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.
Making Time. If anyone has ever figured out how to get more hours out of the day, please let me know 🙂 Once in a while you just have to stop, and slow down. Back in August (yes I’m writing this blog several months late) I was visiting with my in-laws and we decided to take a drive/walk out to the seawall at Lusignan. I took some photos (many left to be processed) but I processed two sequences that I had intended for HDRs, and was somewhat satisfied with this one.
I think that I was still standing in the village of Lusignan, but I was looking towards Annandale, I was told that somewhere ahead of me was an area known as Courbaine Park and (probably more to the left) is an area called Sand Reef. As usual, when taking outdoor HDR images I tend to go for the clouds, there was a very nice layering and depth (or height) to the clouds.
I used Nik HDR Efex to merge and tone map the image.
Skies Over Annandale
I’m hoping to sneak in a blog post or two to catch up before the end of the year 🙂
Although I had quite a variety of shots in this week, I couldn’t help but do a Sunset, a variant of one I had uploaded to the Guyana Photographers FB Group for a Photo Walk 🙂
This was an evening when I was heading into Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara, as I crossed the bridge into “Good Hope South” I noticed the sunset down the canal, so I decided I’d stop and try a few photos. I had often noticed sunsets or similar scenes in the evening, but because its one of the only ways into the village it is always busy and I never stopped. This time, I determinedly stopped the car, grabbed the camera and walked to the bridge. The bridge is wide enough to hold a car and a pedestrian to either side 🙂 As I stood on the bridge, vehicles passed by and I was hand-holding a low-light shot, it took some patience, but I think I came away with one or two good shots 🙂
I had mentioned to someone that it has been a while since I tried a Panorama, or a panoramic image, so when I was with a few other photographers on a visit to the Stabroek Clock Tower, I decided to try one (or two).
Before I go farther, I thought I’d share a bit of information that I have. I was once told (someone can help verify this) a few facts about the Stabroek Market building; the name comes from the area in which it is located, Stabroek, which is a Dutch name in origin, it was commissioned and erected by the British when they ruled Guyana (then British Guiana), and was bought or sourced from an American company out of the United States.
OK, back to the point of this post, the photo. I took a sequence of photos starting from the North (my left) and panning right, this Panorama is comprised of seventeen (17) images, each taken in portrait orientation.
I forgot to do any correction for lens distortion prior to combining the images, so there is some chromatic aberration when viewed actual size. I used Photoshop to combine the images, and minor processing in Lightroom.
Thank goodness it’s not World Bloggers’ Day, Id feel miserable! Even though I have been taking photographs I have not been blogging enough, but this gives me an excuse to do a quick blog 🙂
Since it is apparently World Photography Day (which I had not heard of until today), I thought I would get out of the office for at least a few minutes to catch a quick photo-walk and post a photo 🙂
So here it is. Let photography be a gateway to greater things, to brighter ideas, to more interesting paths!
It is not every week that I can come up with something that pleases everyone, so this week don’t expect something that pleases you 🙂 but if it does, hooray!
I went to the Essequibo Coast a few weekends back for a wedding (photos from which I don’t have permission to share as yet), I took photos other than wedding ones, so here is one from the first day there, which happened to be the last day of the 30th Week of 2011.
It seems that from the North-West region to the Corentyne Coast there is a common theme on the shores of our land, Jhandi Flags! You can’t seem to walk the beaches, sea-walls or the coastline in general without seeing them.
I’ve been delinquent in my posts recently, but I have a really really good excuse…. no I don’t, I’ve just been busy. I can’t even conjure up a plausible excuse that might fool a school teacher on this one.
Recently I’ve been thinking about the past and the future, for this post I’ll deal with the past. As you know I recently posted a photo of St Barnabas, a church that will soon be just a memory, and in my case a few thousand pixels worth of data, and on a recent walk with Nikhil (during which I think I accomplished a grand total of three shutter actuations) I took a photo of a piece of architecture that always fascinated me, for one reason and one reason only, the tower!
I’ve always dreamt of having a tower on my dwelling that I could climb into and see the world around me, and since I’ve taken up photography, probably capture amazing sunset and sunrise photographs from it. Of course, I don’t have any such tower or photographer’s perch, so I just admire the ones that exist.
Of course, this building also has other “architectural” interests, like the Demerara Shutters, the wooden louvres and the shingled outer wall.
This week, the seawall continues its pull on me, when the “feeling” for photography is not with you, go somewhere that relaxes you, even if just for a few minutes. A short walk along the wall and you either come away relaxed or relaxed and with a few photos that were worth the walk 🙂
This week’s shot may not be the best technically, but it captured a “moment”, and that’s what I liked about it. People go to the seawall for many reasons, one of the customary ones is exercise, you feel the fresh air blowing over you and you feel rejuvenated, and you can run or walk, and like this guy, exercise your wrists 🙂
Partial remains of the Globe Cinema, demolished this year, 2011
It recently dawned on me that there may be only one functional cinema left in Georgetown, possibly only one left in Guyana. While the television and computers, handheld media players and the internet have certainly impacted on how we watch our movies, the cinema has always had a big draw for people, however the cinemas in Guyana have steadily gone into disrepair and certainly some have disappeared. While we can place a lot of blame of the modernisation of media viewing, the owners and promoters of our cinemas have to take some of the blame, even when I was much younger, and the cinemas were full of moviegoers, I remember the sordid states of the seats, the persevering smell of urine, and the sound of the rodents running around the aisles.
Starlite Cinema, Pouderoyn, West Bank Demerara. Closed and abandoned
They never did the little things that made you WANT to go to the cinema, why suffer through all that when you could wait a few months and see it in the comfort of your home? It was the experience, it was the “event” of going to the cinema with family or friends to watch a new (or old) movie in the company of others there to enjoy the experience, the camaraderie, the joy of the big silver screen, unfortunately the experience was not always a good one. And the cinemas are disappearing, one by one, by one…
The Astor Cinema, still functional as of this year, but attendance makes it hard for the proprietor to keep it up.
I was re-reading an article written by Godfrey Chin on the Rise and Fall of Guyana’s Cinemas, I believe this was part of his “Nostalgias”, and while I am not old enough to know of some of the cinemas or even the movies he mentions, it hits home. He, of course, goes back to even before we gained our Independence, back to the days of British Guiana, and he brings us into the modern era, where instead of Cinemas modernising to keep up, they just kept going, stagnated in time, except for the titles of the movie releases 🙂
What prompted this blog-post was the sudden nostalgia I got (I am probably getting like Godfrey) when I was processing a photo I took of the partly demolished “Globe Cinema” and an image of the abandoned Starlite Cinema. Both of those images are included in this post. As the Astor is the last remaining cinema, I think that I should make an effort to get permission to do some photography in that establishment before it too disappears.
Formerly the Strand Cinema, now the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
There are at least two other Cinemas that I know of which have been converted into places of worship, it seems to be the thing to do 🙂
Click on each image to see them larger in their respective galleries.
Earlier this week I saw a Facebook Note from a local Journalist, Neil Marks, about the St Barnabas Church being sold, I always find it sad when any place of worship is sold, even more so when there is historic significance to the site (as is the case with most of them as they usually go back several generations).
Nikhil and I took a walk there hoping to find it open, we really wanted to get inside. As it was closed, we settled for taking a few more photos of the exterior from outside the fence. I went to the website of the National Trust of Guyana looking for more information on the site and found that there was pitiful little there.
Although when I first started trying my hand at Photography (you know, snapshots that looked awesome, even though they were probably mediocre) I was never inclined to monochromatic images; the black and whites and the sepia-toned images, but as I learnt more about the art, and as I came to appreciate the works of others, there has always been scenes that seem to render better in monochrome than in vivid colour.
I have found recently that I like to work in “special” fields of photo processing, I like playing with Panoramas, HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, tone-mapped images (using the same HDR software but on a single image and not using bracketed images as in a true HDR), and monochromatic images, more towards black and white or sepia-toned images rather than cyanotypes and the other tones available.
At any given period of my photography, you’ll probably notice a certain “type” of image popping up, so don’t be surprised by today’s monochrome. This was taken on the Georgetown Seawall towards the Kitty pump station, the building is Celina Atlantic Resort (I am not sure how the word resort got in the name, but its more a Restaurant and Bar)
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