Category: Photography

This is what the blog is about, the results of my being a Photo Hobbyist

2011 Deck – Week 22

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography8 Comments

Although when I first started trying my hand at Photography (you know, snapshots that looked awesome, even though they were probably mediocre) I was never inclined to monochromatic images; the black and whites and the sepia-toned images, but as I learnt more about the art, and as I came to appreciate the works of others, there has always been scenes that seem to render better in monochrome than in vivid colour.

I have found recently that I like to work in “special” fields of photo processing, I like playing with Panoramas, HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, tone-mapped images (using the same HDR software but on a single image and not using bracketed images as in a true HDR), and monochromatic images, more towards black and white or sepia-toned images rather than cyanotypes and the other tones available.

At any given period of my photography, you’ll probably notice a certain “type” of image popping up, so don’t be surprised by today’s monochrome.  This was taken on the Georgetown Seawall towards the Kitty pump station, the building is Celina Atlantic Resort (I am not sure how the word resort got in the name, but its more a Restaurant and Bar)

Skies over Celina

2011 Deck – Week 21

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography14 Comments

If you’re going to do a project then you should at least make every effort to keep it up, right?  I seem to be lagging behind too much, something’s got to give!  Anyway, I found a few minutes and I decided to post my image for last week before it got too late.

Finding the time to post on the blog is one thing, but apparently things are getting to the point where finding the time to get the photograph itself is becoming a challenge, definitely not good.  Last week I took four photographs, yes four, F-O-U-R, 4!  and three of them were of the same scene, so that left me with a choice between two images. Bah!  I can’t let this happen again.

This is not a great image, it probably isn’t a good one, but it’s what I have and since I am sticking to the rules I made myself, I have to choose one of those images I took within the week, 🙂  I beg forgiveness in advance.

One Year

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography18 Comments

One year ago, I wrote and posted my first official post on this blog, I am not counting the “Hello World” that Word press starts me off with.  It might seem morbid to some that the first post was about the death of my maternal grandmother, and a photo of the same, but to me it’s not only the scenes that capture our eyes as photographers that may appeal to viewers, but the feelings and emotions that we can convey or arouse from others viewing our work.

One year has passed, and I have had “ups and downs” in blogging, recently a lot of “downs”, time seems to be an elusive creature, and I have not put as much into the blogging or reading blogs as I think I should.  But I think that I have kept up pretty well, and The Deck project certainly gives it some impetus.

Recently there have been other deaths as well, not a good way to celebrate one year of blogging, but it is what it is.  My daughter recently lost one of her teachers from last year, Teacher Gillian, and only this week we lost “Mr. Terrific”, Flavio Commacho, who was very instrumental in the conversion of our system of measurements in Guyana from Imperial to Metric, I remember from when I was a little boy listening to “Swing to Metric” on the radio (yes, radio.  Televisions weren’t quite the thing as yet)

Also this month we lost Sister Rose Magdalene, there is so much to be said for her, and there is a lovely Tribute page on Facebook.  What I remember of Sr Rose is her love for music and pageantry.  She wrote, she sang, she danced, she lived and loved with music in her heart.  I always will remember the special Christmas mass at the old Sacred Heart Church (now burnt down), the traditional readings were replaced by a pageant telling the story of the birth of the Christ child, and at the heart of it all was Sr Rose.  This photo in today’s blog was taken at the memorial mass held in Guyana at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Brickdam Cathedral) for her, the people in it are a few of the members of the Marigold Children’s Choir that she formed many years ago.

This was meant to be a simple (hopefully artistic) photograph, but for me, it has a depth of emotion also.

The music died...

2011 Deck – Week 20

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography6 Comments

I thought to myself this week that maybe I should just put up as good a photo as I could get up to today before I let another week pass by and then I would be behind again in this project…  and since I went with Nikhil to the Kingston Promenade yesterday photo-hunting, I came back with a few decent shots, so here’s to the twentieth week of the year.

It was one of those uninspiring afternoons, nothing seemed to leap out at you, at least not photographically.  I did get a shot of a crab before he scampered back into his “hole” (is there a name for those?), but he isn’t super-sharp, I may yet post it up.  The beach was littered as usual, and the sun was shining so brightly I almost couldn’t look eastwards, and the glare off the water and sand wasn’t helping any either.

Fortunately I did manage to see through the glare enough to spot a youngster playing near the waves, as it turned out I got more than I thought  🙂

Silhouettes on the Seashore

2011 Deck – Week 19

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography12 Comments

City Hall.

I can’t seem to ever get enough photographs of this building, a heavy weight descends upon me when I go closer to it and see the effects of the neglect, the signs of disrepair, and the toll that the sun and rains take from this glorious wooden structure.

For last week I had not taken a single image for “artistic reasons”, I did do a snapshot of some newspapers for a Road Safety blog for The Alicea Foundation, but that’ wasn’t very artistic  🙂

Most of my HDR images usually use a fairly static scene, no moving elements, this week I decided to try one that included some movement, and try out the “ghost reduction” that Nik HDR Efex has built in, I think it worked very nicely.

Take a look at it larger in the gallery.

2011 Deck – Week 18

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography12 Comments

I’m still playing “catch-up”, still a week behind in the blog, and months behind in reading  🙂  Today marks one year since I actually registered as a WordPress user, although I didn’t start blogging until one week later, so I feel compelled to at least update the blog today, so I’ve managed to choose a photo from Week 18 of this year, processed it in one of my favourite ways, HDR, and even uploaded it 🙂

On the 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, Arrival Day, or whatever you want to call it, I went with Naseem and Nikhil for a drive and photo-jaunt between Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara and Rosignol at the mouth of the Berbice River (West Coast Berbice), needless to say we took a lot of photographs.

Our first stop was at the village of Enmore, we were going to go see the Enmore Martyr’s Monument, but the bridge we were planning on using was unusable, opposite that bridge there was a nice scene, so we took some time to “grok” it (as Nik would say) and even took some photos, I took a set of bracketed shots to use for an HDR rendition, and that’s what I present to you today.  All the original images came out dark and desaturated as I expected, since I was shooting into the sun, but since I planned on using them in an HDR, that was OK  🙂

Early Morn at Enmore

As an HDR, I really suggest you click on it to see it at the Gallery!

2011 Deck – Week 16

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography12 Comments

In keeping with the season of Easter (and just being lazy) I used a photo from Palm Sunday for this week’s Deck photo, I “reserved” two from that day just in case I didn’t get anything else I liked for the week, as it is I haven’t even downloaded what little else I did take, so it’s a good thing I did keep back two.

This one is more in keeping with the period, and is somewhat symbolic.  The photograph was taken early in the proceedings, the lay-ministers had just brought up all the ciboria before the altar, and I took a few snaps of them, this one happened to use as the central ciborium the one from the Sacred Heart parish.  The Church of the Sacred Heart was destroyed by fire on Christmas day in 2004, the building was then 135 years old.  The parishioners long to see the church rebuilt and like Christ, rise to new glory.

Happy Easter folks.

Ciboria

Passion Sunday 2011 – Diocese of Georgetown, Guyana

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography3 Comments

Sunday past was the celebration of the Passion of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, also known as Passion Sunday or Palm Sunday, a remembrance of the day that Jesus entered the Holy CIty of Jerusalem, the beginning of His final days of ministry upon earth.  This marks the beginning of Holy Week for Roman Catholics; for the past few years the Passion Sunday celebration has been on a grander scale than that of my youth, all the Parishes of the area process to the Church of Our Lady of Fatima, and there the blessing of the Palms take place, thence the procession of all those gathered takes place into the grounds of the GCC Ground, Bourda, once famous for its Cricket matches.

As my sister pointed out to me, this was more a recording of the event rather than a serious attempt at photography, but there still might be a gem or two to be gathered from the day  🙂  I’m still not able to “make time” for the blogging and following up on other blogs, but too many friends and family were waiting for this one, so I just had to get through these photos at least  🙂

Click on the photograph below to go to the gallery for photos of the event.

2011 Deck – Week 15

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography16 Comments

I had a set of photos from Sunday that I had placed confidence in to choose a Deck photo from, I had already “decided” what the post would look like and that the image would be in colour…  then I went to accompany Nikhil on a photo-walk yesterday and came away with a photograph I just couldn’t put aside.

At the time that I took it, I was not wholly satisfied, I saw too many things in the scene that I thought would be distracting or intrusive in the shot, but then I downloaded them all and started sorting through them, and although I probably gave Nikhil the idea that I wasn’t getting what I felt I should from the scene (which at the time was true), I think I got what the scene offered rather than what I wanted.

There are still elements in the photograph that annoy me (but only if I look at it very large, if I ever have to print it large I may have to “edit” further.)

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

This is a view of a portion of the Seven Ponds monument in the Botanical Gardens, as seen from the Mausoleum.  Laziness played a large part in the choice of lens, I had the “kit lens” on the camera at the time, 18-55mm Canon lens, which most “professionals” would shudder at the thought of using, but I was too lazy to dive into the bag and use anything else 🙂