2013 Deck – Week 22

Our coastal sea-walls are fairly famous, built by the Dutch during their colonization of the area during the 1600’s and the 1700’s, and lasting all these years, protecting the land which they reclaimed from the sea (mainly Georgetown).

Whilst the walls keep the sea waters out, the Kokers (sluices) and pumps allow water accumulated in the drainage canals to be expelled out to the sea, the Kokers only work effectively if the tide is low, so the pumps are used to augment the Kokers, especially at high tide, but not exclusively.

While walking along the wall at Lusignan, I was passing one of the large pipes through which one of the pumps expel the water when I saw this scene.  🙂


Canon EOS 60D  |  Tamron 18-270 Lens  |  1/400s, f/11, 18mm, ISO400


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

Offerings

I was out by the seawall hoping to see a nice sky that I could use for a possible seascape when I came across a flag (Jhandi) planted on the beach with the leaf of the Lotus Flower plant at it’s base with the food offerings to Lord Hanuman.

I tried quite a few angles to get the perfect shot, but still don’t think I got the one that would jump out at me…  but this one I liked never-the-less  🙂


Click on the image to see it in the Seawall Gallery along with many other images from the Guyana Seawalls.

Also click on the Lotus Flower link in the text above to see a brief post I once did on the plant.


In the countryside

The headline might be misleading….

In Guyana, this photo could have been in the capital city of Georgetown, but it’s actually in the village of Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara.  In this era of washing machines and dryers, it’s neat to see clothes drying in the afternoon sun on a clothes line near coconut trees  🙂

Something about fresh sun-dried clothes has a crisp clean “feel” to it that transcends the sense of touch, it goes to the sense of smell, straight to your brain and tells you this is fresh, outdoor fresh… it puts a smile on your face and a bounce in your step.  🙂


Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from my Out and About Collection

2013 Deck – Week 20

I was processing this image as a part of another long-term project that I’ve been doing; Seascapes, but I decided that I would also include it into the Deck Project as it turned out so nicely 🙂

The water was lapping around the larger rock seen here, the tide was on it’s way out, and the sand/mud could be seen at the rock’s base when the wave had receded.  The waves seemed fairly predictable, coming in, swirling past the rock and then receding, so I set my self and waited for it, when it came in, it came a little harder and faster, and I involuntarily jerked backwards a bit and the shot actually came out at a bit of an angle, so I had to crop back to straighten the horizon.  I did have others that I could have used, but this one came out nicely, in terms of composition and the way the water was.

The skies were just how I like them recently, fairly dramatic, nice variations and with a fair amount of detail that I knew I could eke out of the RAW file.


Canon EOS 60D  |  Sigma 10-20mm  |  1/500s, f/14, 10mm  |  Rotational crop


Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

On the move

Normally I try to process my images just to get them to that stage that I like, my personal preference… so theoretically, not too much processing, just adjusting the sliders a little here and a little there…  it works for most images.

This particular image I knew that I would most likely process it in monochrome, but while making my Lightroom adjustments I felt that I wanted a little something extra out of the image….  I processed it with one aim in mind after that… to get as much detail out of that stream of clouds as I could… I even carried it into Nik Silver Efex to give it that extra structure that I was looking for…..  It even has a slight selenium tone over it.

Did I overdo it?  Some may say so, but it’s what I was looking for 🙂


Canon Rebel T1i  |  1/400s 18mm f/13


Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other Monochrome images.

2013 Deck – Week 18

One of the techniques I like to experiment with is HDR, or High Dynamic Range, especially on landscapes.  I don’t mean taking a single exposure and tweaking it or running it through HDR software for the effect, I mean actually taking multiple exposures for recombination in post-processing.

Since the Canon allows me three sequential shots automatically, that’s the amount of frames I usually use, although I would get a better handle on the dynamic range if I used seven or nine exposures.  But since most times I do these things without hunting for my tripod, Is tick to hand-holding 3 exposures in those circumstances.

I took the exposures for this photo one morning on the way to work (I think it was a Saturday… had to be), I was driving and noticed the Lotus Flower first, then noticed the sky, and quickly decided that I wanted a photo of the scene rather than the Lotus Flower alone 🙂

Each exposure was taken one stop apart and recombined using Nik HDR Efex Pro (as a plugin for Lightroom)…my hand may have been a touch heavy on the saturation 🙂


Dayclean  |  Canon EOS 60D  |  Sigma 10-20mm  |  10mm, max aperture f/4


Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

Pegasus on the Shore

Turn back the clock 5 years and 4 months…  I was doing one of those things that the manual says not to… shooting towards the sun… but in this case I didn’t point directly at the sun.  Since I was pointing towards the late afternoon sun, all the colours in the image became washed out leaving an almost sepia-toned image, so I carried it that extra step further in post-processing and made it a Sepia-toned image.

What had caught my eye was the light glaring off of the water that remained after the tide had receded, it made for a nice high-contrast image.


March 2nd, 2008  |  Canon PowerShot S5 IS

Shot on the lonest end of the camera’s 12x Optical zoom.

Click on the image to see it larger in the Sepia Gallery, along with many of my other Sepia-toned photos


Sunset’s Ghostly Walker

I still think that some of my favourite photos are from my pre-DSLR days, but that is probably because those were the days of learning about photography… I’m still learning, but at a slower pace 🙂

Since switching to a DSLR, I found that I take less of the images that excited me back then… I take less Macro photos and I take less long exposures in the evening…

I’m sharing one of the those evening ones today,


Rupert Craig Highway, the Green Light you see there is the traffic light at the Conversation Tree junction.

October 22, 2008, 6:02pm  |  6s, f/8, ISO 80  |  Canon PowerShot S5 IS


Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, along with some other Sunset / Sunrise photos

2013 Deck – Week 10

My priorities in life must most definitely be askew, since I seem to have less time for photography than ever before…  But even if I have to take a photo of the same thing every week, I will finish this project  🙂

As I was driving along the seawall, I noticed the white-capped waves as they rushed to shore and thought to just stop and catch a few.  It was a bright afternoon, but lacking any fancy filters or gadgetry I thought that I’d just bring out the focus of my intent in post-processing.

I used an orange filter in Post-processing to deepen the hue of the sky and emphasize the white caps of the waves.


Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2013 Deck – Week 06

I was taking some photos out by the seawall at Lusignan, and although I think I came away with some nice ones, there was one that I really wished I had taken a different approach to.  I saw a dramatic sky behind a stand of Jhandi flags, and I took a few photos, then moved on, then the thought struck me that I should have tried multiple exposures for an HDR.  By that time it was a little late since the clouds had changed significantly.

When I downloaded my images I was still struck by that scene so I decided to try an Pseudo HDR Technique on it, and this was the result.


Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery