Tag: clouds

2014 Deck – Week 37

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

I’ve never been one to do a lot of “dodging and burning” in images, but this image I liked and I wanted to recover some detail in the shadow of the rock, and I didn’t want to tone-map the entire image, that would have been overkill I think.

So I used the brush tool in Lightroom to lighten just that area to get that detail I wanted.  the rest of the scene worked to my satisfaction.

This is a stretch of the seawall at Lusignan, and at High tide that rock, which seems to be pointing North, is normally covered.

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

2014 Deck – Week 33

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Christ Church was doing some fund-raising, a friend of mine asked me to take a few photos of the church to use in the press release.  The only time I had to make a pass by the church was an early morning on the way to work.

I was thinking that it’s only for a press release, so it doesn’t have to be that good, right?

I was in a bit of a hurry, but I snapped a few, then jumped back in the car and headed to work.  There was some nice clouds behind the church from one angle, and kept remembering this as I downloaded the images to process, I knew that my attitude toward the shot was less than optimal and I had deliberately exposed for the building and not the skies (since it was just for the press), as the sun was rising behind the church, all that detail would be blown out.

I thought that this would be a good time to experiment with what I had read about prior to acquiring a full-frame camera, that it can capture a very wide dynamic range in one exposure.

True enough, the entire sky was blown out in the exposure when I downloaded it.

IMG_2724

But remembering what I had just seen in the sky, I worked the sliders to see what sky detail I could retrieve from the RAW file:

IMG_2724-2

And I was amazed, so I decided to process it better than I had originally intended.  I made slight adjustments in Lightroom to bring some detail back in the sky while retaining the detail and brightness of the building.  Then I took the image into Nik HDR Efex with the express intent to use a single exposure black-and-white tone mapping technique on it, and the results were great.  After a few minor adjustments once I took it back to Lightroom, this was the result:

Christ Church, Waterloo St., Georgetown, Guyana

Someone asked me it I “photoshopped” it, well, I didn’t use photoshop, I used no masks, no layers, nothing like that, just what I described above.  Everything I needed was in the RAW file, if I weren’t in such a hurry and treating the action of taking the photo so lacklustrely, then I may have actually taken multiple exposures for a proper HDR  🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 32

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

As I was titling this photo I was somewhat reminded of the TV Series “Bones”, maybe it was a recent discussion on the show that prompted the title “The Wood in the Frame”.

I saw this discarded wooden frame amidst the rocks on the seawall. and by contorting myself and peering through it I could see that I might be able to frame some of the Jhandi flags within it…  I could not get both my head and the camera into the space available (and I didn’t really want to move the frame), so I know my focus might be spotty, so I was fully prepared for some crazy images to come out.

I had angled slightly down to ensure I got the base of the frame, so it was expected that I’d most likely get the wood lying across the frame in focus.  🙂

I think it came out nicely.  (Yes, I know, most of you would have moved the frame so you can get the angle right, the focus right, everything right…  I like the experimental method over absolute perfection sometimes)

1/250s @ f/10, 24mm, ISO200

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 31

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

I don’t often do HDR images, mainly because I think it’s a technique that has it’s uses in specific circumstances, and also because a basic RAW file out of the camera now has much more dynamic range than before and can be adjusted in post process to utilize that content without the need for multiple exposures.

But I like doing HDR images, to pull and prod at the dynamic range in a scene and get it looking as I remember the scene as my eyes could see it.   Shooting into the sun is tricky, most times all you’ll get are silhouettes, so adjusting exposure to balance the scene is one way to try compensating for that great ball of light, or shooting multiple exposures and using HDR techniques after can also work towards the desired goal.

This one, I went for an HDR, but I didn’t want that wide a dynamic range, so I only bracketed very narrowly from 0ev.  I wanted the colours from the sky and the city below to come through, and I wanted the light and shadow to be there but with more detail than the standard exposure was giving me.

I hope you like it.

HDR Image from 3 exposures.

2014 Deck – Week 29

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Sometimes, subjects are so imposing that you just have to use them, you walk past them and they just beg to be photographed.

Take this truck, for example; we had walked past it and I noticed it’s unusual form, you just don’t see a truck like this around Georgetown every day, I kept thinking that there’s a photo there somewhere…  On the way back I kept glancing at it, then noticed it’s swivel up windows and it’s snorkel-like exhaust system, and all the other rough-and-tough parts at the front, all of this set against a comparatively delicate victorian/colonial styled wooden building in the background.

Of course, including the policeman in the frame was deliberate 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

Photographs and Memories

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts2 Comments

Karran Sahadeo recently did a presentation at Moray House with this title, when I chose this photo for this week’s entry for the Deck Project, it popped into my head.

Often, all we have of moments and events of our younger days are memories… with the current deluge of photos being taken with various cameras, smartphones, tablets, webcams, etc., the current generation may have a different take on it in 20 years.

I can look back at what might be considered a relatively large amount of photos from my younger days, relative to the general population at the time in Guyana at any rate, and I can sometimes remember the moment, the event, the atmosphere, the sounds and other tiny things that made the moment memorable, but there are many more points in my life that have no such record, and all I have are memories.

I was out on the seawall on the way to work one morning when I saw the sky to the south as I approached the portion of the wall right behind my old school ground (Saint Stanislaus College), as I stopped to take the photo, memories of times there came back to me.

I’m not a sportsman, never really was, but I do remember trying a few sports, simply because the teachers said you had to “try”…  I remember being left behind in the 100m sprint, I remember being lapped once in some one of the longer runs, I remember wanting to try the shotput, but being a small fellow, no one would let me, I remember trying the long jump and not doing too badly (as in, at least one other person fell shorter than I did); I also remember getting sunburnt, falling in the grass and bruising my knees, climbing the pavilion steps, eating snow-cones and icicles, and drinking Blackcherry Soda… (Both Banks DIH and DDL had lost their Cola franchises, Banks brought out the ICEE Blackcherry to fill the void), I could go on, but my point is, I can look back on “this” photo and have those memories renewed even though I don’t have photos of any of those moments to look at.

While this photo can mean that to me, for you, it may just be a very plain, very empty black and white photo; for me, the field is filled with students; the pavilion with teachers, students, parents; the gateway and fence lined with vendors selling snow-cones, tamarind syrup and green-mango 🙂

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm | 1/100s @ f/7.1, 10mm, ISO100

Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery from the Collection, while there, take a look at the other images in the growing Black and White Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 25

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

For reasons of my own, I prefer not to take on Photography as a working professional, meaning “photographer for hire”.  One of those reasons is that I’d then have to think primarily of the customer’s satisfaction, and for events that have so many “moving parts” where anything and everything can go wrong, guaranteeing that you come out of the event with photos that the customer will love is probably impossible.

But, IF I were to do events such as Weddings, it would be for the photos that I see, my vision…  as such, I only shoot weddings for Family and friends, and even then I encourage them to get someone else to be the primary photog, mainly so that they can take the blame for the “missed” shots 😀

Every so often I come out of a wedding knowing that I’d gotten what I thought of as a great shot, for me anyway.  At Alisia and Sammy’s wedding I think I came away with two that I considered great, but this one that I am sharing here, is what I like to think of as “my type” of photograph  🙂

Canon EOS 6D, Canon 24-105mm  |  24mm, 1/200s, f/9.0, ISO200

I had done an article regarding Shooting Weddings for the GuyanaPhotographers.com page, if you’re interested, you can give it a read. 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.