Mashramani 2011 – Republic Day

On February 27, 2011March 3, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography13 Comments

Republic Day, a day of celebration, we govern ourselves, no longer under imperial rule; some say that was a mistake, but it happened 41 years ago, sometime before I was born, so it’s all academic to me. Mashramani is the adopted celebration of Republic Day, celebrating a crop that’s harvested, a job completed; or in this day an age, just a big bacchanal, a reason to go out and party, to see the costumes and floats, both governmental and private sector.

Things to remember next year (if I choose to go out): SUNSCREEN, lots of water, and a really big flexible hat that won’t interfere with the camera in front my face.

Because of the recent rains, the “mall” where people usually walk and eat, picnic and party, was soggy, so they chose to walk alongside the bands, this was not good for a photographer, getting s decent shot was hard, so I took as many as were allowed, getting lots of spoilage in the process 🙂

I’ve chosen a tetrad of images for this blog post, those are by no means representative of the full gallery, but I had to choose something 🙂 Click on the image to go to the full gallery.

I hope you view the gallery and let me know which ones you like, commenting on the gallery is as easy as commenting here 🙂

In an attempt to explain Mashramani to someone recently I had to use comparisons, so lets just say that it has similar roots to Trinidad’s Carnival, Rio’s Carnival and Louisiana’s Mardi Gras; well, less Mardi Gras and more Carnival 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 8

On February 25, 2011February 26, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography12 Comments

Wednesday gone was our Republic Day in Guyana, and the big event was the Mashramani Parade, so I had already decided that I was going to pick one of those photos for this week’s Deck image.

After several days of torrential and continuous rain (that flooded my house) the day was Sunny, very sunny, still clouds on the horizon, and every once in a while, above us, but primarily sunny. My head now looks like a large cherry on top my shoulders, I am sunburnt. But hopefully after I upload all the selected images from the day, I’ll think it was worth it 🙂

I chose one that I think represented the exuberance and gaiety, the sheer joy of tramping and mashing down the road that the revellers seem to possess (on and off) through their parade.

Mashramani 2011 – Children’s Parade

On February 23, 2011February 22, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography18 Comments

In Guyana, one of the festivities marking the occasion of Republic Day is Mashramani, the word being derived from one of the many native Amerindian languages, meaning roughly “celebration after a job well done”, the actual celebrations are more African in origin celebrating the end of the harvest time. As part of the Mashramani Celebrations the various schools have entries into the Children’s Float and Costume Competition, the parade is usually held the Saturday before the main National festivities.

I took some photos that day and have uploaded them to the site, below is a checkerboard of photos from that collection, please click on it to go to the collection for the full set.

With any luck today will be sunny and I will be ably to get a nice set of photos from today’s National Mashramani Float Parade.

Happy Mashramani to all Guyanese, a Happy Republic Day, and to the rest of the world, Happy Wednesday 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 7

On February 21, 2011February 25, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography20 Comments

For the seventh week of the year, I fell ill from the Tuesday and didn’t catch myself until the Friday (almost, I was still a little out-of-it through the weekend), so I effectively had one photographic day of that week, so one of the images HAD to work for the Deck. As fate would have it, I didn’t get to process any of those images until today, so I am a little late this time around for the Deck, but better late than never, as they say.

For that week I took a total of thirteen photos (that number alone should have told me it would be a bad week), of those, seven were snapshots for a pre-valentine’s day dinner that my family had and those went up on Facebook, and the remaining six were all from a walk that Nikhil and I took to the seawall, so I just picked one that seemed marginally better than the rest and processed it.

Chips!

On February 17, 2011February 17, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography19 Comments

I’m a bit under the weather, so just a quick one to tide me over.

In almost every village area in Guyana, you either have walking, riding or driving vendors crying out their “wares”, I think some of the famous ones are “Broom Here!!!”, “Papers! Papers!, Kaieteur, Chronicle, Stabroek, Times! Papers!” and of course “Chips! Chips! Chips!, fresh chips!”

Maybe I’ll get the others another time, but for now here’s one of the Chips salesmen 🙂

Click on the image to see it larger on the site, and of course, browse the sight at will 🙂

Alone in the Crowd

On February 14, 2011February 14, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography34 Comments

This was the photograph I had in mind for last week’s Deck Photo, but then the horse-cart took over 🙂

I still find it amazing that in a crowded room or a public place full of people, I can be next to my wife, and feel as if we’re alone, just the two of us. It was one of those things you read about in poems and novels but didn’t quite get until it happened to you. For more than half of my life, that has been us, I can look into her eyes and we’d be alone wherever we were. I look forward to many more years like that.

Well, I took this photograph, so it’s not of us, but you get the idea 🙂 Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Click to see larger on the site.

2011 Deck – Week 6

On February 12, 2011February 12, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography18 Comments

Strange enough I had a totally different image in mind for this week’s Deck Photo, I hadn’t processed the images as yet, but I had sorted out in my mind the images I had taken and had somewhat settled on a particular image. On importing the photos into Lightroom, I saw one that I had dismissed mentally, it was taken hastily and I did not think that I had captured what I wanted. As I looked at it I realised that it had some merit, and as I processed the image it grew on me to the point that I haven’t bothered to process the rest until I finish this blog post 🙂

It was a nice lazy afternoon at Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara, and I was probably on my fourth Cuba Libre, and I saw them coming down the street, barely time to put down my glass (carefully), go for my camera bag, take out the camera, frame up and shoot. There was no second take, just the one shot.

The Boat and The Sky

On February 10, 2011February 10, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography28 Comments

I was about to title this post “The Monkey and The Camera”, because Nikhil might have been right about that day at La Bonne Intention, a monkey with a camera may well have managed to take a good photograph.

In hindsight, I really should have switch to my ultra-wide lens earlier that day, but even with the Tamron 18-270 mounted on the camera, I still got wide enough to capture the truly “awesome” sky that was prevalent at the time.

I’ll let this photo speak for itself. (Click to see larger)

Not really my thing…

On February 9, 2011February 9, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography18 Comments

Having a photo buddy is good, being in the company of other photographers is even better, you pick up things, learn a few tricks and see things from different points of view. Often enough, whenever Nikhil and I are out on a photo-walk, I will see him suddenly divert and take aim at something, and out of my mouth would pop a phrase like “the bike and the tree, eh?” or “the pattern of leaves”, or “the red block and the white blocks caught your eye”.

I am usually right, and I admit that I saw what caught his eye (either before or at the time), I see what it is, I see that there’s a photographic opportunity, but most times, I don’t see the composition that he sees. I’ve come to the conclusion that , at least for now, it’s just not really my thing. He does a marvelous job on those patterns and juxtapositions, on odd combinations of subjects, I don’t “see it” as he does, and that’s fine, if we all saw things the same way, there’s be nothing special in any of our photographs. I think that photographers understand to a good extent what I mean, but the regular Joe, or photo-tekker-outer, or snapshot artist, may not. It’s like Street Photography, there’s an art to it that not everybody gets, certainly not me, and I’ve tried some before and may try more in the future. A good photograph can tell a story in just one scene, the problem I see these days is that not everyone can read 🙂 and even less of us are good story-tellers.

This one is a good example, I saw it, I noticed things like the contrast in colours, the symmetry/non-symmetry, the textures, the geometry, but I wasn’t inspired to take it, I just wanted to do it to see what I could come up with if I pushed myself. I know that in some circle it has merit, but I just can’t bring myself to say it’s a good shot. 🙂

Soaring over the Seawall in September

On February 8, 2011February 8, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography26 Comments

The sky that day was a photographer’s dream, nice variety of clouds, a slowly setting sun, as Nikhil mentioned once “even a monkey could have gotten good photos that day”. I’m not entirely sure about the monkey, but I know we came away with some good ones.

For me, I liked this one because of the clouds, and then there’s the lone man walking along the wall, and the lone bird soaring in the sky.