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.
Being on the northern coast of South America… I suppose that’s what we have… an Exposed Coast… facing the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Luckily for us, hurricanes never seem to come close to shore here… 
Exposed Coast – 13-0514 | Canon EOS 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 2013
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.
There was this “plume” of clouds in the sky that reminded me of the smoke signals I remember seeing in old Western movies, except that it was more contiguous than the separate puffs that I remember from the movies.
I was trying to get an average exposure, but no matter what I did that day the birds in the boat just “glowed”, the intensity of the afternoon sun I guess was just too much for my camera lens/sensor.
I only looked back at this image today and decided to process it through anyway 🙂
Canon EOS 60D | Sigma 10-20mm EX Lens (@20mm, 1/125s, ISO100)
Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery, along with many other of my Black and White images.
My priorities in life must most definitely be askew, since I seem to have less time for photography than ever before… But even if I have to take a photo of the same thing every week, I will finish this project 🙂
As I was driving along the seawall, I noticed the white-capped waves as they rushed to shore and thought to just stop and catch a few. It was a bright afternoon, but lacking any fancy filters or gadgetry I thought that I’d just bring out the focus of my intent in post-processing.
I used an orange filter in Post-processing to deepen the hue of the sky and emphasize the white caps of the waves.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.
Sometimes using a “rule” works in your favour. One of the most harped-upon rules of photography is the Rule of Thirds, I think every beginner in the field knows this one. Divide the viewfinder in three parts, both vertically and horizontally, then use that to help compose the image, whether putting subjects into the portions or onto the dividing lines.
Nikhil always tells me that we should know the rules, so we’ll know when to break them with greater effect on the resulting image, or in this case use it as literally as possible 🙂
I tried my hand at another seascape, and remembered that sometime back I was told that more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface is covered by water, so I covered two-thirds of my image with the sea-water 🙂
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.
Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing.
– Hiroshi Sugimoto
In 1980 Sugimoto began working on a series of Seascapes from around the world, he uses different exposure times (sometimes up to three hours) and he composes them with the horizon bisecting the photograph. Oh, he uses an old-fashioned large format camera to do this, serious stuff!
Sugimoto I’m not, but his reflection on how the view of the sea affects him made me thing of all the times I’ve visited our own Seawall, and even when the tide is high and the waves are rough, there’s a sense of sereneness that permeates me, calms me and makes me forget my worries. His last phrase there also reminds me of how we often stand (or sit) and face the waters and stare out to sea, as if in a daydream, “on a voyage of seeing”.
I won’t try to mimic his work, but the simplicity of his work made me wonder if I could try a simple seascape, something without the occasional boat or human element, or the rocks along a shore.
This image was taken in the afternoon, and I processed it using Nik Silver Efex, with an orange filter for effect.
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, along with others in the Black and White series.
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