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.
At the risk of looking like a total idiot, I went onto the road at midday yesterday for this week’s Deck photograph, walked under a few of the trees lining Avenue of the Republic, stood as close to centre under each as I could get and pointed the camera upwards. Needless to say, I drew a few stares, lots of people wondering if the chinaman had finally lost all his marbles, or if there was a cat up the tree (we don’t see many cats up trees in Guyana, must be a northern thing)
This was one of the few “planned” shots, I usually wing it, go out and see what there is to see, but this was something I genuinely wanted to try out, so I took several photographs under the trees, trying to get the composition that was in my mind’s eye. This is why I do not plan these things, you never get what the mind’s eye conjures up. After several tries I got what I thought was the one I was looking for. I still went out later with Nikhil, to take a walk and see what else I might get for the day, unfortunately the light was not co-operating with us at all yesterday, if you are one of those people unfortunate enough to get my personal email updates you’ll see some of the other image I retrieved from the day 🙂
Now, without boring you with too much chatter about the other images I took, here’s this week’s photo for the 2010 Deck:
I have to play catch-up this week, since I missed out on uploading my Deck photo for last week, so this week is a double upload and blog. I had already decided what photograph I would have most likely used for the Deck, but I did not get a chance until this week to process the remaining images from my vacation.
The Deck photo for Week 31 is a parting shot from St Martin, over on the French side, on the beach front near Marigot, we were waiting for the boat to arrive for our final adventure, a chance to see the corals and fishes under the sea through the transparent underside of a “glass-bottomed” boat. My underwater shots came out terrible, but I loved this scene from the shore:
In the last week, I took photographs on three occasions, one was at a funeral, the other two were on afternoon walks with Nikhil, but for some reason I was not getting the “feel” for the scenes or subjects. My final photograph of today turned out to be one that I was pleasantly surprised with, I took another shot at the New Thriving Chinese Restaurant. The image is a pseudo-HDR, since I also wanted to try out a new software that Nikhil had recently introduced me to, it is still in the Beta (testing) stage, but I am rather impressed by it. It introduces a new type of HDR called HDR ReLight as well as doing the regular tone mapping type HDR, but it also processes RAW files, which I shoot primarily. This was the portion that I wanted to try, and I was rather pleased with the result, the software is Oloneo PhotoEngine, give it a try if you like HDRs or you shoot in RAW.
Here’s the photo for the Deck Week 32, I hope you like it.
This week, I’m off in Sint Maarten on holiday, so I have quite a selection of photographs to choose from for this week’s addition to the Deck. It was a hard choice, but I selected one that epitomizes the week I’ve had so far.
It has been a week of goodbyes and departures, of hello’s and discovery, of family and of friends, I have shed tears of sadness and tears of joy; in life there is light and darkness, the sun and shadow, deep blue heavens and golden sunsets. Life is about change, and as day changes to night, there is beauty to be found, beauty in the day that is ending, in the time of change itself and in the night to come.
So I give you this week’s Photo for the deck of the week.
This week was a poor week for photography for me, didn’t take too many photographs 🙂
The deck photo is not the best photo that I’ve taken all week, but it is unusual for me, so that’s the reason for its choice. Aesthetically, it may not be pleasing to everyone, or as we say, not everyone’s “cup of tea”. I went to accompany Nikhil again, and not having too much time, we took a short visit to the Promenade Gardens again. I wasn’t in the mood for photography, but Nikhil said I couldn’t go and not take something, so after shooting a few things; a flower here a leaf there, I followed him to a spot where he would eventually get his photo of the day for his 365 Project, and the sun coming through the fabric of some leaves caught my eye.
When I put the camera to my eye, there was a spectrum of colours in the light rays that showed in the viewfinder and I was just hopeful that it would also appear that way when I snapped the photograph, to be sure I tried a few different exposures. When peering through th eyepiece of the camera directly into the light it does appear more vibrant, but I think I caught the nice effect that grabbed my attention in the first place.
On one of those midday walks with Nikhil, while he was experimenting with his IR filter and generally trying to get his photo for the 365 Project that he is undertaking, I spent some time trying to get this photograph…
The problem? That darn bee 🙂 although I took lots more photographs of houses or parts of houses this last week, I liked this shot for the Deck, maybe because I spent so much time trying to get it, maybe because I already have too many photos of buildings, maybe because, of the candidates for this week’s choice of photograph, this was one of the few that were still processed as colour and not monochrome 🙂
This was taken at The Seven Ponds, a monument in the Botanical Gardens, so many things around to photograph and I spent loads of minutes on this 🙂
As a small photograph and, worst yet, as a thumbnail, it’s a photograph of a flower, water-lily, some large leaves… my particular interest in the photograph was the insect, the busy bee… so just to show you what it was that REALLY interested me… I’ve included the following enlargement 🙂
If only I had a longer lens, or that flower was closer to the edge of the pond 🙂
I must have been too busy this week, or maybe the short week caught me off-guard, but it seems I forgot all about the Deck photograph until today 🙂 So, with just a little preamble I present this week’s photograph for the 2010 Deck.
At any rate, I actually did take a few photographs this week, so I just had to choose one, right? I wish it were that easy. But, after scanning through the ones I had taken this week, I chose one that may not be my favourite, but I think is a nice dramatic photograph with lots of character, I seem to be looking more and more into buildings with character recently, and as for these “old buildings” I blame Nikhil, he has a fascination for old and derelict buildings that has rubbed off on me somehow. Incidentally, this one was taken on one of our afternoon walks.
Just a note on the processing. More and more people are asking me what “editing” I do to the photographs, and I don’t want to go into that old argument right now, Nikhil has a nice blog on that in Editing a Photograph.
The processing I did to this one was done in three steps, firstly, I did some chromatic aberration adjustment (correcting what is known to many photographers as purple fringing in the high contrast areas), then I did some “spot removal” of a pair of wires in the upper right hand corner, then applied a Lightroom preset called “Color Creative – Aged Photo”. There you go, a step by step of the creation of this week’s Deck Photo, but don’t expect me to do this every week. 🙂
I think that, if I calculated correctly, I am now halfway through The Deck 🙂
This week’s image was taken on one of those “walkabouts” I sometimes do with Nikhil. We had decided to go into a part of Queenstown and walk a couple blocks. That part of Georgetown has always had some picturesque areas, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed with the walk.
This image was of a corner building that was being brightly illuminated by the afternoon sunshine, and its colours are part of what we in the Caribbean had become accustomed to seeing, nicely sprinkled amidst the “normal” white buildings. (click on the image to go to the site itself)
As was pointed out to me recently, only when we Caribbean people travel to the “Great North” do we miss our colourful heritage; this image is an appreciation of parts of that heritage, from the colours to the “Demerara shutters”
I am proud to be a Guyanese, and like the great Dave Martins referred to it, I have my “Caribbean Belly”
This past week I actually took 157 images, I only took these on three days during the time span. I know this stuff only because I had to pick a favourite of the week for a challenge on DP Review, so of those images, one jumped out for me, it may not have been the best image or the most spectacular, certainly not the most colourful, but it had some meaning, and it tells a story.
Now this is the thing about photography, I am just there to record the image, the image usually tells its own story, and like many other types of art, the story can be different for each viewer. A scene will evoke different memories, different reactions, different emotions in people; none are right nor wrong, simply different.
This is my photo for the Deck, the twenty-fifth week of the year 2010, you may like it, you may not, but you will have some reaction to it, let’s just hope it’s a good reaction.
Often enough, where we get the inspiration for some photographs are from other photographs or paintings. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we have taken inspiration from others, it may be a sub-conscious remembrance from childhood, from the numerous books we may have read, or shows we have looked at. And then there are the true “artists” among us who create those photographs that become our inspiration.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, whether or not you believe that is your opinion, but if any of my photos resembles any of yours or others that you may have seen, I will readily admit that it’s either a coincidence or I was inspired by someone’s photo or work of art. Whenever Nikhil is inspired by articles, books or photographs on a particular type of photography, it quickly transforms from inspiration to a passion, and because he includes me in his photo-walks we often discuss whatever area he is inspired by at that point of time. I don’t often share his passion on every aspect, but many times the ideas and the photos he takes, inspires me, and he has even accused me of outdoing him once in his new field 🙂 I like to believe that I merely took his lessons and learnt a little from them.
I like to believe that I am somewhat creative, but I also love to take inspiration from others, often times, it is simply because it’s easier 🙂 I think that maybe creative was the wrong word to use, I have seldom thought of photography as a creative artform, to me it is a recording of a scene, but some say that to record it the way some photographers have been able to do it requires a bit of creativity. Who am I to argue?
What’s the real point of all this rambling? Recently my Aunt showed me an old album of photographs of different places in Guyana (more of Georgetown than anywhere else) and both she and I thought that it would be nice to do a “revisit” of some of them. For one thing, it would show a comparison of similar scenes across a number of years, but it could also show the different attitude of the photographers, just duplicating the scene could be meaningless, showing it from your own perspective could have more meaning, at least for the photographer. One day I will get around to this project, one day.
Inspiration is one thing, just taking the same photo from the same spot of the same scene is just plain lazy. Think to yourself, what about the original image inspired you? Was it the angle? Was it the subject? Was it the colours or the composition? Take the inspiration you got and try to make an inspiring photo of your own, even if you fail, at least you tried.
Below you’ll see a photo circa 1940 of Cabbage Walk (an unusual name, it’s the roadway into Le Repentir Cemetary from Louisa Row in Georgetown) that inspired one of my own, also shown below, at the Botanical Gardens, I’m sure you can tell the difference 🙂
Cabbage Walk (circa 1940), photographer unknown.The Botanical Gardens, 2010
I’ve uploaded my image for the 2010 Deck collection on the site. It seems I’ve been in a monochrome rut for the last few weeks. It’s actually interesting this time, since I usually only make monochromatic shots for a few reasons;
I initially look at the scene and believe from the start that it will look good as either black and white or sepia
The sky was blanket grey and made an otherwise lovely scene look drab – I’m a sucker for a blue sky.
The post process intention was to give the image an older look
In this image, I actually got a lovely blue sky with those white clouds encroaching, something about the decaying building bothered me and I decided after some contemplation to render this in monochrome. I am mostly a fan of “whole buildings” but occasionally I like the partials 🙂
For the post-processing details, I did a bit of distortion correction and then did the monochrome editing in Nik Silver Effects.
This post is also going to be the first post where I do a bit of social commentary, in this case, specifically brought about by my photos of City Hall yesterday.
It is shameful that such a beautiful building, with so much history can be allowed to deteriorate like this, pieces are literally falling off. I don’t know about anyone else, but I pay my taxes, and I would expect certain things in return. I expect them to clean the drains REGULARLY, I’ve only seen them in our area once since I moved in more than two years ago, I even expect them to maintain the parapets, you know, weeding etc., again, never saw them, and I expect them to maintain City Hall! even if it was a crappy building, they should do it, but because it is such beautiful architecture, it is not only a good idea to keep the building that houses the governing body of the city in good repair, it is also their social responsibility to ensure that this piece of history is maintained and not become a part of history, relegated to photographs and memories.
Sadly, it may come to the point that restoration may not be an option and the building will probably be replaced by some concrete box with little or no character. From a photography standpoint, that would be disastrous 🙂
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