Bad Boy

On January 28, 2022 By themichaellamcollectionIn PhotographyLeave a comment

I haven’t been out to the seawalls in a while, I should do something about that!

This one was take a couple years back, came across it this morning going through the catalog for 2020, I processed it and exported, and its only when I started typing this blog post that I realised that its a decent-ish Street Photograph. There are Street ‘togs who would seek to contrive something similar by waiting for the right moment, it just so happens this one was accidental in a way, I actually paid no attention tot he writing on the wall, I was focused on the tyre, the wall and the approaching boy on his bicycle.

Bad Boy – 20-3414
Annandale Seawall, East Coast Demerara

Even after realising the Street Photography nature of the image, I would still keep it in my Seawall Folder 🙂 Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other Seawall Images.

Footprints and the Flag

On January 3, 2022 By themichaellamcollectionIn PhotographyLeave a comment

I typed the Title line at the top of this post and could not help thinking about the Insurrection in America almost a year ago. I was looking at the photo I am sharing and saw the footprints in the sand/mud that led away from the boat in the distance and headed towards shore using the Jhandi flag as a point of reference and a mark to aim for and pass, without disturbing it, and I think of some of the scenes I saw on television of that insurrection, of the trampling of people, ideals, decency and the flag. I didn’t intend to mention anything that political, but it came to mind, so I put it into words.

This scene is from an area on the East Coast of Demerara, past the large Koker at Hope, its referred to as Hope Lowlands, in the early morning the sandflies and mosquitoes eat you alive (or at least the morning we had visited, later in the morning its better, at least it was this time that I took this photo, I was out there with Fidal from 55 Photography, always good to have a photo-buddy, and the diversity in images from other folks on a walk are always great to see.

Hope Lowlands, East Coast Demerara, Guyana, South America

Hoping I get out more this year to get some photos in, my finger has been itching 😉 Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with others from my Black and White album

Supermarket

On March 31, 2020 By themichaellamcollectionIn PhotographyLeave a comment

Supermarkets are usually very busy places, especially during the hours I can shop in them. During this time when people are trying to practice social distancing, its probably not surprising that I can actually get shots that are not too “busy” 🙂

Cleaning (and hopefully sanitizing) the shopping environment.

What caught my attention here was the slight distortion that the cold frosted door caused to the image of the man there as opposed to the clarity of the man beyond the door.

Tilted images are not my thing, but sometimes they are necessary and sometimes they work.

Some people can’t leave their children at home, so it becomes necessary to take them into potentially dangerous areas. Who would have thought that we would ever describe a supermarket as a potentially dangerous area…

Inside supermarkets are not easy to shoot, at least not for me, the lighting is not optimal, being relatively low light, especially in narrow aisles, the diversity of images may not be as ideal as out on the streets, and the space tends to be cramped, luckily, these allowed for some space due to a sparsity of people. 🙂

As you might notice, there is no prevalence of masks, not because Guyanese are conscious of the actual dangers of that, or the possible benefits, but because its not part of our preventative measure, just like staying at home isn’t….

The WHO recently reiterated its position on who should wear masks and when, as always, its about educating ourselves on these things.

Click on the images to see them in the Gallery along with other photographs “In the Streets”.

Cyclist on the dam

On March 6, 2020March 6, 2020 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

I tend to take photographs with composition in mind, maybe except when I’m trying Street Photography, but other than that, its usually about how the scene shapes up, where the lines go, how much foreground versus background to use, and sometimes, even where the main subject should fall, although that is not always the case.

Because of that approach, and because I seldom think about the “colour” of the image, I tend to see the resulting image in terms of black and white, shades of gray, more about form and function, lines, elements, etc.

These were just some thoughts going through my mind while processing this image:

At Lusignan its currently more of a dam than a seawall 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with some others from the “Up East” album

Out There

On February 18, 2020 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughtsLeave a comment

Some thoughts on the photographic process.

For me, the Photographic Process encompasses several stages, some think of it as simply taking a photograph with a device such as a camera or a phone, but I’d like to just mention the stages that I consider part and parcel of the Photographic Process, all of this just to speak specifically about one part that has to do with some of my black and white images.

The photographic process begins with the Photographer’s Eye, seeing that which is intended to be captured, since we all see things differently, this first part starts the differentiation of one image from the next and “my image” from “your image”. Secondly, our camera adjustments, for many this is done using the automatic settings, but for others it may entail making several adjustments to modes and setting values for shutter speed, aperture and ISO; these settings are usually determined by the lighting conditions and the desired “look” of the resulting image. Next comes the composition, determining what to include in the frame, what to exclude, and a variety of other compositional techniques. Then we click the shutter button.

In our current digital age, this is usually the end of the process, it gets shared on social media, etc., some may pass the image through a simple software for preset filters etc before sharing. For photographers, this has only been half the work, the next stage is to process the image, depending upon the ultimate use of the image this can be done in a myriad of ways; for me, I seldom do weddings or portraits, so generally the image is intended as ”art”, yes, it sounds pretentious, but that’s what I usually intend, so I would often process the image through Adobe Lightroom, and for many of my black and white images, I also use DXO Nik Silver Efex for the black and white processing. Once the image is processed to my satisfaction, it is then shared to my site or to social media. For me, however, the process ends at another stage, when I actually have the image printed.

Out There - 14-5265 — Out There – 14-5265 | Oniabo Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, Guyana | 2014

The size of the printed image is usually limited by a few factors, including the size (usually in megapixels) of the original capture, the content of the frame (composition) and the type of processing done to the image. Some of my black and white processing can result in things that would not look well if printed large, such as today’s image. I used a high contrast process and worked to heighten the structure and clarity of the image, in so doing there is a resultant “haloing” in existing high contrast areas of the image, when enlarged this can lend the impression that the image was “edited” that portions were spliced in, when in fact they were not. So, in short, I most likely would not print this image large, possibly 16” x 24”’ as the largest print, this would retain the integrity of the image for me.

This is not a new photograph, it lay unprocessed in my files since 2014, I went scanning through the archives again this morning and spotted it, wondering why I never processed it (as usual). It is not the latest addition to the Oniabo Collection.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images in the Black and White album.

Lusignan

On February 13, 2020 By themichaellamcollectionIn One Way to Do it, PhotographyLeave a comment

Anyone who knows me, or has followed my blog or Facebook posts know that I have a particular fondness for the seawalls. Although I haven’t been shooting much in the last few years, I do manage to get in one or two seawall visits and a few images. Many people don’t realise that the artistic process is not simple and certainly not infallible, over the years, I’ve accumulated many images, and I can often go back through images I’ve taken and overlooked to find a gem or two.

These two images were never overlooked, but I simply didn’t quite get the feel I wanted at the time, I suspect my mindset was different and I didn’t see what was right in front of my eyes. I’ve often looked at images I’ve taken and know that I have “something”, but can’t seem to process is the way my mind or my inner eye was seeing it, so its often a limitation of the mind, or the knowledge to get the image from the raw image into what it was that I was intending to capture and to share.

One of the things I’ve learned over time is not to force my way to achieve something “artistic”, it either comes or it doesn’t. What I can do, and what I often do, is to experiment, to play with the software, try various settings and adjust the sliders without thinking too much about it, just adjust on a visual level rather than intellectually anticipate a particular outcome. What this does if expose my mind to more of what the software is capable of, and also to see changes in the tonality and look of the image that I would not have otherwise seen with my usual predetermined mindset.

This does not necessarily mean that at the end of experimenting that I get a pleasing image, often that’s not that case, and I put the image aside and move on, but I would have learnt a thing or two, which I can apply to other images. It is also just as likely that I would return to that image at a later date, with some more clarity, possibly because I’ve since learnt something new, or simply gotten a different outlook on the image and what it could be.

What I have described is one of my approaches to this “art”, and there are many photographers out there who don’t approach it as art but as a profession. The beauty of Photography is that each of us can approach it differently, and come out of it at the end with unique images, because we are all unique, and what works for me may not work for others, and vice versa. Don’t be afraid to experiment, it is how we learn.

In the beginning…

On July 13, 2017 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

Well, maybe not “the” beginning, just “a” beginning.

It was probably around 2007 that I began to pay more attention to what went into the frame, to what it was I was taking photographs of. Prior to that it was mostly point, click, “look, isn’t that pretty??” Most probably weren’t pretty at all, but family and friends always say “yes, it is” – In 2007, somewhere amidst the generic photos, there began to emerge a few that stood out, and I think that I was seeing things, the things around me, differently, and in so doing I was capturing them differently, light was beginning to take on lifelike characteristics that would change how everything looked, and how everything could be captured on a few thousand pixels.

It was now not so important to capture every detail, but just the ones that would help tell the story, using light and dark, contrast and brightness to illustrate an idea, a concept, a feeling… It was time to pay more attention to the composition rather than just the subject.

I decided to take a look back at the photos I took ten years ago, to see what, if anything, was worth sharing. Most of the images I took were family oriented, so those didn’t count, but I was experimenting, looking around me and trying to capture something out of the ordinary (ordinary being the family photos, nothing captured can compare to even the ordinary of professional photographers, much less fine-art photographers).

I even tried my hand at pointing the camera at strange people, out in public, although I was still much more comfortable pointing at non-human subjects, those that might not complain or make a fuss.

And its also the year, I did my first Photo-Walk, not what would really be considered a photo walk, but myself, my brother, Andre, and two friends, Nikhil and Naseem. We went for a drive “over the river” up to Wales estate on the West Bank of Demerara and I think up to Windsor Forest on the West Coast of Demerara, stopping every now and again to take some photos.

That photo-walk was somewhat of an eye-opener as well, in a relatively short distance, there was quite a lot to see, and a good variety of subjects and scenes to photograph as a result.

This isn’t a retrospective of any kind really, just taking a look at some photos with an eye that has had a decade of shooting, and processing them anew. They were all shot on a bridge camera, or an advanced point-and-shoot camera, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, a 6 Megapixel camera with a 1/2.5” CCD sensor, so there’s not a lot of post processing I could do without delving into the realm of editing.

Back then I was mostly all about colour, vivid vibrant popping colour, so the monochromatic versions (BW) you see are how I see them today, not then.

I chose ten images to illustrate what I had accomplished that year, I don’t think I would have found very many, if any, more that are worth sharing. I hope you enjoy a few.

All the images were reprocessed, and cropped. Click on any image to see them in the Gallery.

Walkabout

On March 18, 2017 By themichaellamcollectionIn PhotographyLeave a comment

Just a photo.

I’ve had it processed for about a month now, but after waiting for the right words to say, I figured I’d just share it 🙂

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm | 2016

Click on the image to see it in the Up East Gallery, along with some other choice images 🙂

Boats at Better Hope

On January 27, 2017 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography6 Comments

Once in a while, I’m fortunate to be on a PhotoWalk with some fellow photographers, last Sunday was one of those days, and while I think my total take in terms of absolute exposures for the afternoon was about 30, I think I came away with about three photos that I liked, and more that are usable, and that’s a good percentage for me.

This one I chose to share as a blog post rather than in the group album, in which I have shared two others 🙂

Boats at Better Hope – 17-3100 | Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm | 2017

Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery in the Collection.

Exposed Coast

On January 18, 2017 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, Seascape2 Comments

Being on the northern coast of South America… I suppose that’s what we have… an Exposed Coast… facing the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Luckily for us, hurricanes never seem to come close to shore here… Smile