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.
This is what the blog is about, the results of my being a Photo Hobbyist
Alone I sit,
I count the time
passing things,
never sublime.
Seconds pass,
minutes crawl
hours move,
shadows on the wall
part of the scene,
am I now
sitting beneath
the leafy bough
warmth of sun,
breeze so cool
keep away,
deathly ghoul
strength be mine,
time to rise,
home I ride
‘neath darkening skies.
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 🙂
Originally, I had often thought that to use a location or subject that you are comfortable with is the ideal thing if you are looking for something to photograph, but, for me, because of the familiarity with the location or subject everything looks “normal“, nothing inspires you to take the photograph and you think to yourself, there’s nothing here that interests me.
It’s always the same, you see these items or these scenes everyday and you are so familiar with them that there’s nothing “special” about it that demands that you photograph it, nothing looks unusual enough, or stands out from the norm that would entice you to take a photograph.
The solution? Get out, go somewhere different, the change in scenery inevitably does the trick.
Nikhil and I have developed a habit of, every now and then, getting out of the office and take a midday walk, other than just getting away from the toll of everyday work, it gives us an opportunity to get some fresh air and also see what is out there to photograph. Two Fridays ago, he came by an afternoon and said “Can you get away for a few minutes? I want to take a few photos”, and away we went, I got a few that I considered worthy enough to upload to the site, you can click on these to see the larger images:
Sometimes, it’s even a place you’ve been before, but something new catches your eye, it could be a new element, or different positioning of old ones, often enough it’s just how the light works on the same old subjects, the scene changes as the sun makes its way across the meridians and the same scene looks vastly different in June than it did in November. On a family outing during Easter, on what would have been “just another day” I actually came away with quite a few photos that I thought I should share, some have already been uploaded and these are some to add:
On the most recent of those midday walks I mentioned I came back with some rather nice ones, my favourites being the Sepia rendered ones;
So, I truly believe that if you’re stuck in a rut with the types of photography, if you have the photographer’s equivalent of Writer’s Block, just grab the camera, and take a walk, it could be a block away, or just out the door, a change of scenery may be all your need. You should have a general idea of where you normally pass, don’t go there, change your route, take the long way home 🙂 Or if you are like most people these days and go everywhere in a vehicle, stop! Drive to a spot somewhere along your normal route and get out, take a walk and maybe you’ll see things just a little differently. If you’re in Georgetown (or New York City), having someone with you is probably a good idea, they can watch your back or even spot something you missed, just remember, if you’re going out, take the camera with you.
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;
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 🙂
As I never intended to pursue the art of photography as a profession, I never thought that I should really delve into certain aspects of it, such as the technical work involved or the jargon, or understanding what all the dials and buttons on cameras really do, I just wanted to point the little gadget in the direction of what caught my interest and after I put into the frame what I figure was a good image, press the shutter button and… Voila! I have the photograph I want. But as with most things in life, it never quite works out that way.
As I got more and more into “taking pictures” I began to concentrate on focusing. and once I did that I noticed that certain things were “sharper” or more in focus than others, and that the general area of “sharpness” varied throughout my photographs, so my landscapes would have a lot of objects sharp, and my portraits would have less objects being sharp, since I was shooting in Auto, the camera was doing these things automatically, depending on light, and the distance the objects were from the camera., so if the camera was doing it, why should I bother with how its done? Exactly! let the camera do all the work, I say. Again, it never quite works out that way.
As I paid more and more attention to the photographs that I took, I began to wish that I had gotten more things in focus or less things in focus, and then I had to go and ask how that was done, and I was told about Depth of Field. Now there are lots of articles on this subject, and if you are interested in really learning all the nitty gritty of DoF, then you should read those, I understand enough to get by but not the whole story.
This is as far as I got and I think it serves me well enough for now, until, of, course, I get the need to do more and need to learn more 🙂
I’ve been taught that there are two types, shallow and wide, those words don’t exactly scream “opposites” to me but, instead of arguing the point, I’ll just accept it. If they say its a shallow depth of field, they’re referring to the fact that I have fewer things in focus or sharper, and if the say it’s a wide depth of field, they’re referring to the photo having more objects (at varied distances from the camera) in focus. Sounds straightforward to me, so how do I manipulate it myself? I apparently need to adjust the “aperture”, oh boy, more things to learn about 🙂
The aperture simply refers to the opening of the lens, how large or how small the opening is, obviously if its larger more light enters and if its smaller less light enters, if you want to know what this has to do with the depth of field, you should read the more technical articles available all over the internet, I won’t even try to explain this one, suffice to say that they’ve come up with a numbering system for describing the aperture size. Now this is where they first confused me, the smaller aperture is assigned the larger number, and the larger apertures are assigned the smaller number. Why? Think of it as fractions. If you were not very good at math then you’ll be as confused as I was. The Aperture settings are described as f/15 and f/2.8, so if you think of the f as 1, then its 1/15th and 1/2.8, and according to my math teachers if the number at the top is the same, then the fraction with the bigger number at the bottom is actually the smaller of the two.
I actually understand what I’m saying and I’m still confusing myself. Here’s the gist then, if I ignore the whole fraction thing and just think of the apertures as numbers, then if I want a shallow depth of field I use the smaller numbers, like 2.8, and if I want a wider depth of field I use the larger numbers, like 15. I like this logic better, narrow = smaller, wide = larger. I can work with this. And then they tell me the next thing that happens when I mess with apertures is that, because I’m playing with the size of the aperture, remember this is the opening of the lens, and this will affect not only the depth of field but the “brightness” of the image (OK, fine, exposure), so if I’m shooting in manual mode I need to adjust the Shutter Speed accordingly. Let’s just say I haven’t gotten to the stage in my learning where I shoot a lot in Manual. So I set the camera in Aperture Priority (usually a big A on the dial) and let the camera figure out the best shutter speed 🙂
So, if you’ve read this far, you KNOW that I’m not a professional, and you should probably doublecheck EVERYTHING I just said 🙂
What sparked this long explanation of mostly confusion, I was staring at the image in this article, which I had taken back in April. Speaking of confusion, if someone mentions to you the “Circles of confusion” with regards to Depth of Field, if you don’t understand what I’ve described here, don’t bother, it will only add to the confusion 🙂 If however, you do grasp the gist of things, then, by all means, look up the “Circle of Confusion” and have some fun reading it.
P.S. click on the image to go to the site 🙂
I agree with NIkhil on this post, so I thought it a great idea to Repost it.
I often read commentary from a photographer called Ken Rockwell, he’s considered a bit of a nut sometimes, but in this I agree with him, The Camera Doesn’t Matter. That statement may be a bit far-fetched, but when you take it in context you’ll see what he means.
The camera is a tool, just a tool in your arsenal. The photographer has to see the intended shot, set the camera to their desired settings, and compose the final image. Final image may be a bit off the mark since it still has to be processed (whether in a conventional lab or a digital setting), and in this there are “tools” as well at work.
In the old context, guns don’t shoot people, people shoot people, it’s the same with photography, cameras don’t take the photographs, the photographer does.
As for Ken’s bold statement, “The Camera Doesn’t Matter”, it’s like this; since the camera is a tool, the photographer needs to know the limitations of the tool, what it can or can’t do and work within those parameters. You can’t expect to take a point-and-shoot camera made in 2004 and shoot a perfect photo of a moving subject in low light as you probably can now with something like the Nikon D300, but if you know what type of light you get the best photos from with the camera, or if you know the type of images you’ll get with that same camera in lower light then you will know what to expect from the camera and what type of photographs you can expect to produce under those circumstances.
If I know that this old camera will produce a grainy image at night, then I’ll pick a suitable subject and use the grainyness to advantage, maybe by using a sepia type conversion for an “old look” to it.
Again, you can use the old saying, a good workman doesn’t blame his tools, know your tools and what they can do and work within the parameters.
A better camera will not necessarily give you a “better” photograph, but it will be different, it may be clearer, larger, more details maybe, but not necessarily better. You will never see the same scene exactly the same way twice, so you need to make the best use of the tools at your disposal to get the best photo at that time.
I seem to live in a location where the “city” meets the “country“, do they call that the suburbs?
One benefit of living here is that I get to see a little bit of both, I have family living in both sections, as it were. On occasion, when I am leaving home for work, I would see some birds, usually too far off for me to photograph, but sometimes, they’ll be perched on a nearby fence, or post, or wire (you get the drift) and if I carefully lift my camera I may even get to photograph them without scaring them away first.
My favourites are the various hawks that prey on snails from the gutters and trenches in the area, anyone who has seen my photographs would have seen these quite a few times over the years 🙂 I probably need to try and capture those in new ways, even I am getting tired of just seeing them staring at me 🙂 Quite common, in our area are some types of white birds… OK, I just noticed that I know nothing of bird nomenclature, if anyone knows where Waldyke Prince is, tell him I need help in this area. Anyway, back to what I was saying… there are these white birds, and once in a while they’ll pose just like the hawks.
I have also found that I don’t take enough photos in the rain, this may have to do with the fact that my camera is now weather-sealed, but still, I don’t do it enough. My favourite rain shot is still my Fleur de Lis Gate Toppers, which I did twice, once when I used a Canon Powershot S5 and then recently with the Canon Rebel T1i, anyway, enough advertising for Canon, here is that white bird sitting in the rain 🙂
Of course, if anyone knows the name, common and scientific, I would be grateful for the knowledge.
Back in March of this year, we were fortunate enough to get an invitation to go along with my brother to visit a forestry concession in the Berbice area, the main location was at Bamboo Landing, where we visited the first day, then we traveled onto the base camp at Charabaru where we spent the night.
One of the main reasons for going was to see a Harpy Eagle in its natural habitat, Rommel (who runs the concession) explained that they had found at least two sites in the concession where there were Harpy nests and they had stopped all work in those areas to preserve the habitats. It is nice to find that type of thinking in this age when more and more people think only of the dollar.
We were hopeful of seeing the Harpy eagle, but not too optimistic, since we had heard stories of people looking for hours and not seeing one. We were luck, we saw two of them,
TWO! And then I realized that I am not equipped for Bird photography, I need a sponsor for bigger lenses 🙂 But, as someone once pointed out to me, a
poor photograph is better than none, so I can proudly proclaim that I have photographs of the Harpy Eagle in its natural habitat.
The concession also has its own farming areas, so the photographs in the album on my site reflect quite a diversity of images. I have already used some images from that trip in previous posts in the blog, those covered monochromes and HDRs, these are strictly general type photographs, no special post-processing.
The Harpy eagles were sighted in the early morning and, as chance would have it, the only way we could see him, was facing due east, towards the morning sun, I guess you really can’t have everything, at least we saw them.
I hope to get another chance sometime to visit the area again, it really is very nice and peaceful and full of opportunities.
Visit the album at A Trip to Bamboo Landing
I have found that over the years of playing with cameras, I really love the vibrant colours that the default settings of a Canon camera have always had, and most times it shows in my photographs.
Over the years I have come to love doing select monochromes, specifically the black and whites and sepias that you can always find wherever I post my images. These two types of monochromes lend a different atmosphere to an image, sometimes even an image that has little appeal in it’s original colour state.
Many people take photographs and then decide later on that this particular one or that particular one would look nice in monochrome, while it has happened to me before (and likely to happen again) I usually take a photograph with this particular type of end-product in mind, these two images I recently posted from the trip to Bamboo Landing are very representative of that, they are the only one taken with monochrome in mind and each one was taken with the particular type of monochrome processing in mind that you see evinced in them.
The Black and White Image, was taken just after noon sometime, the heavy clouds and the shadows from the foliage made me think of this as a BW image, the lone tree (actually has some brush around it) cave a nice focal point to an otherwise bland river scene.
The Sepia image was taken around the same time, whenever I see something like an old house or an old boat (almost anything old) I almost instantaneously think “monochrome”, it just goes well together. When I first started doing Sepia photographs I had favoured the Canon default type on their point-and-shoot cameras, that very very vibrant, heavy on the sepia, but as I learned more and took more photographs, I learned to appreciate the lighter touches of sepia in an image.
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