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.
I was doing some re-arranging of my website-recently (background stuff that no-one would notice) and came across a folder I had created to temporarily put images, before I made them public, I did not use it extensively and actually forgot it was there, there were two images in it, I decided to make at least one of them public, the other one I am still not happy with.
I was fortunate to be one of four people in a group that was allowed into the Parliament Buildings to do some photography last year. I have actually processed very few of those images, one in particular I took time to use a tripod, and do multiple exposures for a HDR image, this is the one that I am sharing today.
Although I used a tripod, I only used three exposures but I think it came out nicely.
I hope you like it.
As always, please click on the image for a much better view in the Gallery.
Girls of the Savanna - A Phillip Williams Photograph
You know …no you don’t know what can happen after a shot is taken, after a single moment is captured and frozen in time. Sometimes, no, most times that image lives on long after the person or object is gone. Phillip Williams (on Facebook)
A photograph is a moment frozen in time, given how some of us take photographs it could be a moment that is a split second, or minutes (those nifty long exposures that show light trails at night or even star trails in the sky). Phillip Williams captured a moment, a beautiful photograph at Guyana’s Rodeo showing two lovely women on horseback. The one to the left with the blue tie around her neck is Cheryl, a friend of Cheryl’s told Phil that she took her own life late last year, may she rest in peace. I am not a reporter and I can’t verify this, but it’s not relevant to the emotions and thoughts that go through people’s minds when they hear things like this.
As photographers we should remember that we capture moments of people’s lives, and those moments are tied to memories, photographs can be very powerful when it comes to evoking an emotion. Phil’s photo makes me want to head off to the Rodeo to see what these young ladies would be doing, it gives me a longing for Lethem and the open savannah outside, it brings back memories of vaulted skies and distant mountains.
For friends and family of Cheryl, this photo may bring joyful memories of the Rodeo, of how she lived and laughed and loved, or it may bring back painful memories of her death and the sorrow that those who loved her felt at her passing, and the unanswered questions about the “why” of it all.
If you are going to call yourself a photographer, a photo-hobbyist, an amateur photographer, an aspiring photographer, and yes, even a snapshottist, what you produce with each shutter-click can be very meaningful. Will every photograph we take have that impact, probably not! Should we strive to make every photograph that we show to others have more meaning than just a shutter-click, definitely!
I wanted Phil to do a small write-up, but he said he is more of a “Visual” type of guy, no argument there, he’s quite a talented photographer and videographer, his photos and videos do their own story-telling, I seem to like adding words to mine 🙂
Click on the photo to see the original at Phil’s Flickr feed.
Just a little ramble from me, this is not instructional in the literal sense. A fellow blogger and photographer, Nigel (or greysqrl) always asked me to write a tutorial on my monochromes and specifically my black and white photographs, but I’ve never felt that I had an “art” to it or a specific sequence of steps in the methodology to really do a tutorial type of blog, so I thought that at least I can do some rambling or musing on the subject.
Back when I shot with the Canon S5 Super-Zoom bridge camera (basically a hyped-up point-and-shoot) there were several colour modes including black and white and sepia, so I had disciplined myself to taking the scenes that appealed to me in these aspects in those modes, so I never had a full-coloured version of the photograph for any sort of comparison. So for me, the idea of a scene being in monochrome always started out before I pressed the shutter-button.
After I started using a DSLR (for now the Canon T1i or 500D) I learnt about post-processing further, using RAW images, etc. Now, I still consider many scenes in monochrome and earmark them for that specific type of processing later, but I also change my mind about some scenes that were not considered for monochrome initially.
What makes a good monochrome image? I really never thought about it, I just “feel” that some scenes make better monochromes than others. I am sure that as I continue my photographic journey I will learn more about what actually makes a good monochrome, to me it’s a “old” looking scene, or a scene with high contrasts, or in many of Nikhil’s cases one with lots of texture 🙂
How do I process a monochrome image? Since all my current images start out as full coloured, it is usually that “feel” that helps me select the ones for monochrome, either that or the new method of processing as colour and then it doesn’t quite come out the way I want and I send it over to monochrome just to see what would happen 🙂
I use Lightroom as my primary image processing and workflow application, but the majority of my monochromes are done in Nik Silver Efex (after some processing in Lightroom). I take each photo on its own merit, some need to be treated softly while others need to be more contrasty and structured. Nik Silver Efex has a range of presets that you can view easily and then do your own fine-tuning.
With scenes that have clouds (I seem to have many of those now) I always go for bringing out or enhancing the detail in the clouds. The dynamic range captured using a single exposure is not (always) a true representation of what the human eyes saw or can see. Often I would look at the scene and see the nice detail in the foreground, then look up and see the layering in the clouds, but when the photograph is taken I lose some detail, and In post=processing I try to retain that detail that I saw.
Dry Docked?
This particular photo was not intended as a monochrome image, the upper portion of the boat (or lower portion in the image, since the boat is upside down) was yellow and I had initially intended to emphasize that, but it didn’t work out as planned.
There was a challenge recently in the Guyana Photographer’s FaceBook page, it was about silhouettes, while there seemed to be various interpretations on the theme, I noticed that not everyone had the same idea of a silhouette.
Although many dictionaries seem to have similar definitions, they usually go back to the original meaning, referring to “cut-outs”, the explanation that I like the best I came across on Wikipedia (yes, I know, not always the most reliable of sources, but its accurate here), “A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene consisting of the outline and a basically featureless interior, with the silhouetted object usually being black”. I think this explanation covers the idea of a silhouette regardless of the medium used to illustrate it.
This image I intentionally under-exposed when I took it to capture more detail in the sky and less in the foreground and objects between myself and the horizon, although I did under-expose I apparently didn’t do so enough since I still had to adjust the black levels to get what I wanted 🙂
Although the tree-line takes prominence in this image, the real interest is the child on the wall walking into the sunset. Intentionally under-exposing the photograph is one way I know of getting the silhouettes that we try for in images like this. Getting the right exposure is important, goodness knows I’m still trying with that, but learning when to over-expose the photograph and when to under-expose it can create those moments that are more memorable than an average exposure 🙂
The Walk Home
For a better look, click on the image to see it in the Gallery.
The final week of the year, and the final photo for the Deck Project for this year. This one I can say I like, it has been “edited” a bit in addition to the standard processing, I added a “purplish” gradient to the sky for effect.
Another year has ended, I am a bit disappointed with myself, and I think I need to refocus for the new year, I plan on restarting the Deck Project, it gives me a sense of purpose for my photography, so I wouldn’t want to stop it. I think that Nikhil may be re-starting his 365 Project that he did a year ago, I look forward to that.
As we end this year and look forward to 2012, I present a photo that I think represents many Coastland Guyanese, a typical afternoon on the coast, enjoying the winds of the Atlantic and just “Shooting the Breeze” (chatting, talking, gaffing!)
People who know me, know that I like music, I can carry a tune, I can even play one (given enough time), and I have a wide appreciation for music, meaning that I try to appreciate different styles and genres.
Everyone has their opinions, and they’re entitled to them, so not everyone will agree on the categorization of music into “good” and “bad“. I have my own definition of music, or more specifically the “tune” or “melody” that forms the body of a song; for me it’s “If you can play it on an instrument (other than the human voice) then it may be classified as a melody or tune”
Enough of the rambling, this is actually about a photograph. This was a photo that was a strong contender for the 2011 Deck – Week 51, but was passed over.
Jane has been the primary organist at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception for as long as I can remember, she has her quirks, but the one thing I know is that for her, it’s about the Music. As I understood the story (as I was told as a boy) she had a development challenge and learning music (and the piano/organ) was a form of therapy, to say that Music saved her life would probably be a reasonable statement.
About the Music
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery 🙂
I had shortlisted four images for this blog-post, two of them were too much in keeping with the general theme of the last few weeks, so I discarded those (for later publication) and one was somehow reminiscent of photos I’ve seen from Nikhil and some other local photogs, so I ended up with this one.
I titled it “Ritual at Dawn” because I had inadvertently caught some people in the frame, I think they may have been Hindus out to perform a seaside ritual (I think I should enquire more about this)
I was a bit dissatisfied with the original capture, but was taken enough by the scene to try to “salvage” the image. I tried a single image HDR tone-mapping, but that didn’t work out as I expected. I then decided to go for a pseudo-HDR, since I hadn’t actually taken multiple exposures, I created the multiple exposures in Lightroom (using a 1.5ev on the original image) In the image with the +1.5ev I wanted to get more detail from the rocks on the shore, so I used a gradient to adjust the exposure in that area. Using the three new exposures I did an HDR process in Nik HDR Efex Pro, and although the full-coloured resulting image was OK, I thought that in this instance I would get a better image using a black and white HDR rendering.
I think Week 50 was the worst photographically for me this year…. I have one photograph. According to Dwayne Hackett even if I took a hundred shots of the same subject that day and I used one, it’s still only one photograph, I didn’t take a hundred photographs, just a hundred attempts 🙂 I took three photographs of the same subject that week. Three!
If I thought things couldn’t be worse, I had forgotten to reset the settings on the camera… so they were taken in bright sunlight at ISO 1600.
Reminder to self (for the thousandth time) always reset your camera immediately after a shoot (or whatever session) or else you have to live with whatever the camera hands you next time!
This building is right behind DeSinCo Trading (Sheriff Street), in the little side street, I think its Craig Street, I had never noticed it before, I was waiting in the vehicle while my better half was in DeSinCo, I just couldn’t help myself after staring at it for several minutes, just got out of the vehicle and snapped three shots just to satisfy the little voice in my head that said “go take the photo, go take the photo!”
Church Closed
Its a sad sight to see places of worship that become abandoned, usually because of a lack of attendance over the years, I don’t know the story behind this one, but I was reminded while writing this post of my most recent experience in church, I was saddened at the poor attendance to Christ mas Eve’s Midnight Mass. I remember when I was younger (much younger) the Midnight Mass at the Cathedral was always packed, maybe some of the pews in the wings would be empty, but the centre of the church would be filled. Have we lost the faith that we once had or has the commercialisation of Christmas finally overtaken the true meaning for the Season?
Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery.
UPDATE: I was told by Dave that the property is now owned by DeSinCo, Frank (owner of DeSinCo) built a new church for the parishioners on Middleton Street (a short distance away), so this one was not closed for a lack of attendance but for a more practical and financial reason. 🙂
I think that Christmas Carols (and Christmas music in general) lends to the “feel” of Christmas as much as many of the other traditions associated with the Day and the Season. Whether its Carollers on the street or in the church, the chorus of voices or the clarity of the soloist singing those traditional carols (or the new songs) helps get me in the Christmas Mood.
This was a photo taken at the annual Festival of Carols held at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Brickdam Cathedral), it is one of the few times I’ve attempted higher ISOs on the Canon Digital Rebel T1i, although there’s a fair amount of noise it wasn’t too bad for the shot, and I did a bit of noise reduction in Topaz 🙂
Because I am behind schedule posting my Deck images this year, it is co-incidental that the image for the 48th Week is actually appropriate for today, the day I am posting it…
Everyone has beliefs, even if you say you don’t believe in anything, that in itself is a belief. I believe in Santa Claus! Maybe not the person, but the idea, the idea of giving, of making children happy, even of the stories and the legends that surround this figure.
I like to be a child again every Christmas and believe in the magic of giving, in the magic of the gift that was the Christ-child.
To all my friends and family, to anyone who happens across this page, whether you believe in Jesus, in Allah, in the pantheon of Hindu gods, in the Buddha, in a Supreme Being or in no particular power, I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings!
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