2014 Deck – Week 42

On December 13, 2014December 13, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Winslow Craig is one of my favourite local sculptors, his work appeals to me more than most, probably because I know so little about the art-form that I cannot appreciate the intricacies of others (particularly those that bested him in the 2012 GVACE; he placed third)

I was at Moray House for his recent retrospective presentation, and took a photo that I quickly grew fond of, and so did someone at Moray House; although I originally processed it in monochrome, they requested a coloured version for their inaugural magazine “Ku’wai”, as a non-profit organisation and one that supports the Arts in Guyana I really couldn’t say no, and I was honoured that they wanted it for the cover of the magazine.

Since I had only uploaded the monochrome processed version to Facebook, I decided that the coloured one worked nicely and I would also use that for the Deck Project.

Moray House, 21st October 2014 | Sculptures on display by Winslow Craig

The piece on the table was loaned to the presentation by the current owner, the one in the background is called “Saving Seeds”, it was the piece that placed third in the 2012 Guyana Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition; to my understanding, it is a wire-framed structure covered with a material that Winslow made called Sawdue (sawdust and glue).

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, and to see Winslow’s current entries in the 2014 GVACE, visit the GVACE 2014 Exhibition which opens on Thursday 18th December 2014, exhibition of pieces are likely to be at Castellani House and the National Museum.

2014 Deck – Week 41

On December 12, 2014December 12, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

People write all sorts of things in the sands at the seawalls… and beaches worldwide, from Love Letters (Pat Boone sang about this), to drawings, to directions to the nearest Qik Serv, to Hearts with cupid’s arrows through it and the Lovers’ names inscribed, all to be washed away with the next high tide.

Those messages are as transient to us as we are to the timeless sea; and yet, we keep making those markings and the sea wipes them out again.

I snapped a photo in passing this fellow as he used quite a long stick to mark out something in the sand, I have no idea what it was he was drawing, maybe it was a message to an extra-terrestrial ship 🙂

Midday Markings – Kingston Foreshore, Georgetown.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 40

On December 10, 2014December 10, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography4 Comments

It is not often that I am at the seawalls when the tide is at its highest and the waves are crashing against the sea defences, when that does happen, I usually take some photos, but seldom use any; mainly because I never seem to get one that I think stands out enough.

I think I may have gotten one that passed muster this last occasion 🙂

Crashing Waves – Georgetown Seashore

On this one I did some unusual processing (for me), I “cooled” the lower area with the rocks prior to applying the red filter, without that the details in the rocks were getting lost 🙂

2014 Deck – Week 39

On December 9, 2014December 9, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

The good thing about taking photos of your baby girl is that when nothing else has been shot for the week, you can always use one of those photos as your photo of the week 😀

Here she is at almost 6 months old.

Malina – just about 6 months old

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 38

On December 9, 2014December 9, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

This photo was included as part of my extended Oniabo collection which I presented at Moray House in a slide-show presentation in October.

The Oniabo collection started as a collection of 6 images, but when I was offered the opportunity to present something at Moray House, I revisited the idea and extended the collection to 16 Images.

I now have a better grasp of the collection and what I want it to be, and by early next year I hope to have concluded the set, omitting some that are there now and including others that are still in the making 🙂

Compositionally I was going for the three layers that I saw; the cloudy sky beyond the horizon, the mud-flats and the receded sea, and the rocky foreground, it was fairly dark already, but I knew that the some-what even lighting would make a good shot. A couple being there helped to make this shot even better.

“couple” – Lusignan, East Coast Demerara

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, also the visit the Oniabo collection as presented at Moray House.

2014 Deck – Week 37

On December 6, 2014December 6, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

I’ve never been one to do a lot of “dodging and burning” in images, but this image I liked and I wanted to recover some detail in the shadow of the rock, and I didn’t want to tone-map the entire image, that would have been overkill I think.

So I used the brush tool in Lightroom to lighten just that area to get that detail I wanted. the rest of the scene worked to my satisfaction.

This is a stretch of the seawall at Lusignan, and at High tide that rock, which seems to be pointing North, is normally covered.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project.

2014 Deck – Week 36

On December 5, 2014December 5, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography4 Comments

While I’ve never really considered this blog as a “photography blog” in the true sense, it is mostly about my photos, so sometimes, the photos just have to speak for themselves; so here’s a thousand words:

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 34

On November 29, 2014November 29, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

A Saturday midday upon the wall.

The breeze was nice, there were very few people around, and I paused in my walking to see what these rocks would look like from a lower perspective… 🙂

1/320s @ f/13.0, 24mm, ISO 200

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other photos from this year’s Deck Project

2014 Deck – Week 33

On November 27, 2014November 27, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Christ Church was doing some fund-raising, a friend of mine asked me to take a few photos of the church to use in the press release. The only time I had to make a pass by the church was an early morning on the way to work.

I was thinking that it’s only for a press release, so it doesn’t have to be that good, right?

I was in a bit of a hurry, but I snapped a few, then jumped back in the car and headed to work. There was some nice clouds behind the church from one angle, and kept remembering this as I downloaded the images to process, I knew that my attitude toward the shot was less than optimal and I had deliberately exposed for the building and not the skies (since it was just for the press), as the sun was rising behind the church, all that detail would be blown out.

I thought that this would be a good time to experiment with what I had read about prior to acquiring a full-frame camera, that it can capture a very wide dynamic range in one exposure.

True enough, the entire sky was blown out in the exposure when I downloaded it.

But remembering what I had just seen in the sky, I worked the sliders to see what sky detail I could retrieve from the RAW file:

And I was amazed, so I decided to process it better than I had originally intended. I made slight adjustments in Lightroom to bring some detail back in the sky while retaining the detail and brightness of the building. Then I took the image into Nik HDR Efex with the express intent to use a single exposure black-and-white tone mapping technique on it, and the results were great. After a few minor adjustments once I took it back to Lightroom, this was the result:

Christ Church, Waterloo St., Georgetown, Guyana

Someone asked me it I “photoshopped” it, well, I didn’t use photoshop, I used no masks, no layers, nothing like that, just what I described above. Everything I needed was in the RAW file, if I weren’t in such a hurry and treating the action of taking the photo so lacklustrely, then I may have actually taken multiple exposures for a proper HDR 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 32

On November 26, 2014November 26, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

As I was titling this photo I was somewhat reminded of the TV Series “Bones”, maybe it was a recent discussion on the show that prompted the title “The Wood in the Frame”.

I saw this discarded wooden frame amidst the rocks on the seawall. and by contorting myself and peering through it I could see that I might be able to frame some of the Jhandi flags within it… I could not get both my head and the camera into the space available (and I didn’t really want to move the frame), so I know my focus might be spotty, so I was fully prepared for some crazy images to come out.

I had angled slightly down to ensure I got the base of the frame, so it was expected that I’d most likely get the wood lying across the frame in focus. 🙂

I think it came out nicely. (Yes, I know, most of you would have moved the frame so you can get the angle right, the focus right, everything right… I like the experimental method over absolute perfection sometimes)