting our angle of view to see what else there is to be seen, or how a different view can change our perception of what we see. It works for photography and pretty much everything else, too.

******

I'm off to Maine in a week to teach two back-to-back classes at the Maine Media Workshops. There's still some room in each one, so it you or anyone you know might be interested, see the image links above in the right column.

 

A view of the bridge in late winter. The swimming area is just on the other side of the bridge (click in the image to see it larger).

 

 

 

 

HDR Workshop in Maine this September

Gathering Storm Over Lake Superior  •• [Canon 5D]
June 20, 2011  •  Madeline Island, Wisconsin
(Click in the image for a slightly larger & sharper version)

This is an HDR shot from three exposures that was taken during my recent workshop at the Madeline Island School of the Arts in northern Wisconsin. Towards the end of the first day a storm blew in off Lake Superior and we had rain, wind and fog for the next two days. We made the most of it, however, and even in those conditions, came home with some really fine images. I'd rather have storm clouds than a blank, featureless sky any time! I was impressed with the Madeline Island School of the Art's commitment to offering excellent photography workshops and I'm looking forward to returning to Madeline Island next summer to teach more photography and digital darkroom classes. If you live in that area of the country, or want to travel there, be sure to sign up for my newsletter (subscription form is in the righthand column) to keep up to date on workshop dates for 2012.

In addition to using HDR to hold detail throughout all areas of the tonal range, I also used a 5-stop Neutral Density filter from Singh-Ray for these shots. The primary reason for that was to get a slow enough shutter speed to blur the moving water in the foreground. I find that this makes for an interesting visual interpretation of the water but it also helps in the blending of the different exposures. Sharply focused moving water can create blending issues during the HDR process and blurring the water creates much better blending in those areas of the image. This image was processed using Nik's HDR Efex Pro, which is an excellent program for HDR imaging.

September Workshops in Maine

If you want to learn more about the HDR process, and about digital photography and getting the most from your images in the digital darkroom, I invite you to join me on the beautiful coast of Maine this September. I'll be teaching two consecutive classes at the Maine Media Workshops: Advanced Digital Photography and HDR & Beyond. This will be my seventh year teaching at The Workshops. I always have a wonderful time there and I always look forward to going back. It's a great place to get away from it all, leave your regular routine behind and immerse yourself in creative photography. Links to more details on my two Maine workshops are below

Advanced Digital Photography  •  Sept. 4 - 10

HDR & Beyond  •  Sept 11 - 17

Finding the Mountain

The Mountain in the Dunes  [Canon 5D]
September 4, 2010  •  Death Valley, California
(click in the image for a larger version)

One of the things I love about photography, is the process of discovery. In addition to the obvious visual discoveries that come from finding interesting compositions while exploring a location with your camera, I also appreciate learning about new places that I visit, and finding out about the people, wildlife and history of a region.

Another aspect of the discovery process that I find very enjoyable and endlessly fascinating is finding things in the images after I have taken them. This does not happen with every image, of course, but it happens enough to tell me that my mind is always on the lookout for patterns, symbolism and metaphor that may exist within the image. Sometimes I find visual clues that lead to a train of thought that in turn leads to some very interesting conceptual destinations. And other times, a simple arrangement of shapes suggests other images or ideas.

This was the case with today's image, which was taken shortly after sunrise in the Mesquite Dunes of Death Valley. In the spaces between the dunes, there are often exposed sections of cracked and fractured earth, as seen above. In this particular section, I found a triangle shape that intrigued me. It was not until after I had returned from the trip and was working with the images in Lightroom, however, that I saw that the triangle shape also created the appearance of a mountain. And the hard, diagonal shadow actually suggested two mountains, one in front of the other. Since Death Valley is surrounded by high mountains, I found this unexpected visual discovery not only pleasing, but also very appropriate, since it alludes to a part of the landscape that cannot be seen in the downward angle of this photograph.

 

 

Iceland Workshops

Earlier this year I announced an August workshop in Iceland that I would be co-teaching with photographer Mike Shipman (more info on that class below). Well, a week ago a brand new Iceland workshop was added to my schedule and I'm very excited to announce that I'll be leading off the summer season for Focus on Nature, the premier Icelandic photo workshops comapany.

We'll be venturing beyond our regular routines and embarking on a journey to discover and photograph the breathtakingly beautiful landscapes of Iceland. The focus of the class will be on creating compelling and memorable images and during 7 incredible days (some of the longest days of the year in Iceland), you will improve and hone your camera skills, learn to read the light in a scene, refine your eye for composition, and streamline and enhance your digital darkroom technique.

There's a 10% Discount if you book before April 30th!
Register soon to reserve your spot
and take advantage of the discounted rate.

Click Here to read more about the True North workshop.

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

 Six weeks after my late June journey to Iceland, I'll return to co-teach a workshop with photographer Mike Shipman of Blue Planet Photography.

We'll be teaming up with local Iceland pro photographer and guide Tim Vollmer for 10 days of total immersion in creative photography exploring some of the most scenic areas of this amazing island. The high instructor-to-participant ratio should result in lots of time for personalized, one-on-one instruction.

Click here to read the full workshop description
and regsiter to reserve your spot.

 

 

The Thrill of a New Landscape

Scorched Oasis  [Canon 5D]
Death Valley, California  •  September 4, 2010
(click in the image for a larger version)

 

Here's another shot from the wildfire location in Death Valley. After my initial exploration that first day as I was leaving the park, I returned to this site on my way back through Death Valley after Photoshop World had ended.  I stopped once in the afternoon, but decided the light was not ideal so I had a late lunch at the restaurant at Furnace Creek Ranch and then returned later in the day when the late afternoon and early evening light would be better.

I spent close to three hours hiking through this extensive burn area. New views and image possibilities awaited me at each rise of a hill or curve in the landscape. A tiny rivulet of a stream, quite unexpected here, snaked its way through the dry soil and drifts of gray ash, and stands of blackened palm trees grew along its path, a scorched oasis already showing signs of coming back to life. I had never before encountered a burned oasis and I found it very intriguing on both a visual as well as a metaphorical level.

For me there's nothing quite like the thrill of finding a new type of landscape to explore, a landscape that you've never seen before. There's an almost palpable excitement as you survey the scene and imagine the different photographs that you will encounter as you begin your explorations. And, of course, there's the expectation of finding images that you cannot possibly anticipate, as well as the knowledge that the view will change throughout the day with the shifting of the sun, or the arrival of clouds, a continually evolving scene in the ever-chaninging crucible of light and shadow. 

Technical Notes

This image is a blend of two exposures, one for the shadowed area in the foregound and a second shot for the far mountains and the sky. I actually took three shots with the idea of combining them as an HDR image. I did try the HDR process, but was not thrilled with the result, so I opted for a conventional, manual blending of the two layers with an eye towards creting a more realistic interpretation of the landscape.

The two source files
(click in the image for a larger version)