2012 Deck – Week 20

On June 16, 2012June 16, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2012 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Aday.org had come up with an idea to present “A day in the world” through photographs, they wanted photographers worldwide, from amateurs to professionals, basically anyone with a camera, to take a few photos on May 15th and upload them to their site. They had so many uploads they quickly got problems handling it and I am still not sure if my photos are there and if they are eligible for the final project, I think a lot of the information went AWOL during the upload. At the time of writing this blog-post, they are still sorting out everything to relaunch the website.

I took a few photos within the city to contribute, and I am choosing one of those to share as my photograph for Week 20 of this year.

Its a very familiar scene in Georgetown, this was “after-work” and these people are most likely workers on their way from their jobs to get transportation home, and I used City Hall as a backdrop for some added familiarity 🙂

Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery.

City Watch

On March 16, 2012March 16, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

For anyone who has read the books by Terry Pratchett, specifically the ones dealing with the twin-city of Ankh-Morpork, you know about the City Watch, for those of you who have not read those books, I encourage you to try them, Terry Pratchett is a master story-teller and a comic genius.

But this is a photography blog, not a book review blog, and the title of this post has nothing to do with Samuel Vimes or the City Watch of Ankh-Morpork, although now that I think of it, maybe I should have titled the photograph “Vimes” 🙂

Most of us get very few opportunities to rise above the humdrum of everyday life, to stand above it all and, with a calm that belies the hustle and bustle below, just take in the view of a city, our own city, noise-filled, garbage-filled, accident-prone, with a mix of colonial buildings and modern square concrete structures.

Imagine this; from one vantage point, you can see the hub of public transportation, the minibuses and taxis, a landmark eatery, hotel and beer-garden, the seat of government, hotels, churches (including one of the tallest wooden buildings in the world), the high court, one of the largest markets in the country, city hall, the busiest business district in the country, the Atlantic Ocean and so much more.

That is the view from the clock tower at Stabroek Market, and you haven’t even turned around to see the wharves and the mighty Demerara River with its speed-boat traffic, the ferry and the aging but impressive harbour bridge.

Click on the photo below, see it larger in the gallery and imagine yourself in that man’s position.

2011 Deck – Week 19

On May 19, 2011May 19, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography12 Comments

City Hall.

I can’t seem to ever get enough photographs of this building, a heavy weight descends upon me when I go closer to it and see the effects of the neglect, the signs of disrepair, and the toll that the sun and rains take from this glorious wooden structure.

For last week I had not taken a single image for “artistic reasons”, I did do a snapshot of some newspapers for a Road Safety blog for The Alicea Foundation, but that’ wasn’t very artistic 🙂

Most of my HDR images usually use a fairly static scene, no moving elements, this week I decided to try one that included some movement, and try out the “ghost reduction” that Nik HDR Efex has built in, I think it worked very nicely.

Take a look at it larger in the gallery.

The Deck – Week 23

On June 11, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Commentary, Photography2 Comments

A Power Struggle, and City Hall is losing

I’ve uploaded my image for the 2010 Deck collection on the site. It seems I’ve been in a monochrome rut for the last few weeks. It’s actually interesting this time, since I usually only make monochromatic shots for a few reasons;

I initially look at the scene and believe from the start that it will look good as either black and white or sepia
The sky was blanket grey and made an otherwise lovely scene look drab – I’m a sucker for a blue sky.
The post process intention was to give the image an older look

In this image, I actually got a lovely blue sky with those white clouds encroaching, something about the decaying building bothered me and I decided after some contemplation to render this in monochrome. I am mostly a fan of “whole buildings” but occasionally I like the partials 🙂

For the post-processing details, I did a bit of distortion correction and then did the monochrome editing in Nik Silver Effects.

This post is also going to be the first post where I do a bit of social commentary, in this case, specifically brought about by my photos of City Hall yesterday.

It is shameful that such a beautiful building, with so much history can be allowed to deteriorate like this, pieces are literally falling off. I don’t know about anyone else, but I pay my taxes, and I would expect certain things in return. I expect them to clean the drains REGULARLY, I’ve only seen them in our area once since I moved in more than two years ago, I even expect them to maintain the parapets, you know, weeding etc., again, never saw them, and I expect them to maintain City Hall! even if it was a crappy building, they should do it, but because it is such beautiful architecture, it is not only a good idea to keep the building that houses the governing body of the city in good repair, it is also their social responsibility to ensure that this piece of history is maintained and not become a part of history, relegated to photographs and memories.

Sadly, it may come to the point that restoration may not be an option and the building will probably be replaced by some concrete box with little or no character. From a photography standpoint, that would be disastrous 🙂