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.
Category: Photography
This is what the blog is about, the results of my being a Photo Hobbyist
I almost didn’t get to sort out this last week’s photos, and I may have already used my best image for that last post 🙂
This week’s image has a little novelty, a small moon in the background. While this week’s image may not be too special, today is special for myself and Nikhil, we were both chosen as “Featured Local Photographers” for an event being held by the Demerara Tobacco Company as part of the Dunhill Experience, so a few of our images will be on display at a semi-private event and we are expected to be there to discuss our photography with the guests. This is a first for me, my fifteen minutes of fame (or shame, if I can’t put two words together correctly). Wish me luck, I am not too worried about my friend Nikhil, he’s a lawyer, he’s faced worse people 🙂 I think that they will feature other photographers at later events, so we’re like the opening act 🙂
Anyway, here’s the photo of the Susamacher Methodist Church 🙂
Recently I have taken to “not” reviewing my images until Friday morning, when I would choose my photograph for the 2010 Deck collection on the main site. But this week I broke from the norm to attempt another HDR (High Dynamic Range) image. I went with Nikhil out to get his daily photograph, and we turned down the dividing road between the villages of Better Hope and Vryheid’s Lust, I wasn’t much inspired by the things I saw, but the sky was very nice, and I thought that a wide-angle HDR would turn out nicely. I had also just downloaded my trial version of Nik HDR Efex Pro and I wanted to try it out.
I have blogged about how I normally process my HDR images before, so this post is more about showing the results of trying the new software from Nik. I was impressed with the similarity it has to the other Nik software I’ve tried (like the Nik SIlver Efex) and it is easy and intuitive to use. I did not try to learn too much on this first try, just played with the basic settings to see how it stacked up against Dynamic HDR from Mediachance.
I think the resulting image speaks for itself, both Nik HDR Efex Pro and Dynamic HDR were able to help me to portray the variety of tones that I saw, in this case I was facing the slate afternoon sun, so the image has a lot more detail than a standard shot of the sky which rendered the buildings in the foreground as mostly silhouettes.
Take a look and let me know what you think 🙂 If you click on the image the site has it a bit larger.
Do you see the humanoid looking speck at the top of that hill?
That’s my brother Andre, also known as The Lunatic. Always willing to go the extra mile or the extra climb for that perfect photograph, We were already on top of a hill and could see a nice view and a good distance, but Andre just had to go for a higher vantage point.
That’s my brother for you! When he was a teenager he rode from Georgetown to Lethem, he will tell you that he actually didn’t start riding until Linden, but that’s like saying the glass if fifteen-sixteenths full and not full all the way. Anyone who has travelled the trail in recent years knows that its rough, well that trail didn’t exist in that state when he rode it, it was rougher, with steeper hills and swamps.
He is the kind of person who will run towards the tornado to get a good shot, instead of running for cover like the rest of us, he will hang off the edge of cliffs looking at waterfalls, and jump out of a moving vehicle on a precarious hillside just because he sees a photo opportunity, leaving the rest of us panicking in the vehicle, worrying more about him than ourselves.
When Andre makes up his mind to do something, he’ll move mountains to do it, and accomplish it with style and a smile on his face.
Why am I saying all these things about him now? Men in our family generally don’t express that much emotion to each other, we acknowledge things like pride and love with a nod of the head and a small smile. Andre is the second member of our family to migrate this year, Joan married and migrated a few months back, none of the family have done so before, and the feelings are bitter-sweet. We are happy for them and wish them well in their lives, a future that is unsure as always, but sure to be filled with many things new and wondrous, yet we are sad that we are losing them, it is hard to say goodbye to someone who has been a part of your life for all of memorable time.
When this blog-post goes live, I will be at the airport saying goodbye to my brother, my friend. Vaya con dios! Hasta la vista!
This week was fairly good as photography goes, I took a lot of photographs, 311 of which I’ve downloaded, the remainder were from a wedding that I was helping my bother Andre out at.
Choosing an image for this week’s deck proved more difficult than I would have thought, but that is mainly because the image I wanted to use, I decided to relegate to another blog-post for tomorrow. The image I eventually decided upon was chose for the unusual perspective, at least for me, I am usually more of an angular person when it comes to the direction from which I generally point the camera, Nikhil is usually the one who goes for “head-on” views.
I had the Sigma 10-20mm Wide angle lens on my camera, and I thought that the image would look good from a head-on view facing the horizon, unfortunately the shoreline and the horizon were not exactly parallel at this point, but I think I got the image to where I wanted it 🙂
This was taken along the seawall somewhere between Montrose and Le Resouvenir on the East Coast of Demerara.
I decided on the name before I realised that I have one that was actually taken in October, but since I am unable to come up with a new creative sounding name, it remains as September Monochromes.
I want to start off with a Sepia image, it’s not necessarily a great image, but I liked the elements; seashore, people – young and not-so-young, and a fishing rod.
Afternoon After-school
The next is the first of the Black and White images, it is one that I recently entered into a DP Review challenge called Clouds, I was experimenting with a borrowed Canon 80-200mm lens and most of the images came out very low contrast, so like the Sepia one above, most of the rest I’ve rendered in monochrome. This one came out much better than expected, I had to give it a title for the challenge, so that’s how the title came to be.
Sail-winds and Silhouettes
Along the seashore, you are sure to find a coconut washed ashore by the waves, this one was partway up a concrete sloped walkway on the seawall, maybe washed there but probably kicked there by some youngster.
Coconut
The final image is the one taken in October, after our Robbery ordeal and we daringly went right back to the Kingston Promenade, I like the clouds in the sky and thought that the lighthouse silhouetted against it would look nice 🙂
They were doing some renovation work to the lighthouse, so you might notice the scaffolding on the sides of it there.
Sometime back I had mentioned to Bob Zeller, who is a superb bird photographer, that I had taken a few photos of birds in my journey as a photo-hobbyist. They are nothing as good as Bob gets, but I like to think they have a little merit 🙂 Another photographer who also has superb photos of birds is David Fernandes, who doesn’t have a blog that I know of, but has some lovely images on his site. If you get a chance please check out Bob’s blog and David’s site, especially if you are a bird watcher!
Some of you may have already seen these images, as they are not new, the last “birds” I shot was a pair of ducks wobbling along the road.
I don’t have one of those nice 400 or 500mm lenses that do such nice jobs of bird photography, so I have to rely on being luckily close to the bird or just crop the image to get a nice final composition 🙂 I thought that I wouldn’t try to lump them all into one blog-post, and being inspired by Bob’s photography and Bob Marley’s song “Three Little Birds” I thought that three images would be just right for this post. By the way, I don’t think the two Bobs are related.
First up is a little fellow that visited the house across the street from me whilst that house was under construction, I suppose that it should be no surprise that with the wood around for construction, he and another pal visited, and when the word was done, I never saw them back there again 🙂
The Wood and the Woodpecker
The second is the ever popular Kiskadee, one of the mobile telephone companies here even used them once as part of a campaign for their pre-paid mobile card vendors with the slogan “They’re just about everywhere”, more descriptive of the bird than the vendors, but we got the point 🙂 This one I took up at Good Hope Village on the East Coast of Demerara.
Kiskadee, Good Hope, East Coast Demerara
Finally there is this elusive little black and white bird that is so flighty (excuse the pun) that it is hard to get close to him for a good photo 🙂 I came out of my vehicle one day and there he was along the gutter, without trying to open my gate or anything, I reached into the vehicle for the camera and snapped off as many as I could before he flew off 🙂
Black and White
As you can probably tell from my nomenclature and my evasive naming of the birds, I am no bird watcher, and even with the general biology degree, the identification of bird species was not on the syllabus, so if anyone can help me with the names, scientific and local I would be grateful. 🙂
It wasn’t until I previewed this blog-post that I realized that all the birds are facing left, quite a coincidence!
UPDATE:
Bob has informed me that the first photograph of the woodpecker is a Pileated Woodpecker. Thanks Bob.
Something has changed… although I am not sure what it is, it has affected my photography, or maybe it has affected how I see my photographs. I was very disappointed with this last week’s photographs, either I have lost the zeal or I am more critical of the images, or I have simply taken bad images this last week. Of the one hundred and five images taken over the last week, there was one that I was somewhat pleased with, a location that I had photographed before, but never posted an image of it for The 2010 Deck.
We revisited the Kitty Market Square, and I took this image, I liked it in colour, but I also liked it in monochrome… after some consultation, the monochrome edged out the colour 🙂
I took photos on three days of the last week (from last Friday to this Thursday) but most of it is not worth even processing. The day that I took this photograph was eventful, so I will mention some of that after I put the photograph up. I was going to just put the photo up and leave the rest of the story out, but many people are expecting the story, so I will put some of it up.
The photograph is one of those Sunsets where the area around the sun is now warming up (so to speak) and the remainder of the sky is a cooler blue.
Kingston seashore, Georgetown Guyana. 5:37pm, September 28, 2010
Nikhil and I were out on the Kingston seashore photographing driftwood, waves, and whatever else caught our eye, including the setting sun and the resulting effects in the sky. Approximately 10 minutes after I took this photograph, we were back on the Promenade area around the area by the “Roundhouse”, there are usually some homeless men living in the Roundhouse. We were looking in that area for other things to photograph when we noticed that the sunset had changed to a much more orange and red cast and decided that we would return to the end of the promenade to photograph it. Just about this time two young men on bicycled passed us and stopped their cycles on at the end of the Roundhouse and disappeared behind the wall there. As we approached the end to photographed the sunset, we noticed that they were urinating and we naturally averted our gaze and concentrated on the sunset.
We were focused on the scene before us when they finished their business and walked behind us towards their bicycles, the next thing I knew I was falling to the ground and being attacked about my body by one of the men who now had a piece of wood in his hand. We were being robbed. My spectacles had fallen off and I could barely make out the man now shouting at me and hitting me, I told him to stop hitting and just take whatever it was he wanted, we were not going to fight them. It seemed he didn’t believe me and shouted to his companion to throw the gun. I repeated myself and seemed to get through to him, he searched my pants pockets and took all my cash and my cellular phone. He threw my wallet and licence on the ground and demanded that I not get up and try to follow them.
Nikhil helped me to my feet and also to find my spectacles, I really am useless without them. Some of the homeless men were returning to the Roundhouse after their evening bath in the sea and were shocked that in the short space of time that they had gone, we were attacked and robbed. Of course, we then called for help using the cellular phone that I had in my shirt pocket which they missed, we went to the Police and now one of them men has been captured. I learnt from NIkhil that although he was not assaulted with a piece of wood, the man who robbed him had a pistol. Amazingly, I still had my camera, but Nikhil’s camera was gone.
Fortuitously, one of the photographs I had taken earlier had captured the two men when they had passed us, that photograph assisted the police to identify the men and thus far apprehend one of them.
We are both fortunate to be alive. I have always been told by people wiser than myself that in a robbery, do not be a hero! Give them what they want and live. Some of that advice must have sunk in since that is what I did after the initial resistance. Of course, a few blows to the back of the head and neck puts one in a more submissive mood.
The photograph may not be great, but it certainly is not the last Sunset that I have seen.
This week was busy, I got more photographs than usual 🙂 I have quite a number that I would love to use as the photo for The 2010 Deck this week, but I have to choose one, so after some thought I chose one that I am unlikely to replicate anytime soon, it is a wide-angle shot from a low perspective:
Lighthouse, Kingston, Georgetown, Guyana
This is the “Lamp Room” at the top of the Lighthouse in Kingston, Georgetown, Guyana. It was taken from the stairwell at the level with the floor.
I’ve had this one in my upload folder for some time now, since Nikhil tried his self-portrait, and I thought at the time to just get a slightly different angle to his “back-of-the-head” shot he was going for. Of course, my version is a little darker and more moody, but I rather liked it, but I don’t think that Nikhil liked his “stomach” showing as much as I have it 🙂
Nikhil: attorney-at-rest, photographer-at-work
I happen to think he is a very good lawyer, and quite possibly a much better photographer, but what do I know?
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