Scotiabank Guyana 2011 Calendar

On December 21, 2010December 22, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography22 Comments

Well, it’s not the first time I’ve had a photo used in a project, but this is the first time since I started a blog 🙂 I had two photographs printed in the 2010 Calendar for the Guyana National Trust.

Scotiabank (Guyana) did their 2011 Calendars through a firm called KRITI, who approached a number of photographers who had some local scenes with a slight emphasis on the skies above, be it dramatic skies, overcast skies or just beautifully clouded skies. Of the six photographs featured, there were five “local” photographers and one foreign photographer (who lived here for two years, so he’s as local as foreigners get).

Below are some snapshots of the calendar with links to the photographer’s pages that I could get. (Click on the photos to go to the photographer’s pages)

Starting of was Nikhil’s image along the LBI (La Bonne Intention) shore,

Then Dwayne Hackette’s Sunset along the Berbice River,

Phillip William’s Earth Station photograph,

Philip Williams: Earth Station, Carifesta Avenue, Georgetown, Guyana

Rustom Seegopaul’s Georgetown from the Harbour Bridge crossing the Demerara River

My Lonesome Tree photograph from the Hamburg (Tiger Island) in the Essequibo River (taken when I shot with a Canon S5 Bridge Camera

Lonesome Tree on the Hamburg — Michael Lam: Lonesome Tree, Tiger Island, Essequibo River

and to top it all off with James Broscombe’s Great Balls of Fire, from the Rupununi

To be absolutely frank, the image of James’ Great Balls of Fire in the calendar does not do the original photo Justice, definitely click on the image above for a good look at the photo on his blog.

It should be noted that these cover all three major rivers of Guyana, the Georgetown Coastline and the Interior. If you are a Scotiabank Guyana customer, make sure to collect your copy 🙂

Thanks to Scotiabank and a special thanks to Sita at KRITI.

The Deck – Week 48

On December 4, 2010December 4, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography14 Comments

I am pretty much disappointed with this week’s photographs, I have one of my wife that I thought was a great shot and was very tempted to put as the photo for this week’s Deck entry, but she would never forgive me if I did, so I had to settle for this one.

I intentionally took multiple exposures most of this week because I intended to do some more HDR attempts, but this one didn’t come out as expected. For some reason my alignment was all wrong and there’s quite a bit of haloing as a result. I did intend a BW HDR, so this I used as much to my advantage as possible.

I did the HDR merging in Nik HDR Efex Pro, and also added a vignette to it there. The final touches were added in Lightroom using a BW POP preset I got from Eric Kim, who does really great Street Photography, I hope he doesn’t mind that I used it for something other that Street Photography 🙂

I rather liked the lone tree and it’s reflection, so that’s why this was my choice this week.

The Deck – Week 47

On November 26, 2010November 26, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography10 Comments

As has been the norm of late, my week was busy, I only got to take photographs on three days, but I did manage to get a very nice photograph that was actually enhanced by the crazy cloudy weather we’ve been having recently.

This week I give you a scene from the Botanical Gardens, I was in the central area of the Seven Ponds, where some of the Nation’s revered men have been laid to rest; including the first Guyanese Governor General, Sir David Rose, the First President of Guyana, Arthur Chung and the great Guyanese poet Martin Carter.

Facing the ponds is The Mausoleum where the body of the second president of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, is entombed. Linden Forbes Samson Burnham was the first Executive President of Guyana, and was called the Founder Leader during his tenure as president.

The Mausoleum is a recent addition to the Gardens being built in 1986, it has numerous sculptures on the interior walls done by Ivor Thom.

The reflection in the pond was what drew me to this scene, I hope you like it.

The Deck – Week 45

On November 12, 2010November 12, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography4 Comments

There’s an old Koker (or sluice) on Camp Road outside of the Guyana Technical Institute that I have been keeping an eye on for months, I always want to stop and photograph it, but most times there are some homeless men or just loafers around it, then at other times, the scene just wasn’t appealing to me. I was accompanying Nikhil as he headed up to David Street to photograph a scene his wife had pointed out to him when I noticed the lighting and the overall scene and asked him to stop so that I could get it at least this once.

I was a bit pressed for time this week, I haven’t processed any of my other images for the week, I took the easy route and did some minor “light” editing in Oloneo for this week’s image.

Camp Road Koker - 1/125s f/8.0 ISO200 10mm

The Deck – Week 43

On October 29, 2010October 29, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography10 Comments

Oloneo just extended their current Beta version of their software to December, and I remembered that I had wanted to experiment with a single image in their software and see what lighting possibilities there were, so this week I chose a photograph that I had wanted to do some minor lighting adjustments and colour saturations to. As Oloneo can work directly with the RAW file I actually got quite a lot of noise in the process, and I then used some noise reduction before uploading.

As a stand-alone RAW processor it is not bad at all, nowhere close to Lightroom, but then nothing is. I like the slider controls and I would recommend it for HDR work, and if you like experimenting, it has a unique “Relighting” HDR feature, for controlled shooting conditions, check out their site if you get the chance.

I only took 86 photos this week, but for the small number I had a slightly hard time choosing one, I think it is just because of my experimenting in Oloneo that I chose this one 🙂

This was taken at Diamond (village) on the East Bank of Demerara, the cane fields are in bloom, the sun was about to go into its daily descent for sunset and some of the clouds were reflecting the sun’s glow nicely. Oloneo stripped out the EXIF information from the file, I hope they fix that in the final version.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Diamond Fields 7505. Canon T1i, 1/40sec f/4.5 ISO200 10mm

The Deck – Week 42

On October 22, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography14 Comments

I almost didn’t get to sort out this last week’s photos, and I may have already used my best image for that last post 🙂

This week’s image has a little novelty, a small moon in the background. While this week’s image may not be too special, today is special for myself and Nikhil, we were both chosen as “Featured Local Photographers” for an event being held by the Demerara Tobacco Company as part of the Dunhill Experience, so a few of our images will be on display at a semi-private event and we are expected to be there to discuss our photography with the guests. This is a first for me, my fifteen minutes of fame (or shame, if I can’t put two words together correctly). Wish me luck, I am not too worried about my friend Nikhil, he’s a lawyer, he’s faced worse people 🙂 I think that they will feature other photographers at later events, so we’re like the opening act 🙂

Anyway, here’s the photo of the Susamacher Methodist Church 🙂

Late Afternoon @ Better Hope

On October 20, 2010October 20, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography23 Comments

Recently I have taken to “not” reviewing my images until Friday morning, when I would choose my photograph for the 2010 Deck collection on the main site. But this week I broke from the norm to attempt another HDR (High Dynamic Range) image. I went with Nikhil out to get his daily photograph, and we turned down the dividing road between the villages of Better Hope and Vryheid’s Lust, I wasn’t much inspired by the things I saw, but the sky was very nice, and I thought that a wide-angle HDR would turn out nicely. I had also just downloaded my trial version of Nik HDR Efex Pro and I wanted to try it out.

I have blogged about how I normally process my HDR images before, so this post is more about showing the results of trying the new software from Nik. I was impressed with the similarity it has to the other Nik software I’ve tried (like the Nik SIlver Efex) and it is easy and intuitive to use. I did not try to learn too much on this first try, just played with the basic settings to see how it stacked up against Dynamic HDR from Mediachance.

I think the resulting image speaks for itself, both Nik HDR Efex Pro and Dynamic HDR were able to help me to portray the variety of tones that I saw, in this case I was facing the slate afternoon sun, so the image has a lot more detail than a standard shot of the sky which rendered the buildings in the foreground as mostly silhouettes.

Take a look and let me know what you think 🙂 If you click on the image the site has it a bit larger.

Late Afternoon at Better Hope — 3 Image HDR, processed using Nik HDR Efex Pro

The Deck – Week 41

On October 15, 2010October 15, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography19 Comments

This week was fairly good as photography goes, I took a lot of photographs, 311 of which I’ve downloaded, the remainder were from a wedding that I was helping my bother Andre out at.

Choosing an image for this week’s deck proved more difficult than I would have thought, but that is mainly because the image I wanted to use, I decided to relegate to another blog-post for tomorrow. The image I eventually decided upon was chose for the unusual perspective, at least for me, I am usually more of an angular person when it comes to the direction from which I generally point the camera, Nikhil is usually the one who goes for “head-on” views.

I had the Sigma 10-20mm Wide angle lens on my camera, and I thought that the image would look good from a head-on view facing the horizon, unfortunately the shoreline and the horizon were not exactly parallel at this point, but I think I got the image to where I wanted it 🙂

This was taken along the seawall somewhere between Montrose and Le Resouvenir on the East Coast of Demerara.

September Monochromes

On October 13, 2010October 15, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography15 Comments

I decided on the name before I realised that I have one that was actually taken in October, but since I am unable to come up with a new creative sounding name, it remains as September Monochromes.

I want to start off with a Sepia image, it’s not necessarily a great image, but I liked the elements; seashore, people – young and not-so-young, and a fishing rod.

The next is the first of the Black and White images, it is one that I recently entered into a DP Review challenge called Clouds, I was experimenting with a borrowed Canon 80-200mm lens and most of the images came out very low contrast, so like the Sepia one above, most of the rest I’ve rendered in monochrome. This one came out much better than expected, I had to give it a title for the challenge, so that’s how the title came to be.

Along the seashore, you are sure to find a coconut washed ashore by the waves, this one was partway up a concrete sloped walkway on the seawall, maybe washed there but probably kicked there by some youngster.

The final image is the one taken in October, after our Robbery ordeal and we daringly went right back to the Kingston Promenade, I like the clouds in the sky and thought that the lighthouse silhouetted against it would look nice 🙂

They were doing some renovation work to the lighthouse, so you might notice the scaffolding on the sides of it there.

The Deck – Week 40

On October 8, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography16 Comments

Something has changed… although I am not sure what it is, it has affected my photography, or maybe it has affected how I see my photographs. I was very disappointed with this last week’s photographs, either I have lost the zeal or I am more critical of the images, or I have simply taken bad images this last week. Of the one hundred and five images taken over the last week, there was one that I was somewhat pleased with, a location that I had photographed before, but never posted an image of it for The 2010 Deck.

We revisited the Kitty Market Square, and I took this image, I liked it in colour, but I also liked it in monochrome… after some consultation, the monochrome edged out the colour 🙂