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.
When taken from a low perspective with an utra-wide-angle lens, scenes take on a different look 🙂
The bright whites at the top of the wood are harsh reflections from the one o’clock sun.
Canon EOS 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 1/125s, 10mm, f/8, ISO 100
Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery, along with many others in my Black and White Collection.
Getting the subtle colours out of a sky opposite the now setting sun isn’t easy…. but I think I caught this one at the right time…
In the distance is a Koker and boat offsetting the foreground rock, the rock shows some of the warm light of the setting sun coming through the clouds to the back of me.
I often think to myself that if I keep revisiting the same spots then I’ll not find new photos to add to my collection, but although I do come away with many similar photos that often never see the light of day, I do get one or two that are different and worth sharing 🙂
Canon 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 10mm, 1/60s, f/5.6 | Lusignan, E.C.D, Guyana
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery with the other images from this year’s Deck Project.
Creepy but amazing creatures, the web wasn’t in perfect condition, but it was being lit up by the afternoon sun, and my wife’s cousin suggested I take a photo of it.
They really do make very intricate and delicate structures.
If anyone knows the common name or scientific name of this one, do let me know…
I miss doing macros… I think I’ll start a fund for a 100mm Canon Macro lens…. all donations accepted, none too large or too small 😀
Canon ESO 60D | EFS 18-135mm Kit Lens | 135mm, f/5.6, ISO125
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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