2011 Deck – Week 13

On April 2, 2011April 2, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography22 Comments

Another tough week, one day of actual photography, and even that was “forced”. Yesterday, another blogger whom I follow, Bob Zeller, posted a blog along the lines of an award for “Versatile Bloggers”. While I don’t see myself that way I was very honoured to be included in the company of he other bloggers in Bob’s List, if you get a chance check that out, quite impressive. I will follow this up in my next post; hopefully, I can be as magnanimous as Bob was 🙂

This week’s Deck photo was originally to be of my Alma Mater, Saint Stanislaus College (a High School actually), but I was more taken by my images of the church that I attend. They are both on the same street, Brickdam, and Nikhil and I walked it looking for things to photograph.

This is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, seat of the Bishop of Georgetown, His Lordship Francis Alleyne OSB, and is commonly referred to as Brickdam Cathedral. It is the central church of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Guyana and my parish for all of my life, although I now live outside the geographical area of the parish, we still attend mass there. It is bordered by Brickdam, Hadfield Street, Camp Street and Pollard Place, the current concrete structure replaced the original wooden structure that was destroyed by fire decades ago. Although it is not photographed as often as the St George’s Cathedral, it has its own appeal and beauty.

Some people may notice, while others may not, this image, while not a true HDR image (I only used one exposure) was processed in Nik’s HDR Efex to get the most out of both the clouds and the building, I tried to be as subtle as I could without losing the detail that I wanted.

Raiment for the Rains

On March 30, 2011March 30, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography16 Comments

During our recent spate of rainy weather, I chanced to be on the sidewalks waiting with my camera in hand and I grabbed a few photographs, of the set two stood out, but I only like one enough to use, so I chose here first before I post to Flickr.

Many of our pavements/sidewalks and streets in Georgetown flood as soon as the place gets cloudy, but the recent rains put a lot of pressure on our poor (excuse for a ) drainage system. 🙂

At least this fellow was prepared for the weather, not only with an umbrella, but with long boots as well. 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 12

On March 26, 2011March 26, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography16 Comments

Compared to the previous weeks in this year, this week has been generous in terms of photographs, well, I won’t count the week with Mashramani, as that day alone resulted in a plethora of images.

I haven’t processed half the images from this week as yet, but I already have a favourite, not the best of the week, but a favourite none-the-less.

Last Sunday was Phagwah (or Holi) in Guyana and several other countries where the Hindu religious is popular, my knowledge of the Hindu religion is that good, but from what I remember of it from “school-days”, it’s a day of “equality”, when castes have no meaning, when race is not an issue, when everyone looks the same at the end of the day, not only in God’s eyes gut to our own. When everyone is covered in the colourful powders of Phagwah day, they all look the same.

I really wanted to get into the “Khendra” but I doubt that my camera would survive that one, so I settled for some images of my daughter and her cousin playing Phagwah up in Good Hope village on the East Coast of Demerara. 🙂

Insects

On March 24, 2011March 24, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography16 Comments

Interestingly enough I had loads and loads of photographs of insects when I shot with the Canon S5IS bridge camera, but since I have been shooting with the T1i SLR, I have very few, very very few, as a matter of fact this is the first that I’ve uploaded to my site and I had to create a gallery just for it 🙂

I think that because the S5 had a very good Macro mode and an even better Super Macro mode, I experimented more with them and with the usual victims of those modes, insects. Also, I had bought “add-on” macro lenses from Raynox that really had me doing some nice experimenting 🙂 Now that I use the SLR, I am longing for a good Macro lens, and I dream about the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro regularly 🙂 (anyone feeling generous, I won’t refuse a gift)

Anyway, enough of the dreaming, here’s the insect I mentioned…

: Hang on!

Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, he’s there all by himself.

I took this the same day last week when I took the one I posted for the Deck, so some might say this is more appealing, but the Lotus Flower fit my mood at the time 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 11

On March 19, 2011March 19, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography14 Comments

I’ve been feeling a bit depressed this week, probably a combination of factors, and not a feeling I am familiar with. I need to leave it behind, but maybe the photo for this week will reflect some of that in it.

As befitting the week, I only shot photos on one day, so I didn’t have much of a variety to choose from, there were two I favoured, so I chose one and hope that someone other than myself would like it, although it is the more “depressing” of the two, I preferred it overall, I will post the other image in a later post.

Ships at Sea

On March 16, 2011March 16, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography18 Comments

Well, I had to title it something and this sounded apt enough. Both photos have a sea-vessel and the water they traverse upon, so “Ships at Sea” it is, even though I am not sure they would call it the Sea… I’ve always been confused by that.

Growing up it was always the Sea, and protecting us from it was the Seawall, made sense…. now technically, the water to the horizon northwards from our shores is the Atlantic Ocean, I don’t think it is still the Caribbean Sea, and since I am being technical, both photos are not pointing Northwards but more West by North West, making that particular area of water the mouth of the Demerara River.

Aye, my head hurts from trying to sort that one out, so Sea or Ocean or River, its got a boat on the water. They’ve both been done in monochrome to emphasise the clouds and the water, taken on different days but in generally the same location, on the stretch of beach along the Kingston shore.

Click on them for a better view in the Gallery.

2011 Deck – Week 10

On March 12, 2011March 12, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography15 Comments

Only one day of shooting photos this week, terrible! But I did get a very nice one (at least one), and it is somewhat in keeping with my last post “A fascination with skies”.

Both Nik and I needed to get out and get something, as the week had progressed without much photography being done, it was raining and we thought that we might have to abandon the idea (at least for me, since the camera wasn’t going to handle the rain too well), but as we drove the rain eased for a bit and we decided to stop at the Koker at Ogle and see what was there for the offering.

A good thing we decided to stop, I got a few and I am sure Nik got more than I did :-), and as we headed back to “town” the rains decided that we’d had enough of a break and continued its work.

I hope you like this one, it’s another “seawall” shot, and another monochrome 🙂

Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.

A fascination with skies

On March 8, 2011March 8, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography21 Comments

Many of my favourite images have had some amount of sky in it, I usually get very “miffed” when shooting landscape or even people and building shots and the sky is just a drab gray, I like blue skies, plain blue, hues of blue, I just really like blue skies, if there are errant clouds then all the better, but a sky fully covered with clouds usually gets to me, I found a way to deal with that over time, I look for a good scene that will process better as a monochromatic image.

While I have gotten better at that, I still like the blue, and I like dramatic skies, streaming clouds, or clouds spotting the vista to the horizon. The last Deck photo was taken on a day that had a nice variation of clouds in the sky, and I got a few others that I thought were worth sharing.

These were taken with the full intent of getting as much out of the sky as possible while still retaining some foreground interest. All were taken with the Sigma 10-20 Ultrawide Lens. I hope you like one or all 🙂

The temptation to render any of the three images into monochrome was great, but I resisted, barely. I felt that the colours in the sky and the foreground were more truly representative of the “feel” of the afternoon, than a monochrome would express, although I think I could probably have gotten more drama out of the images in monochrome 🙂

Click on the images to see them larger in the Gallery, I think I may have to print the one title “Inland Bound” larger for better scrutiny myself 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 9

On March 4, 2011March 4, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography22 Comments

This week I almost didn’t have anything to upload, and I almost went for Sasi’s idea of using the eggs 🙂 Fortunately, Nikhil had a desire to go check out the Kingston Promenade again, so we took a few minutes and went.

I started out with my Tamron telephoto lens but quickly switched to the ultra-wide Sigma 10-20, I had noticed the skies were nice, some clouds, some patches of blue showing, some streaky areas, and some heavily clouded areas, so I thought something good can come of that.

I got a few keepers from the shoot, but this one stands out, somehow a coconut got wedged or nestled into the hollow of a tree trunk on the beach… Nature’s “hole-in-one” 🙂

Click on the image for a larger viewing in the Gallery.

Cricket, lovely Cricket!

On March 1, 2011March 1, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography14 Comments

In the Caribbean and Guyana, this is our game, Cricket! Played by more countries than baseball, but less recognised by the “west”, the only thing played more and enjoyed by more around the world is probably football, NO, not that thing played by Americans, where they hardly use their feet except to run (with amazing speed actually), I’m referring to the real football, also called Soccer worldwide.

In cricket there’s variations of the game,there’s the one called Test Cricket, where everything is tested from the players endurance to the spectators’ patience over several days, usually five but it could be seven, then there’s the One-day Cricket, or standard 50-over matches, the World Cup for which is actually being played now. The newest forms of the game have been Twenty 20, or a twenty over form of the game, shorter and more exciting, and adopted by the governing cricket body, the ICC, as a new standard form, and here in Guyana, we have the yearly 10/10 games now sponsored by local telecommunications company GT&T. But those are the structured forms, as children growing up, other than the usual school-yard cricket we knew of three types of cricket, Cricket-in-the-street, Cricket-in-the-rain and the one that none of us could play but loved through the Dave Martins and the Tradewinds song, Cricket-in-the-Jungle!

As much as I’d love to catch a photograph of Monkey batting, the Elephant bowling, the umpire Parrot and the rest, I have to settle for the ones I can find, and I was fortunate to recently see a group of youngsters playing Cricket in the Street, in the Rain! Can’t beat that combination! I would have gone down to get closer photographs, but two things held me back, the camera isn’t weather-sealer and I hadn’t walked with the zip-lock bag as suggested by others, and if they saw me taking photos, it would lose some of the natural feel to it.