2014 Deck – Week 05

On February 25, 2014February 26, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

I was tagging along with Fidal Bassier at Park Vue Hotel, Guyana’s newest Hotel, and we were given a tour by one of the owners who showed us the various offerings of the hospitality establishment.

Fidal was being considered as one of the photographers to record images for the Hotel for use in their marketing (I believe some other lucky photographer did the job eventually), while we were there we asked to take a few photos in the lobby / reception area and the Lounge.

Although I don’t think I’m very good at it, I’ve always liked a bit of Architectural photography, so I tried my hand at this one for this week’s Deck photo.

I hadn’t noticed that I’d lost some detail in the tiles when I originally shot it, so I did a tone-mapped version of the photo to retrieve some of that detail

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 04

On February 19, 2014February 19, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

This week I will let the photo do the talking.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 03

On February 5, 2014February 5, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Even though I don’t get out too often to take the landscape photos I yearn for, I do enjoy picking my daughter up from her Saturday “Revision Classes” on a Saturday and heading out to the seawall, she goes hunting for rocks and shells, and I hunt for photos.

This tyre with it’s bright paint caught my eye, and I was going for a simple photo then my daughter began running on the far side… resulting in an even better photo 🙂

I’ve been working in LightZone again for this one, and I really believe that it has a lot of potential, I really miss the gradient tool that I’ve become accustomed to in Lightroom, but it’s just like switching cameras, you just need to use the tools at hand to achieve a finished product that you can be satisfied with.

I used two localised masks in this one just to see how that would work, and it did a good job, I wanted some more clarity on the tyre itself without affecting the entire image, and I wanted to make local adjustments to the sky (I didn’t have a polarizer on the lens)

I hope you like it.

Clink on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 02

On January 17, 2014January 17, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography3 Comments

I selected one of the images I took from the recent Guyana Photographers’ Photowalk to the Conservancy via Canal #2 for my Deck Photo for this week.

While I’ve never swum or plunged into the Conservancy, I do remember the many outings to creeks and diving off of a tree at the side, even after being warned that it was either shallow or may have stumps unseen under the water.

This shot reminded me of those days. Many other photographers on the walk captured this moment, one even at, what appeared to be, the same moment, but it still remains one of my favourite images from the walk. When I noticed what was occurring, I knew I didn’t have time to stop, bring the camera to my eye, compose and shoot, so I shot it from the hip 🙂

Canon 60D, Sigma 17-50mm | 17mm, ISO 100, 1/400s, f/9

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 01

On January 9, 2014January 9, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography4 Comments

Welcome back to my Deck Project, a photography project of one photo for every week of the year, giving me 52 photos for the year. (and there are 52 cards in a Deck of normal standard cards, not counting Jokers, hence the name Deck Project)

I start the year at a very familiar place, the seawalls, living on the coastland of Guyana gives us easy access to the sea and the extensive shoreline.

Recently there was a discussion about how Guyanese (among many others) prefer to use pirated software instead of paying. This has primarily to do with a difference in income levels and the cost of many software can easily exceed the salaries of the average or even above-average Guyanese. The cost of such popular photo-processing software as Adobe Lightroom and Corel AfterShot Pro has declined in recent years making it more affordable, but the habit of acquiring pirated copies persists. After this discussion I remembered Nikhil posting about an Open Source photo-processing software called LightZone, and I decided to give it a good try (even though I do own and use Adobe Lightroom)

This photo for the first week of the 2014 Deck Project was processed primarily in LightZone (but since I use Lightroom to interface with my website, I used Lightroom to tag/keyword and upload the image) LightZone is surprisingly versatile and powerful, I think I’ll be using it a bit more to experiment with some features as well as to encourage those who can’t afford Lightroom or AfterShot to try something that’s Free but also pretty powerful.