Tag: Black & White

2014 Deck – Week 12

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

For this week I actually had quite a few photos to choose from, mostly along the seawalls.  Fidal Bassier had invited me along to shoot with him, he was doing part of a photo-shoot for Miss Earth Guyana, Ms Stacy Ramcharran, and even though I was late getting there, I decided to stop anyway and see what was going on.

The talented team from Bravo Arts under the direction of Steve Bravo had already done an amazing job of the body paint etc., and Stacy’s entourage were well in attendance and assisting her with all the necessaries.

Fidal was setting up on a mound on the southern side of the National Park, the winds had picked up a bit and he asked me to help hold one soft-box in position while I was there…  but I’m a photographer, and I just couldn’t resist the urge to click the shutter button.

Whilst holding the soft-box in one hand (the wind was trying very hard to tug it out of position and out of my hands), I slung my backpack to the side and extracted the camera with one hand, the lens on the camera would have to work… it was the Sigma 10-20mm, so I suspected that cropping after was most likely.

I took only two photos, mainly because Fidal decided at that moment to switch locations, and by the time we had set up at the next spot, it was time for me to say adieu.  One photo I had cropped and sent to Stacy, she ended up using it as the Cover image for the official Facebook Page for Miss Earth Guyana 2014:

IMG_3953-2

The second one, I did not crop, it was the one I preferred, and I had decided since then that I would likely use it for the Deck project, so here it is:

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project

All-in-all, it was educational to watch these folks at work, and that I clicked the shutter twice, and got two photos that were usable, I feel good 🙂

Bask

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, PoetryLeave a comment

In going over older photographs, I usually have an easy time of picking out the ones I want to keep and those that I either will never use or would come back to later (eventually).

This one sort of nagged me.  I don’t think it’s a particularly great shot, but I kept going back to it, I decided yesterday to process it and see what developed, and although I still think it’s just a photo of a rock on the seashore, I’m partial to it.

Click on the photo to see it in the gallery along with others in the Black and White Collection.

Bask

Battered by the pounding waves
at times of high water,
stood upon as a refuge
from the swirling foam…
pinched by crabs as an anchor
from the pull of the receding waters,
Covered by shifting sands,
and uncovered by the waves,
ebb tide is past and
the waters are gone
basking in the warmth
of the sun, this fine dawn.

Noon

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Most photographers will tell you that the worst time to go shooting outdoors is noon, with the midday sun directly overhead casting deep shadows on people’s faces, or flooding subjects with overhead light giving it very little dimension, this applies to landscapes as well… As Lady Luck would have it, that’s when I get to go outside… at midday, whether it’s to accompany Nikhil on his walk or leaving work on a Saturday… it’s the noon sun I usually have to shoot under.

This one is not the type of thing I normally do, but something about it caught my eye and I shot it… left it to percolate for almost a year, then went back to it with fresh eyes.

Not something that many may like, but here it is anyway 🙂

Click on the image to see in the in Gallery with others from the Black and White Collection

Perception

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts1 Comment

Lately, I’ve been very busy, although depending on your point-of-view I might also have been giving priorities to the “wrong” things; for my myself, I say I’ve been busy.

I tell people that I’ve been busy, so I haven’t updated this blog, and updated the Deck Project, they look at me askance and think I’m either lying or stretching the truth, but it’s a matter of perception I suppose.

Often, what we see in a photograph is also a matter of perception, this image is one I overlooked when choosing my photo for week 9 of the Deck Project this year; when I say “overlooked”, I mean that I did not see then the potential that I saw when going back through the images the second time.

I was looking at a photograph recently of what appeared to be a woman holding a young girl lying limp across her arms, I later realized that it was a young man in her arms, but the combination of dark hair and a dark material near the head gave the long hair I usually associate (firstly) with girls, the features of the youth were very smooth and “pretty”, and he was attired in a hospital gown, all adding together to skew my perception.

I’ve also been trying to look at scenes differently and change my perspective, also altering my perception of the scene itself.  Anyway, all of this preamble is just to introduce you tot he image that I had also titled “Perception” 🙂

12:55 pm  |  Red filter  |  Canon 60D, Sigma 10-20mm lens

1/320s, f/11, ISO 100, 10mm  –  Processed in Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex

Click on the image to see it larger in the Black and White Gallery of the Collection.

2014 Deck – Week 09

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

The fascination with all things coastal continues!  Of course, it’s more like searching for images that I like and since most of my time seems spent on the coast, that’s what you’ll get 🙂

The fishing boats at Lusignan, always seem to compel me to take a few photos, even if I never use them, but this one worked well for me, I think my processing went a tad overboard (no pun intended) but at the end of it all I still liked the final image.

I was considering a Dutch title for the image since the word Moored comes from the Dutch word Meren (according to some dictionary I was reading), but then the name Lusignan was from France, so I went with a French title instead (not that anyone really cares) 😀

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm  |  1/250s, f/10, ISO 100

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with the other images for this year’s Deck Project

Singed

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts2 Comments

Have you ever latched onto a word with unusual fascination?  When I first read or heard certain words, there was an undue fascination that I got for them, one of those was “singed”…  No, it has nothing to do with singing, so no funny quips about that 🙂  Another one was “chaos”, that one was simply because I’d read it in a book and had formed this pronounciation in my head that turned out to be completely wrong.

So… back to “singed”

It was the first week of 2014, and I was walking the seawall looking for a few photographs when I came across the piece of singed wood… it was laying across another piece of wood forming a cruciform shape, the harsh midday sun cast a strong shadow and I decided that it might make a decent photograph 🙂

I also took the opportunity to try out LightZone to process it from start to end… I finally found how to straighten the horizon in it… using the crop tool just like in LightRoom (silly me couldn’t find it the first time I was processing an image in it).  I must say, that while there are some things I miss from this piece of software, it is a very powerful application, and the integration of the changes into the saved file (JPG or TIF) makes it easy to go back and adjust the processing.

LightZone also professes to be able to work as a plugin to LightRoom, so if you just want some of the neat features in LZ, you can try it as a plugin.  For an OpenSource (read that as FREE) software, it is powerful and user-friendly, this is not a stripped down software, but a full fledged product for RAW image processing.

Now… to the image.  It probably won’t rank as a great photograph, but I liked it and it gave me a good opportunity to try out LightZone

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm  |  1/160s, f/9, 10mm, ISO 100

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images in the Black and White collection

Bob

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

I was walking along the seawall last year when I spotted these three birds on the rocks near the waterline, I was fortunate enough to get off one photo of them together before they separated further (in no small part to my approach)

Whenever I see three birds together I always think of Brother Bob, Bob Marley, simply because of those words in the song… “Three little birds, Pitch by my doorstep”

The song was actually called “Three Little Birds”, but most everyone I know refers to it as “Don’t Worry” or “Every Little thing’s Gonna be alright”

So these aren’t exactly little birds, and they certainly weren’t singing sweet songs, but they still reminded me of the song.

Hope you like it:

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 17-55mm  |  1/500s, f/8, 50mm, ISO 100

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other Bird photos

Pier

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, Poetry4 Comments

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, along with many others in the Black and White Collection

Standing posts, by day’s light
Beaten by the waves
bleached by the relentless sun
Dwelt upon by snails

By moonlight, a ghostly pier
Appears ‘neath the moon
A vision that’s never seen
In day’s high noon

Stretching out into the deep
Walked upon by wraiths
boats with ancient passengers,
On the pier he waits…

Eyeing all who step ashore
Some will never leave,
Captain of his merchant ship,
Lord of the seas

Each night he walks the pier
Beneath the moon’s light
Each night the slaves come again
Reliving ghostly plight

The wraiths leave with the dawn
At peace once more
Until the rising moon
Brings them back to shore.

2013 Deck – Week 52

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography, Poetry5 Comments

Skies above and oceans below,
Soar above the tethered boats
Down winding creeks and rivers brown,
Past piers, docks and abandoned forts.

Wind beneath my outstretched wings
Sun upon my feathered spans
Gliding, soaring, questing far
Over seas and distant lands.

See upon a curved horizon
Tree-lined coasts, and wave-swept beach
Flying high above ocean’s blue
Soaring forward, to sometime reach

A land with trees laden with fruit
Ponds and lakes with fish aplenty,
Seeking always rich lands afar
Always knowing, there will be many.

Returning home, back to my shore,
To mangrove clumps and fishing boats,
To fly along the creeks that wind
And from its waters, slake my throat.

Click on the image above to see it in the Gallery along with the entire collection for this Year’s Deck Project!

2013 Deck – Week 47

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography4 Comments

Every once in a while I will look at a scene and I would be moved to try to photograph it using the technique known as High Dynamic Range (HDR), and on even fewer occasions, I would look at the scene and think that it would make a good Black and White HDR.

I had just picked up my daughter from her “After-Classes” and we took a drive by the seawall, as soon as we pulled up and parked I saw the way the tide was out, and how the sky was over-cast with some low hanging clouds, I knew I wanted to try a few photos near the metal piling that’s been there for ages, and I thought it would render nice in HDR.

I tried to keep her from running ahead and getting footprints all over the area, but it wouldn’t have mattered, her footprints didn’t last too long in that mud 🙂

I tried a few angles around the sheet of metal, and decided after on this portrait oriented one, The way the shape of the puddle, the arc of the wet and dry sands (mud), the curve of the receding water-line and the straight horizon all clashed, made the scene seem more fluid to me.

I hope you like it. (Three exposures blended for an HDR image)

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery