Photography; I shoot what I like, and sometimes people like what I shoot. All photos are copyright to Michael C. Lam unless explicitly stated otherwise.
During our recent spate of rainy weather, I chanced to be on the sidewalks waiting with my camera in hand and I grabbed a few photographs, of the set two stood out, but I only like one enough to use, so I chose here first before I post to Flickr.
Many of our pavements/sidewalks and streets in Georgetown flood as soon as the place gets cloudy, but the recent rains put a lot of pressure on our poor (excuse for a ) drainage system. 🙂
At least this fellow was prepared for the weather, not only with an umbrella, but with long boots as well. 🙂
Compared to the previous weeks in this year, this week has been generous in terms of photographs, well, I won’t count the week with Mashramani, as that day alone resulted in a plethora of images.
I haven’t processed half the images from this week as yet, but I already have a favourite, not the best of the week, but a favourite none-the-less.
Last Sunday was Phagwah (or Holi) in Guyana and several other countries where the Hindu religious is popular, my knowledge of the Hindu religion is that good, but from what I remember of it from “school-days”, it’s a day of “equality”, when castes have no meaning, when race is not an issue, when everyone looks the same at the end of the day, not only in God’s eyes gut to our own. When everyone is covered in the colourful powders of Phagwah day, they all look the same.
I really wanted to get into the “Khendra” but I doubt that my camera would survive that one, so I settled for some images of my daughter and her cousin playing Phagwah up in Good Hope village on the East Coast of Demerara. 🙂
It’s been a while since I touched a Panorama, or a stitched image 🙂 This one is old (last year) but I never got around to stitching and processing it until now. Originally intended as a six image Panorama, it seems the last two in the sequence refused to be stitched in (I may try a different software later) so I ended up with a four image stitched together Panorama.
This is from the Roundhouse on the Kingston Promenade on the Georgetown Seawall, facing west, the sun isn’t quite setting but it the exposure gave it a little darkness and added to the mood. At full size you can see that there are people on the Jetty (pier) in the distance. and even someone on the rocks in the foreground.
I encourage you to click on the image for a better view at the Gallery, but unless you have a very wide monitor, it won’t help too much 🙂 Try this link to see an 1100 pixel wide version.
Interestingly enough I had loads and loads of photographs of insects when I shot with the Canon S5IS bridge camera, but since I have been shooting with the T1i SLR, I have very few, very very few, as a matter of fact this is the first that I’ve uploaded to my site and I had to create a gallery just for it 🙂
I think that because the S5 had a very good Macro mode and an even better Super Macro mode, I experimented more with them and with the usual victims of those modes, insects. Also, I had bought “add-on” macro lenses from Raynox that really had me doing some nice experimenting 🙂 Now that I use the SLR, I am longing for a good Macro lens, and I dream about the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro regularly 🙂 (anyone feeling generous, I won’t refuse a gift)
Anyway, enough of the dreaming, here’s the insect I mentioned…
Hang on!
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, he’s there all by himself.
I took this the same day last week when I took the one I posted for the Deck, so some might say this is more appealing, but the Lotus Flower fit my mood at the time 🙂
Today was supposed to be the day the trial began for the two men who attacked and robbed both Nikhil and I last September, but true to these types of cases there were some problems with the case and it has been postponed for a few weeks, but this revelation did not happen until we had been in the court for nearly three hours.
I was looking back at the photos I took that day, only two of which I had processed and decided to process another one. Looking back, I think that this image has some merit, I love silhouettes, and while it wasn’t quite sunset as yet, the sky was lovely, and the Pegasus silhouetted against the sky appealed to me.
A Silhouette of Pegasus
And as usual, please click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.
I’ve been feeling a bit depressed this week, probably a combination of factors, and not a feeling I am familiar with. I need to leave it behind, but maybe the photo for this week will reflect some of that in it.
As befitting the week, I only shot photos on one day, so I didn’t have much of a variety to choose from, there were two I favoured, so I chose one and hope that someone other than myself would like it, although it is the more “depressing” of the two, I preferred it overall, I will post the other image in a later post.
Well, I had to title it something and this sounded apt enough. Both photos have a sea-vessel and the water they traverse upon, so “Ships at Sea” it is, even though I am not sure they would call it the Sea… I’ve always been confused by that.
Growing up it was always the Sea, and protecting us from it was the Seawall, made sense…. now technically, the water to the horizon northwards from our shores is the Atlantic Ocean, I don’t think it is still the Caribbean Sea, and since I am being technical, both photos are not pointing Northwards but more West by North West, making that particular area of water the mouth of the Demerara River.
Aye, my head hurts from trying to sort that one out, so Sea or Ocean or River, its got a boat on the water. They’ve both been done in monochrome to emphasise the clouds and the water, taken on different days but in generally the same location, on the stretch of beach along the Kingston shore.
Only one day of shooting photos this week, terrible! But I did get a very nice one (at least one), and it is somewhat in keeping with my last post “A fascination with skies”.
Both Nik and I needed to get out and get something, as the week had progressed without much photography being done, it was raining and we thought that we might have to abandon the idea (at least for me, since the camera wasn’t going to handle the rain too well), but as we drove the rain eased for a bit and we decided to stop at the Koker at Ogle and see what was there for the offering.
A good thing we decided to stop, I got a few and I am sure Nik got more than I did :-), and as we headed back to “town” the rains decided that we’d had enough of a break and continued its work.
I hope you like this one, it’s another “seawall” shot, and another monochrome 🙂
Overcast at Ogle
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.
Many of my favourite images have had some amount of sky in it, I usually get very “miffed” when shooting landscape or even people and building shots and the sky is just a drab gray, I like blue skies, plain blue, hues of blue, I just really like blue skies, if there are errant clouds then all the better, but a sky fully covered with clouds usually gets to me, I found a way to deal with that over time, I look for a good scene that will process better as a monochromatic image.
Fibre in the Sand
While I have gotten better at that, I still like the blue, and I like dramatic skies, streaming clouds, or clouds spotting the vista to the horizon. The last Deck photo was taken on a day that had a nice variation of clouds in the sky, and I got a few others that I thought were worth sharing.
These were taken with the full intent of getting as much out of the sky as possible while still retaining some foreground interest. All were taken with the Sigma 10-20 Ultrawide Lens. I hope you like one or all 🙂
The temptation to render any of the three images into monochrome was great, but I resisted, barely. I felt that the colours in the sky and the foreground were more truly representative of the “feel” of the afternoon, than a monochrome would express, although I think I could probably have gotten more drama out of the images in monochrome 🙂
Inland Bound
Click on the images to see them larger in the Gallery, I think I may have to print the one title “Inland Bound” larger for better scrutiny myself 🙂
This week I almost didn’t have anything to upload, and I almost went for Sasi’s idea of using the eggs 🙂 Fortunately, Nikhil had a desire to go check out the Kingston Promenade again, so we took a few minutes and went.
I started out with my Tamron telephoto lens but quickly switched to the ultra-wide Sigma 10-20, I had noticed the skies were nice, some clouds, some patches of blue showing, some streaky areas, and some heavily clouded areas, so I thought something good can come of that.
I got a few keepers from the shoot, but this one stands out, somehow a coconut got wedged or nestled into the hollow of a tree trunk on the beach… Nature’s “hole-in-one” 🙂
Click on the image for a larger viewing in the Gallery.
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