Sean Duggan Blog

Paying Homage to Eartha

The Largest Globe  [Canon 5D]
Yarmouth, Maine  • September 2, 2011
(click in the image for a larger, sharper version)

I arrived in Maine on Friday evening and my first stop on the drive north to Rockport was at the headquarters of the DeLorme Company and their map store to photograph the huge globe there. Dubbed "Eartha" by the designer, David DeLorme, it measures 41.5 feet in diameter and has been certifed by the Guiness Book of world records as the "World's Largest Revolving/Rotating Globe".

This is my seventh year teaching at the Maine Media Workshops and on several occasions I had glimpsed the glass-walled atrium containing the giant globe from the highway while driving by but had never stopped to photograph it. This time, since I was driving north by myself, and since it would be evening, I decided that it was a perfect opportunity to check it out. In terms of what the light was doing, my flight arrived a bit later than I would have liked. Earlier in the evening just after sunset would be have resulted in a deep blue color in the sky, which would have worked well with the blue color on the globe itself. Since that wasn't happening for this visit, I framed the scene to focus on just the building with very little of the dark sky showing. Next time I'll try for an earlier arrival and hang around until the sky transitions to that perfect, irresistable blue.

To control the wide range of contrast in the scene I made seven exposures for HDR and blended them together in Photomatix. Further work in Photoshop and many adjustment layers later yielded the result you see above. I actually ended up making the image much darker than the initial HDR result. The reason is that I wanted most of the attention to be on the globe, with the atrium structure playing a secondary, supporting role. And the bushes in front? I really didn't need to see any detail in them, even though in the brightest of the seven exposures, you could see some detail there. Just because you can record detail throughout all regions of the tonal range in HDR, does not mean it's a good idea to keep all of that detail in the final image. The process or techniques that you use should always serve the image, not the other way around.

More from my workshops in Maine in the days ahead. Stay tuned!

The seven source shots for the DeLorme Globe HDR image.
(click in the image to see it larger)

 

 

Bring on the Night: Changing the Time of Day for Creative Effect

Marshall Point Light  [Canon 5D]
August 13, 2008  •  Port Clyde, Maine
(click in the image for a larger version)

From the mountainous Eastern Sierras in the previous post we head to the far eastern shores of the U.S. to the rocky coast of Maine, and a nighttime view of the Marshall Point Light at Port Clyde.

Ah, but is it really a nighttime view?

Actually, it is not. Rather, it is a day-for-night (or, perhaps more accurately, an early evening-for-night) interpretation created from two slightly different treatments of a single Raw file, as well as tonal and color modifications applied via adjustment layers and layer masks in Photoshop.Though creating a day-for-night effect can be somewhat involved,depending on the photo and what the actual time of day was, in this image the changes are fairly simple. They are achieved primarily through an adjustment layer that significantly darkens the scene and another one that makes it seems as if the light inside the house is spilling out onto the porch.

Below you can see the original image, which was taken in the early evening hours after the sun had set (click in the image to see a larger version). You can see a screenshot of the final layers panel for this image at the end of this post.

TIP: The starpoint of light coming from the lighthouse was recorded that way in-camera. If you are photographing bright points of light at night (or in the early evening hours as in this scene) and you want to create the pointed rays of light like this, the trick is to use a small lens aperture. The aperture in this shot was f/18. Of course, in low light situations like this, such a small aperture will necessitate a slower shutter speed and you will need to be on a tripod to ensure that camera motion does not create an unsharp image (the shutter speed for this image was 2.5 seconds).

 

 

Advanced Digital Photography Workshop in Maine

Night photography, combining multiple exposures, and creative post-capture interpretive techniques in Photoshop are just some of the many things we'll be exploring in my Advanced Digital Photography workshop coming up Sept. 4 - 10 at the Maine Media Workshops. There's still some spots left so sign up soon if you're interested in getting away from your normal routine and spending a week exploring a beautiful part of the country and focusing on improving your photography and digital darkroom technique.

I will also be teaching my HDR & Beyond workshop immediately following this one (Sept 11 - 17).

• • •

The Final Layers Panel of the Marshall Point Light image:

 

 

Kuskov House: Deconstructing a Composite Image

Kuskov House  [ Canon 5D ]
April 26, 2011  •  Fort Ross, California
(please click in the image for a larger version)

Time once again for another edition of Time Machine Tuesday, where I normally venture back to an image taken at least a year in the past at about the same time of year. For this TMT, however, I am stretching that rule a bit and venturing only a month back (but to a Tuesday!) to an image made on the recent field trip my daughter's 4th grade class made to Fort Ross on the rugged Sonoma County coast. For details on the historical background of Fort Ross, see my previous post.

The photograph above shows a view of the Kuskov House. The structure is a replica of the original commandant's house, which was built around 1818. This is where our group of Artisans slept (our room was on the 2nd floor, at the back of the building). The final image is a composite of three different photographs. The primary reason for the composite was to create a night image that more closely matched the actual view in the deepening dusk at the time I made the image (the two main images were made just before 9pm). With the camera on a tripod, I made two exposures: one to record the darker sky, and a second one to record more detail in the structure and the foreground. Due to the extreme contrast that exists in night scenes, this is often a technique I will use to capture detail in the different areas of the scene that are important to me. You can see the two source exposures for the basic composite below:

 

The shot for the darker sky. Exposure time: 19 seconds

 

The shot to bring out some foreground detail. Exposure time: 60 seconds

After making initial adjustments in Lightroom, the two images were opened into Photoshop as two layers in a single file. A layer mask on the lighter layer created the basic blend of the two exposures. After that, several adjustment layers were added to further fine tune the color and tonal qualities of the image. The open doors at the bottom of the Kuskov House were retouched because I felt that they were too visually distracting. They also did not make sense from a purely strategic point of view in an image of a fortified structure at night that is guarded by two cannon.

The initial blend of the two exposures plus some retouching and several adjustment layers to fine tune the color and tonal qualities of the scene.

I was pretty pleased with how this was looking at this point, but I didn't like that the cannon on the far right was cut off and not fully in the scene. The obvious solution, of course, was to take a cannon fom one of my other shots of this building and add it in. Photographic purists may shudder at the thought, but for this image, such a move makes sense because there really is a cannon there and bringing it back into the image creates a more accurate interpretation of the scene that I remember from the fort. And interpretation is a key word here: this is a fine art, interpretive image and not a documentary or journalistic one.

I did not have any night images that showed the full cannon on the right side, but I did have some shots that had been taken earlier that afternoon. In Lightroom I adjusted one of these to create a darker version with a color tone that more closely matched the actual night scene in my composite:

 

An afternoon view of the Kuskov House, showing the cannon on the right.

The afternoon view after darkening and color balance adjustments in Lightroom.

The partial wheel from the cannon on the right in the origial exposures was retouched and the new cannon was scaled to the correct size and added to the composite. Additional work with adjustment layers was applied to match the lighting and color to the night scene.

 

Adding the full view of the same cannon to the image.
(click in the image for a larger view)

In addtion to adding the cannon, I also used some of the detail from the front of the building in this image and created a layer to add that to the structure in the composite. The reason for this is that in the lighter version of the night scene, no detail was recorded on the front of the Kuskov House. I feel that the finished image looks better with just a hint of the detail showing in that area.

 

Subtle detail on the front of the building was added from the same image that provided the full view of the right cannon. (click in the image for a larger version)

This image was photographed with the intention of creating a composite to better show the scene as it actually looked. Some artisitic license has been applied in terms of the cool, blue color balance, but in terms of the brightness, it is very close to how I remember the view (not that memory, mine or anyone's, is a reliable source; perhaps it is more accurate to say that this is how I choose to remember the view). The addition of the cannon on the right and the subtle details on the front of the building were afterthoughts that did not occur to me until I was working with the layered file. But those additions work well to help create an interesting and evocotive portrayal of the nocturnal scene.

Hopefully this overview of how the image was made will help gvie you some inspiration and ideas for creating your own night composites. The more detailed steps of how this was done were too many to put all of them into a blog post, but I may create a tutorial video of how this image was made. Subscribe to my Viewfinder Newsletter if you're interested in that (the form is above on the left); new video tutorials always appear in the newsletter first. You can see a view of the final Layers Panel for this image  below.

Workshops in June, August & September:

Digtal Photography Essentials & Lightroom Workflow
Madeline Island (on Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin) June 20 - 24;

True North:
Photographing the Interpretive Landscape in Iceland, June 26 - July 2
The 10% Discount for early registration has been extended until May 31;

Icelandic Visions: A Photo Workshop with Mike Shipman & Sean Duggan
Aug. 17 - 26

Advanced Digital Photography; Sept 4 - 10
Maine Media Workshops

HDR & Beyond; Sept 11 - 17
Maine Media Workshops

 

 

 

Starry Starry Night

Fort Ross, 1:05AM   [ Canon 5D ]  Exposure Time: 11 minutes
April 27, 2011  •  Fort Ross, California
(click in the image for a larger version)

A couple of weeks ago I accompanied my daughter's 4th grade class on a multi-day field trip to Fort Ross on the northern California coast. Fort Ross was a Russian fur trading and agricultural settlement that was active from 1812 to about 1841 and operated by the Russian-American Company.

"This commercial company chartered by Russia's tsarist government controlled all Russian exploration, trade and settlement in the North Pacific, and established permanent settlements in Alaska and California. Fort Ross was the southernmost settlement in the Russian colonization of the North American continent, and was established as an agricultural base to supply Alaska. It was the site of California's first windmills and shipbuilding, and Russian scientists were among the first to record California's cultural and natural history. Fort Ross was a successfully functioning multi-cultural settlement for some thirty years. Settlers included Russians, Native Alaskans and Californians, and Creoles (individuals of mixed Russian and native ancestry.)"
   — Source: California State Parks Website

Our visit to Fort Ross was part of a living history program. We stayed for a day and a half and everyone was in costume and had roles to play that were based on actual people who worked and lived at the fort. The students, and a small contingent of parents who came along, were divided into different groups: There were the Militia, the Hunters, the Cooks, and the Artisans. Each group had to take a shift during the night watch. Some groups were luckier than others with the time of their watch. My daughter and I were part of the Artisans and our group's watch time was 11:30pm to 2:00am. Some of the kids were already asleep by the time we had to get up and waking after only an hour or so of deep sleep was not easy for some of them.

Candle lanterns that the students made to lighten up the dark night watch.
(click in the image for a larger version)

We assembled by the large fire pit, bundled up against the chill night air. Our job was to keep the fires going, ensure the large cauldron had plenty of water, make tea and hot chocolate for ourselves, and, most importantly, keep watch for spies and invaders. We did experience the latter, in the form of bold and surly raccoons who infiltrated the compound from several directions as they attempted to ransack the garbage and search for stray morsels of food.

Fort Ross is in a pretty remote spot on the northern California coast and there are no bright lights nearby (apart from the small community of Jenner about 15 miles to the south...the brighter part of the sky to the left of the tower in the photo above are the lights from this town). The isolation made for excellent star gazing. There is something extraordinary about being far away from the light pollution of big cities and in a place where you can really gaze deeply into the fabric of the night sky. The architecture of the stars becomes so much more than just points of light in the sky, and takes on a three-dimensional appearence. You see colors and light variations that you don't normally see, and the shimmering ribbon of the Milky Way is easily discernable.

When one is obligated to defend the interests of Mother Russia from marauding raccoons in the middle of the night, it pays to have something to do to pass the time (besides raccoon patrol). As the rest of the Artisans group huddled around the fire and sipped their tea and hot chocolate, I took my tripod and ventured  into the darkness near one of the corner towers to make this photograph. Having made plenty of long night exposures long before digital cameras came on the scene, I really appreciate how easy this type of photography is with digital. With film I had to rely on experience or guesswork to determine how long the exposure time should be, usually making several bracketed exposures just to make sure I got something. With a DSLR, you just make test shots, review the results and increase or decrease the exposure time as needed. Better living through technology!

I love to immerse myself in an environment for long periods of time and experience it deeply. Part of this experience, of course, is exploring with my camera. One of the things I love about digital photography is that it makes it much easier to take advantage of every photographic opportunity that may come your way.

Upcoming Workshop News:

My next workshops are coming up in June (Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin, and Iceland) and August (another trip to Iceland!). You can find links to these workshops in the image column on the right. The 10% Discount for early registration for my True North Iceland Workshop has been extended until May 31.

 

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

 

Christmas Eve Greetings to All!

May your holiday be filled with happiness, good cheer, the companionship of family and friends, love, laughter, fine photographs, gratitude, and lots of yummy treats (not necessarily in that order). ~ Seán

A Winter Solstice Gathering

Winter Solstice Gathering  [Canon 10D]
December 18, 2004

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, that is). The darkness of winter will be gradually lessening now as the days become ever longer.

For this edition of Time Machine Tuesday, we travel back 6 years ago to the Winter Solstice of 2004. Our family was invited to the home of some friends for their annual solstice bonfire in the forest on their property. In terms of one of the more common hallmarks of technical quality, namely sharpness, this image really doesn't have all that much going for it: I did not have a tripod with me that night and the hand held shutter speed of 2 seconds resulted in a photo where all of the detail is tantilizingly on the wrong side of sharp.

But sharpness is not everything in an image. Sometimes, capturing the light, the mood, or the memory is more important, and I think that this is such a scene. Precise, sharp details, while satisfying on a purely technical level, wouldn't really bring anything more to the image. The trees, the lanterns, and the ground might be in focus, but the people would likely still be somewhat blurry, especially if they moved during the exposure.  In terms of the most important aspect of this image, which is remembering this night and the people who gathered there, the flickering candle lanterns, and the bonfire's glow creating the sense of being in an immense forest cathedral, this photograph has everything it needs.

 

Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin 2011 Calendar

My 2011 calendar featuring 12 new pinhole photographs from the surreal and enigmatic Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series is now available. Click here to see a preview of all of the images in the calendar or to place an order.

 

FOTOfusion in South Florida

In mid January I'll be presenting some hands-on classes and giving a presentation on the Artifacts series at FOTOfusion, the photography and imaging festival hosted by the Palm Beach Photographic Center. The dates are Jan 11 — 15. Here's a list of my sessions:

• Creative Interpretations with Camera Raw
  (90-minute computer lab)
  
  
• Crafting the Multiple Image Composite
  (3-hour computer lab)
  
  
• Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin
  Lecture/Presentation

Friday Night at the Drive-In

Friday Night at the Drive-In  [Canon 5D]
Sacramento, California – August 13, 2010
(click in the image for a larger, sharper version)

We did something last night that I have not done for a long, long time: we went to a drive-in movie ("Despicable Me"...a fun romp that was perfect for a family outing). This was a first for my 9-year old daughter and also for my wife, who grew up in Europe, where they didn't have drive-in movies (at least, not in her part of Europe, which is Germany). It was a perfect summer night. I even saw two meteors from the Persieds streak by above the screen.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I lived in southwest Idaho and worked as a projectionist. I spent a lot of time running the shows at several drive-in theaters, including multi-screen venues like the Sacramento 6 where we went last night (the most drive-in screens that I worked from a single booth was three). Our visit to the drive-in brought back a lot of memories of those times: The smell of popcorn, the sounds of the projection booth, doing speaker, equipment and film maintenance during the day, blockbuster main features and mediocre co-features, and very late summer nights since we would run the main movie, then a co-feature and then the main movie once more, and since it was Idaho, some very cold winter nights, too (some of the drive-ins I worked were open all year, even in the snow). I also recall one memorable occasion when I was out on the lot testing unused speakers and seeing a Pink Panther cartoon melting spectacularly into a giant abstract artwork as it jammed in the projector. As I raced frantically back to the projection booth a chorus of car horns erupted in the night (a classic drive-in experience!). Last night, even though it was Friday the 13th, there were no such projector mishaps.

I had brought a tripod with me to the drive-in, as I had the idea of taking some photos, but in the end I was too lazy to get it out and so I improvised. A dashboard, in addition to being a great place to put your dash, also makes a handy camera-stabilizing platform, and it worked quite well. The exposure time for this shot was 71 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400. The movie was playing during this shot but the accumulation of projected light on the screen rendered as total white during the long exposure.

Next Workshop: Maine in October

My next scheduled workshop is Real World Digital Photography II at the Maine Media Workshops Oct 3 - 9. This is a follow-up to my Real World Digital Photography I class that took place in Maine in mid June of this year. We pick up where we left off with more in-depth explorations of digital photography and digital darkroom techniques. Mid-coast Maine is really beautiful in early October and it's a great place to explore creative photography. Join me for Fall in New England at the Maine Media Workshops! More Info.

Washing the Board

Washing the Board [Canon 5D]
Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawaii  •  April 23, 2010
(click in the image for a larger version)

I returned from Hawaii a week ago, after teaching three workshops at the University of Hawaii. While there the display on my Macbook Pro died, which was a huge hassle. Fortunately it waited to die until after the workshops were completed. So for the extra three days I spent on Oahu I couldn't review any of the images that I had shot and even now, after a week back home, I've barely had a chance to go through them.

For the past few years, I have embarked on a multi-day Lensbaby "walkabout" along Waikiki Beach; it just seems to be a perfect place to explore the unique visual characteristics of the Lensbaby Composer. Usually these walkabouts take place in the late afternoon and early evening, after my class has wrapped for the day. Above is a shot from the second evening of Lensbaby indulgence.

In addition to visual play with the Lensbaby, I also did a lot of work on my black & white pinhole series Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin, shooting ten rolls of 120 film in a variety of different locations in four days. A busy schedule over the past several months has left me with limited quality time to spend on this project (not to mention time for updating this blog) and it's been easier to take new photos for the series than actually finding time to work on them after the negs have been developed. I will be trying to pick up the pace in the weeks ahead so that the web gallery can be updated prior to a magazine article featuring the series. Stay tuned for a new Artifacts image, as well as more on that article in a few days.

Upcoming Workshops

I have a few workshops coming up in June, July and September that I am really excited about. See below for all the details.

Real World Digital Photography
June 13 - 19
Maine Media Workshops • Rockport, Maine
Info & Registration Link

The Creative Digital Darkroom
June 28 - July 1
Marlborough School • Los Angeles, CA
Info & Registration Link

The Creative Eye: Photography & Digital Darkroom Essentials
July 25 - 31
Santa Fe Photographic Workshops • Santa Fe, New Mexico
Info & Registration Link

Photoshop Creative Collage
September 16 - 19
Mesilla Digital Imaging Workshops • Mesilla, New Mexico
Info & Registration Link

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