Scotiabank Guyana 2011 Calendar

On December 21, 2010December 22, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography22 Comments

Well, it’s not the first time I’ve had a photo used in a project, but this is the first time since I started a blog 🙂 I had two photographs printed in the 2010 Calendar for the Guyana National Trust.

Scotiabank (Guyana) did their 2011 Calendars through a firm called KRITI, who approached a number of photographers who had some local scenes with a slight emphasis on the skies above, be it dramatic skies, overcast skies or just beautifully clouded skies. Of the six photographs featured, there were five “local” photographers and one foreign photographer (who lived here for two years, so he’s as local as foreigners get).

Below are some snapshots of the calendar with links to the photographer’s pages that I could get. (Click on the photos to go to the photographer’s pages)

Starting of was Nikhil’s image along the LBI (La Bonne Intention) shore,

Then Dwayne Hackette’s Sunset along the Berbice River,

Phillip William’s Earth Station photograph,

Philip Williams: Earth Station, Carifesta Avenue, Georgetown, Guyana

Rustom Seegopaul’s Georgetown from the Harbour Bridge crossing the Demerara River

My Lonesome Tree photograph from the Hamburg (Tiger Island) in the Essequibo River (taken when I shot with a Canon S5 Bridge Camera

Lonesome Tree on the Hamburg — Michael Lam: Lonesome Tree, Tiger Island, Essequibo River

and to top it all off with James Broscombe’s Great Balls of Fire, from the Rupununi

To be absolutely frank, the image of James’ Great Balls of Fire in the calendar does not do the original photo Justice, definitely click on the image above for a good look at the photo on his blog.

It should be noted that these cover all three major rivers of Guyana, the Georgetown Coastline and the Interior. If you are a Scotiabank Guyana customer, make sure to collect your copy 🙂

Thanks to Scotiabank and a special thanks to Sita at KRITI.

The Deck – Week 50

On December 17, 2010December 17, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography13 Comments

After three successive monochrome postings for the Deck project, I decided this week, that regardless of what the weather was like I wanted a coloured image,and I finally got something in keeping with the season, Demerara Mutual Insurance company lit up their building very nicely, and I took a few images at night to try and capture the spirit 🙂

Here’s the resulting image. Demerara Mutual has it’s main office on Avenue of the Republic in Central Georgetown, to the right of the photo, you can even see a portion of City Hall.

The Deck – Week 49

On December 10, 2010December 10, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography15 Comments

This week sees a continuation of the monochromatic trend of late, but instead of just a straight BW, I went for a sepia with a vignette. It was on one of those walks with Nikhil, while looking for his Photo for his 365, and even though these waterways have been done, and over-done, I thought I’d give it a try, with the over-cast sky and perpetuating gloom of the afternoon this was pre-destined to be a monochromatic photograph.

After minimal processing in Lightroom, I did the monochromatic rendition in Nik Silver Efex, it came out rather nicely.

The Deck – Week 48

On December 4, 2010December 4, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography14 Comments

I am pretty much disappointed with this week’s photographs, I have one of my wife that I thought was a great shot and was very tempted to put as the photo for this week’s Deck entry, but she would never forgive me if I did, so I had to settle for this one.

I intentionally took multiple exposures most of this week because I intended to do some more HDR attempts, but this one didn’t come out as expected. For some reason my alignment was all wrong and there’s quite a bit of haloing as a result. I did intend a BW HDR, so this I used as much to my advantage as possible.

I did the HDR merging in Nik HDR Efex Pro, and also added a vignette to it there. The final touches were added in Lightroom using a BW POP preset I got from Eric Kim, who does really great Street Photography, I hope he doesn’t mind that I used it for something other that Street Photography 🙂

I rather liked the lone tree and it’s reflection, so that’s why this was my choice this week.

The Deck – Week 47

On November 26, 2010November 26, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography10 Comments

As has been the norm of late, my week was busy, I only got to take photographs on three days, but I did manage to get a very nice photograph that was actually enhanced by the crazy cloudy weather we’ve been having recently.

This week I give you a scene from the Botanical Gardens, I was in the central area of the Seven Ponds, where some of the Nation’s revered men have been laid to rest; including the first Guyanese Governor General, Sir David Rose, the First President of Guyana, Arthur Chung and the great Guyanese poet Martin Carter.

Facing the ponds is The Mausoleum where the body of the second president of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, is entombed. Linden Forbes Samson Burnham was the first Executive President of Guyana, and was called the Founder Leader during his tenure as president.

The Mausoleum is a recent addition to the Gardens being built in 1986, it has numerous sculptures on the interior walls done by Ivor Thom.

The reflection in the pond was what drew me to this scene, I hope you like it.

The Deck – Week 46

On November 19, 2010November 19, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography8 Comments

It’s been another crazy week, somehow not finding the time to do certain things, like check out other photography blogs and process some of my photos. I took photographs on only three days this week, so one of them had to work for this week’s Deck Photo.

It has been a while since I tried out my Macrography (or Macro Photography), and since I came upon a moth recently in the house, I was quick to grab the opportunity to try some out. Since I don’t have a nice Canon Macro Lens, I went the old route, I grabbed my 18-55 Kit lens and my Raynox M250 Macro Lens, snapped them on together on the camera and experimented with the subject.

I didn’t have a lighting option available to me, neither softbox nor macro flash, so I was relying on natural sunlight, with it being an overcast day, that wasn’t too helpful either, but I think I got a good shot none-the-less.

I have the Raynox lenses from when I shot with the Canon PowerShot S5, and I love them both, the 250 is a larger magnification, so since I was only using a maximum of 55mm on the kit lens, I went for that one, how they work is that you screw in the Raynox lens onto an adapter and snap it onto the front of the camera lens.

Here’s a portion of the moth’s wing:

Macro of Moth Wing - Canon 18-55mm with Raynox M250 Macro Lens

The Deck – Week 45

On November 12, 2010November 12, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography4 Comments

There’s an old Koker (or sluice) on Camp Road outside of the Guyana Technical Institute that I have been keeping an eye on for months, I always want to stop and photograph it, but most times there are some homeless men or just loafers around it, then at other times, the scene just wasn’t appealing to me. I was accompanying Nikhil as he headed up to David Street to photograph a scene his wife had pointed out to him when I noticed the lighting and the overall scene and asked him to stop so that I could get it at least this once.

I was a bit pressed for time this week, I haven’t processed any of my other images for the week, I took the easy route and did some minor “light” editing in Oloneo for this week’s image.

Camp Road Koker - 1/125s f/8.0 ISO200 10mm

The Deck – Week 44

On November 6, 2010November 6, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography7 Comments

How I started the project for the 2010 Deck, the photographic week ends on a Thursday, this last Thursday also happened to be the day before a national holiday in Guyana, a Hindu festival called Diwali or Deepavali (pronounced Deepawlee). There is also an annual event on the night before Diwali, the Diwali Motorcade, featuring lots of illuminated vehicles.

Although the image I have decided to use for this week’s Deck Photo is not the best image for the week, I thought that I should use something representative of the Holiday. Moving night photography is definitely not my thing 🙂

This is a portion of the winning “float” of the night, it was from the Edward B. Beharry Group of Companies, and executed beautifully by Andrew Arts.

The Deck – Week 43

On October 29, 2010October 29, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography10 Comments

Oloneo just extended their current Beta version of their software to December, and I remembered that I had wanted to experiment with a single image in their software and see what lighting possibilities there were, so this week I chose a photograph that I had wanted to do some minor lighting adjustments and colour saturations to. As Oloneo can work directly with the RAW file I actually got quite a lot of noise in the process, and I then used some noise reduction before uploading.

As a stand-alone RAW processor it is not bad at all, nowhere close to Lightroom, but then nothing is. I like the slider controls and I would recommend it for HDR work, and if you like experimenting, it has a unique “Relighting” HDR feature, for controlled shooting conditions, check out their site if you get the chance.

I only took 86 photos this week, but for the small number I had a slightly hard time choosing one, I think it is just because of my experimenting in Oloneo that I chose this one 🙂

This was taken at Diamond (village) on the East Bank of Demerara, the cane fields are in bloom, the sun was about to go into its daily descent for sunset and some of the clouds were reflecting the sun’s glow nicely. Oloneo stripped out the EXIF information from the file, I hope they fix that in the final version.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Diamond Fields 7505. Canon T1i, 1/40sec f/4.5 ISO200 10mm

An Exhibition

On October 27, 2010October 27, 2023 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography24 Comments

I seriously doubt that I should classify it as an exhibition, but failing to find another name for it, that’s what it was in essence. There are a series of events held under the patronage of the local tobacco company, the Demerara Tobacco Company, where they associate their premium brand of cigarettes, Dunhill, with various forms of art, featuring local artists. I understand that prior to the event at which I was involved, there was one where they showcased a local painter, some of his finished work as well as one he was working on at the event itself.

The event planners had shortlisted a few up-coming local photographers, you know, the ones who aren’t famous locally as yet, and we were invited to a meeting to discuss the event. At the end of the meeting they had decided that this would most likely be the first photographic exhibition event they were doing and since both Nikhil and I had a “portfolio” each to choose from, they would like it if we did the event. Our portfolios were originally sent to the event planners by another photographer (he’s the Professional one) Dwayne Hackett, so a big thanks to him.

At first we were flattered, and then we were panicked, as we had to choose (together with a representative from the sponsors) and print the images by the next day.

Amazingly we managed to do it all, and even helped to mount the images, with LOTS of help from the guys who work with me at the sign company (DD Signs), without their help it would not have come off, definitely not!

The event itself was…. not too bad. It was held in the Blue Lagoon Bar at the Hotel Tower, we had to contend with lots of music from a separate event outside, the portable AC units were not doing the job of cooling the room, and we were asked to wear formal attire (I think the last time I wore a suit before that was to my sister’s wedding). The attendance was poor, but that might have been a good thing for two very nervous photographers, we had less chance of embarrassing ourselves 🙂

We had our cameras, but they were mostly there to identify us as “The Photographers”, and I don’t think either of us took much more than a few token photographs.

For our regular readers, we decided that since we didn’t bother to actually take photographs of our photographs on display, we’d link a few here on the blog post 🙂

Nikhil’s Set

My Set

And here’s one taken by another up-and-coming photographer on the scene, Troy Parboo, in it we are graced by the presence of Ms. Shannon de Haas, another of the short-listed photographers.