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.
At the close of the thirtieth week of the year, I was in Barbados, and my sister and her husband had decided to carry us on a whirlwind of a tour of Barbados’ scenic points, I’m surprised I could remember where I took this one.
I think we almost circled the entire island that day, starting from almost the southernmost point of the island and going eastwards around the coastline.
If my memory serves me correctly, this one was taken at North Point, from the name it’s likely the northernmost part of Barbados, and I was very engrossed with the view, but I managed to get some photographs in while admiring it.
This is an HDR from three exposures, I hope you like it.
Before departing from the Kingston Area to begin the Family Reunion in Ocho Rios, my dad thought that getting a photograph of everyone who were in the Kingston area would be a good idea, so after everyone had eaten some breakfast, packed their bags and were ready to go, we all got together for the group photo.
I was hoping to do some photography whilst on the drive over, but the high grasses after the recent rains and a few other adverse conditions made that a bit impractical 🙂 I did manage to snag a photo of a vendor’s stand with some of the fruits out front during a brief stop.
One of the areas we drove through was Fern Gulley, but photographs can’t tell that story, you have to take the drive through yourself, but I took one of the curving road and the enclosing ferns to give the general idea, this spot had a nice window in the canopy above for extra light, many other sections did not, the ferns would enclose the road and create a lovely rainforest feel.
Once at the hotel, we checked in, went for lunch, then to find our rooms, We had chosen the mountain view option rather than the ocean view rooms, just to save a few dollars 🙂 This is part of the view from our room, not too bad 🙂
After some afternoon swimming (or more like wading in the pool), we were taking a walk to see the Gazebo at the ocean’s edge and I snagged a few more photos, after that it was dinner and bed 🙂 Not a bad day overall.
Nikhil does more unusual cropping than I do, often times he’ll use the cropping to help emphasise the subject, and this is something I don’t often do, usually when I crop I try to keep the same proportions as the original image, and I try to crop very little, usually only as a corrective method (to rotate the image correctly of to remove something at the edge(s) that shouldn’t be included). I often forget that I can crop for emphasis and to strengthen the composition.
This week’s image is such an example, I originally thought that it was a good image, but for some reason it wasn’t as strong as I’d originally thought, so after some monochrome work on it I tried an unusual crop, and I think it worked.
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.
For many students in the trimester system, it is now the end of the school year, the end of projects and assignments, the end of homework, the last of the tests and exams until the next academic year begins.
I find it fitting that the image I chose reflects some of this; hands raised in joy as the sun sets on another day. The end of one thing usually marks the beginning of another, soon we begin the “August” or summer holidays, although those in the semester system have already begun theirs 🙂
I was processing this photo from 2009 and the title that immediately sprung to mind was “Walk and Talk”, obviously because that’s what the girl was doing; walking leisurely on the jetty, and talking on her cell phone (or mobile phone, or cellular phone, depending on your custom).
Then, of course, being a Caribbean Man, the song from “reggae great” Pluto Shervington popped into my mind as well; that would be “Ram Goat Liver”
As I am fairly certain that not many people outside of the Caribbean would know the song, I’m including the lyrics from the chorus:
Ram goat liver good fi mek mannish water
Billy goat teeth mek the earring for you daughter
Curried goat lunch put de bite in your bark
It mek you daughter … It mek you daughter walk and talk
I think that it is a good bet that the young lady in the photograph may likely be of East Indian descent, so the idea that she might have had Curried for lunch would not be too far fetched, and she can certainly walk and talk 🙂
Walk and Talk. A cropped telephoto image. Click on it to see it better in the Gallery.
These days I have to wonder if the cell phone is more of a convenience or an intrusion. As it is, they are now more than just phones, they’re basically what was once your home computer, now in the palm of your hand. I remember when I owned a PC with a 386 processor that had an 80MB Hard Drive and at the time, that was considered large; now my smartphone has more than that amount of memory built-in and an additional card that can hold an additional 8GB of data.
But I digress. It is convenient to have a phone always with you, rather than being tied to a land-line. It is convenient to be able to check your e-mail, your Facebook and Twitter accounts, check stock trades and the latest news, and so much more. There are, however, times when you can do without the constant interruptions, the unpredictable yet persistent “ping” or “bleep” or whatever “ring-tone” you’ve chosen to notify you of every event that the phone is now capable of alerting you to. After weighing the Pros and Cons, I came to a decision that the mobile phone is as much as a convenience as you want it to be, and conversely, as much of an inconvenience as you want it to be.
My phone goes on silent when I go to Church, to meetings and to various functions where I prefer not to be disturbed, I feel the vibrations and I am aware that when I finish whatever it is I am doing that, after the hour or two, I will have a few (or quite more than a few) messages to read and maybe calls to return. But I am the master of the phone, it is not the master of me, and quite frankly, that is how it should be.
This week almost passed without me having taken any photos. I had some slim pickings, but I think I got a nice one.
Nikhil has often used the word “Grok” especially as relating to “grokking the scene”. It has become more important to grok the scene if you want to capture and express through the photograph what it is the scene says to you.
Even though I thought I had heard the word before, no one lese I know has ever used it as often as he does.
I check it up on Wikipedia and then thought to myself, “that’s where it came from!”, apparently coined by the author Robert Heinlein in his novel “Stranger in a Strange Land”. I love the definition given for it in the novel (keep inmind that it is a Science Fiction novel set on Mars)
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man.
Can we understand a scene so completely that we become as one with it? That is probably something to aim for, to achieve it would be great,
Here’s a photo of Nikhil, Grokking the scene 🙂
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, and if you haven’t seen the other entries for the Deck project they’re all over there in the Gallery.
Easter Week. I suppose that the easiest thing to try to get photographs of for Easter Week is of children flying their kites (at least in Guyana, anyway). On Easter Monday we went to the seashore near Annandale (someone referred to the spot as “Friendship”), on the Easy Coast of Demerara.
I was taking a photo of a spot where an old Koker (sluice) once stood, and my daughter and her cousin came over to play/annoy/get in the way and so I made good use of them as they were already in the scene 🙂
For a better view of the photo, please click on the image above to see it in the Gallery.
After two years of doing this, I think that this is what keeps me intrigued in photography, the weekly search for a photograph. While Nikhil has embarked upon his Daily Photography project this year (I hope he goes the full 366) I know my limitations, I won’t be trying that anytime soon.
I think that this image is somewhat appropriate to the year, the crazy Armageddon stories and to my photography. If you believe the Mayan Calendar theorists and many of the other Doomsday predictions regarding the year 2012, then you’re probably hoping, like myself, that I get some really good photographs this year! 🙂
This was taken on New Year’s Day, because of my interests in HDR, I thought that I would try another Black and White HDR, this one was taken at midday, I think the originals were 2ev apart.
It was a breezy day (forgot my tripod again, so this was hand-held for all three exposures), and very overcast, lots of clouds as you can see.
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.
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.
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