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.
Several weeks ago my Deck photo was an exterior photograph of the Saint Barnabas Anglican Church. That church is now in the process of being demolished, but luckily, I got to take some photographs of the interior just before that. I happened to be on the outside of the church doing some more exterior shots with the wide-angle lens when I was approached by another local photographer, Amanda Richards, recent winner of the local chapter of the PAHO Safe Motherhood Photography Contest, she was awaiting the priest to open the church for the Deconsecration Ceremony. So fate stepped in, and I got to go inside the church to photograph parts of it before all the items were removed.
This photograph was pure luck! I was facing the altar taking a photograph, when I saw the area lighten around me, on turning around, a man was opening the doors at the back and just at that moment Ms Marjorie Kirkpatrick walked across the aisle. And there it was, one of my favourite photos of the set.
I called the photograph “Final Entrance Opening”, referring to the doors themselves and to the final service to be held there.
I will do a later blog-post on the rest of photos from that set. 🙂 I promise.
For years I have had the job description of a “Computer Graphic Artist”, I can honestly say I don’t think I deserve that title, I am not an artist, I can’t draw to save my life! I know some computer software programs that help in “artistic” layouts, so that’s what I do 🙂 And apparently, successfully, at least for a number of years now!
If someone were to say that my “vision” of the product I am trying to create using those software was artistic, I’ll take it as a compliment, and if someone were to say that I have used that artistic vision and adapted it to my photography, I would also take that as a compliment 🙂 My first “artistic” job under that title was under Bernard Ramsay, and I learnt more about layouts and type-style usage from him than at any other time in my life, I helped to bring the Computer into his business (which was mostly hand-done even then), but he helped shape the “artistry” in me.
Even before then when I did small posters or flyers for the church, or Posters for the National Cultural Center for the late, great Lloyd Grannum, it was the encouragement of those that I did those things for that helped shape me.
As a side-note, Lloyd Grannum was probably one of the greatest men to ever walk this earth (in my humble opinion), his outlook on life, love and his laughter always made me feel that this simple man, with a simple job and a simple family life, had more greatness in a smile than I would ever achieve in my lifetime, and that feeling has never changed.
Back to the topic of artists! During the recent Squash tournament that took so much of my time away from my work and my “casual” photography, there was an Opening Ceremony for the event, and just before that ceremony, one of the female squash players of the Guyanese team did some “face-painting” for the members for the team. She is an Artist (yes, with a capital “A”). A talented young lady, who comes from a very talented family, I think every member of their family expresses “art” in one way or another, simply amazing!!!
She is Gigi! watch out for her, she is destined for greatness in art. My Deck photo this week is of her in action, while painting faces may not be very glamorous, this was not only about the art! It was about Squash, about Team, about Compadres and Friends, about Expression, and Patriotism!
In the last post I mentioned that I was thinking about the past and the future, and this post was to be the photo about the “future” I was thinking about.
I recently spent a very packed week doing some “sports” photography, something that I don’t do. I was volunteered to assist with the photography of the Junior CASA (Caribbean Area Squash Association) Squash Tournament. Squash is an indoor game, played on a “closed” court, and in Guyana, there is very little area available for viewing, much less photographing the game. The lighting on the courts is not exactly geared towards photography either, the courts are lit by flourescent lights (some more than others), three of them have glass backs, but the reflection in the glass are an obstacle by themselves!
I took photos in each of the five courts, two of them I had to shoot through the glass, no choice, two others have no glass wall, and I had to shoot from the spectator area above the back of the court, and the last court I shot through the glass, from the spectator area at the back of the court, and from windows high on the side of the court.
For simplicity I used the smallest lens I had, the 18-55mm, and since none pf my lens are particularly fast, it didn’t matter too much, I had to play a lot with ISO and shutter speeds 🙂
The photo I chose to use from that week is of one of the first round games of the tournament, as photos go, it’s not spectacular, but it shows the angle from which I was taking photos (up at the window), some athleticism demonstrated by the players, a small piece of the glass back-wall to the far left; it was taken at ISO800, with an aperture of f/5.0 and a shutter speed of 1/320. During the afternoon I actually got up to those speeds, but as the time passed 5pm the light changed and getting any shutter speeds in the 1/200 vicinity was lucky 🙂
It was a learning experience, hours on hours shooting, hours and hours sorting the photos looking for acceptable ones, playing with camera settings just to get the shutter speed up! The full gallery of photos from the tournament is at their home page, there are contributions from at least three photographers (all amateur) including myself.
I guess what made me think of the future for this photo, was that it was a Junior Tournament, so maybe some future great squash players, and for some of them (the players in the Under 19 category, like these two) it is their last year as Juniors, their future in Squash is with the Seniors.
I’ve been delinquent in my posts recently, but I have a really really good excuse…. no I don’t, I’ve just been busy. I can’t even conjure up a plausible excuse that might fool a school teacher on this one.
Recently I’ve been thinking about the past and the future, for this post I’ll deal with the past. As you know I recently posted a photo of St Barnabas, a church that will soon be just a memory, and in my case a few thousand pixels worth of data, and on a recent walk with Nikhil (during which I think I accomplished a grand total of three shutter actuations) I took a photo of a piece of architecture that always fascinated me, for one reason and one reason only, the tower!
I’ve always dreamt of having a tower on my dwelling that I could climb into and see the world around me, and since I’ve taken up photography, probably capture amazing sunset and sunrise photographs from it. Of course, I don’t have any such tower or photographer’s perch, so I just admire the ones that exist.
Of course, this building also has other “architectural” interests, like the Demerara Shutters, the wooden louvres and the shingled outer wall.
This week, the seawall continues its pull on me, when the “feeling” for photography is not with you, go somewhere that relaxes you, even if just for a few minutes. A short walk along the wall and you either come away relaxed or relaxed and with a few photos that were worth the walk 🙂
This week’s shot may not be the best technically, but it captured a “moment”, and that’s what I liked about it. People go to the seawall for many reasons, one of the customary ones is exercise, you feel the fresh air blowing over you and you feel rejuvenated, and you can run or walk, and like this guy, exercise your wrists 🙂
Partial remains of the Globe Cinema, demolished this year, 2011
It recently dawned on me that there may be only one functional cinema left in Georgetown, possibly only one left in Guyana. While the television and computers, handheld media players and the internet have certainly impacted on how we watch our movies, the cinema has always had a big draw for people, however the cinemas in Guyana have steadily gone into disrepair and certainly some have disappeared. While we can place a lot of blame of the modernisation of media viewing, the owners and promoters of our cinemas have to take some of the blame, even when I was much younger, and the cinemas were full of moviegoers, I remember the sordid states of the seats, the persevering smell of urine, and the sound of the rodents running around the aisles.
Starlite Cinema, Pouderoyn, West Bank Demerara. Closed and abandoned
They never did the little things that made you WANT to go to the cinema, why suffer through all that when you could wait a few months and see it in the comfort of your home? It was the experience, it was the “event” of going to the cinema with family or friends to watch a new (or old) movie in the company of others there to enjoy the experience, the camaraderie, the joy of the big silver screen, unfortunately the experience was not always a good one. And the cinemas are disappearing, one by one, by one…
The Astor Cinema, still functional as of this year, but attendance makes it hard for the proprietor to keep it up.
I was re-reading an article written by Godfrey Chin on the Rise and Fall of Guyana’s Cinemas, I believe this was part of his “Nostalgias”, and while I am not old enough to know of some of the cinemas or even the movies he mentions, it hits home. He, of course, goes back to even before we gained our Independence, back to the days of British Guiana, and he brings us into the modern era, where instead of Cinemas modernising to keep up, they just kept going, stagnated in time, except for the titles of the movie releases 🙂
What prompted this blog-post was the sudden nostalgia I got (I am probably getting like Godfrey) when I was processing a photo I took of the partly demolished “Globe Cinema” and an image of the abandoned Starlite Cinema. Both of those images are included in this post. As the Astor is the last remaining cinema, I think that I should make an effort to get permission to do some photography in that establishment before it too disappears.
Formerly the Strand Cinema, now the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
There are at least two other Cinemas that I know of which have been converted into places of worship, it seems to be the thing to do 🙂
Click on each image to see them larger in their respective galleries.
Earlier this week I saw a Facebook Note from a local Journalist, Neil Marks, about the St Barnabas Church being sold, I always find it sad when any place of worship is sold, even more so when there is historic significance to the site (as is the case with most of them as they usually go back several generations).
Nikhil and I took a walk there hoping to find it open, we really wanted to get inside. As it was closed, we settled for taking a few more photos of the exterior from outside the fence. I went to the website of the National Trust of Guyana looking for more information on the site and found that there was pitiful little there.
Sometimes a photo is just a photo, nothing more, right? Wrong!
Every photograph, yes, even snapshots, tell a story, not everyone can understand the story since the language might be different, the concepts are alien to some of us, and often the message is so subtle that it eludes many of us, but a story is there. It might be a story in a single sentence, it might be a paragraph, it may even be a few chapters. It is up to the photographer to tell as much or as little of the story as they like, and it is up to the viewer to read and interpret not what the photographer is trying to say, but what the image is saying.
Art is interpretive, and it is unlikely that two people will interpret any given photograph in the same manner, similar maybe, they may even draw on each other’s observances and add them to their own, but the act of viewing a photograph is personal, it is between the viewer and the image, and sometimes, the relationship is profound, and others it can be negligible.
Some photographs make an impact and keep you looking back at them and seeing more than you had noticed in the beginning, others you may look at once, and never be drawn to them again, that’s just the way it is.
For many people, their snapshots tell more of a story than the “artsy” types of photos than others tend to like taking. The story told by a snapshot at a family gathering is more personal than that told by most “professional” photographs, The story is not more nor less important, just different and more personal, and no one should seek to belittle one or the other, that’s just the way it is.
Although when I first started trying my hand at Photography (you know, snapshots that looked awesome, even though they were probably mediocre) I was never inclined to monochromatic images; the black and whites and the sepia-toned images, but as I learnt more about the art, and as I came to appreciate the works of others, there has always been scenes that seem to render better in monochrome than in vivid colour.
I have found recently that I like to work in “special” fields of photo processing, I like playing with Panoramas, HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, tone-mapped images (using the same HDR software but on a single image and not using bracketed images as in a true HDR), and monochromatic images, more towards black and white or sepia-toned images rather than cyanotypes and the other tones available.
At any given period of my photography, you’ll probably notice a certain “type” of image popping up, so don’t be surprised by today’s monochrome. This was taken on the Georgetown Seawall towards the Kitty pump station, the building is Celina Atlantic Resort (I am not sure how the word resort got in the name, but its more a Restaurant and Bar)
If you’re going to do a project then you should at least make every effort to keep it up, right? I seem to be lagging behind too much, something’s got to give! Anyway, I found a few minutes and I decided to post my image for last week before it got too late.
Finding the time to post on the blog is one thing, but apparently things are getting to the point where finding the time to get the photograph itself is becoming a challenge, definitely not good. Last week I took four photographs, yes four, F-O-U-R, 4! and three of them were of the same scene, so that left me with a choice between two images. Bah! I can’t let this happen again.
This is not a great image, it probably isn’t a good one, but it’s what I have and since I am sticking to the rules I made myself, I have to choose one of those images I took within the week, 🙂 I beg forgiveness in advance.
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