Tag: flags

2013 Deck – Week 45

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography4 Comments

Sunrises and Sunsets are considered a cliché type of photograph by many, yet I am still drawn to them, not as often as before, but I still enjoy a good sunrise or sunset, and I enjoy taking photos of them too  🙂

When I take a photo of a sunrise or sunset, I try to include some other object of interest, since a sunrise is just a sunrise and a sunset just a sunset (well, most times, there are possibly exceptions).

I was driving home, when I saw some lovely pastel to darker colours in the late afternoon sky, and thought I should at least stop somewhere to see if I could get a nice photo,  the tide was in, and I spotted someone line-fishing, probably for Cuirass, and quickly snapped off a few shots before walking to the seawall to see what else there may be.

As it turned out, I’m very happy I took those shots, it came out well.  I hope you like it.

Click on the image above to see it in the Gallery

2013 Deck – Week 28

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography4 Comments

I had stopped near the Shell Service Station at Ogle on the off-chance that there’d be something over the seawall to shoot, this was one of those times when I was not disappointed….  I took quite a number of photos trying to capture the mood, and I think this one comes close…  I have others that I may use at a later date, but this one reflects a lot of what I saw… and hopefully conveys the mood to you as well.

It’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon (remember we live in the tropics here in Guyana), but instead of a harsh overhead sun, we had very overcast skies, very fluffy clouds, not that dead-pan grey sky that depresses me, and the light filtering through the clouds was just enough to really lend something special to the scene.

As soon as I started walking along the wall I had company… a dog, apparently resident to the general area, but that’s a photo for another day  🙂  I photographed from on top the wall, from an eastern viewpoint, a western viewpoint, then went over the wall for another series of shots… all the while thinking about what’s the best angle…. what’s the best composition.

There are other photos, with other elements, but this one simplifies it for me and gets the idea across better 🙂

Canon EOS 60D, Canon 18-135mm Kit Lens  |  1/400s, f/13, ISO320, 18mm

Click on the image to view it in the Gallery, while there check out the other images for this year’s Deck Project, and other albums as well.

2013 Deck – Week 06

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography2 Comments

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

2012 Deck – Week 35

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2012 Deck, Photography10 Comments

In June of this year Imran Khan had done an article on the new insurgence of young (and not so young) Photographers in Guyana in the form of the Facebook Group Guyana Photographers, this was recently re-blogged on the GuyanaPhotographers.com site.  In it he mentioned that the Seawalls seem to be a favourite or default location for their “treks”, this is very true.

With most of the population of Guyana living on the Atlantic coast, this is inevitable; with the majority of (accessible) roads meandering along the coast, this is inevitable; with the majority of the coastland given over to farming (and now housing) leaving the only scenic areas being the seawalls stretching from east to west along the coast, this is inevitable.

I’m not saying that there aren’t more places that would make nice photographs, there are, they are just not as “easy” to get to.  You can read “easy” as being “not too expensive to get to”, “not too arduous to get to”, “not needing to plan a trip weeks in advance” and  ‘not requiring a four wheel drive vehicle with a winch and hi-lift” to get there.  🙂

So, for someone who has a full-time job but would still like to get a nice photograph, as Imran so accurately pointed out, the Seawall becomes the “default” location  🙂

With that said… here’s a pair of Jhandi Flags… on the sea shore, just in front of the Seawall

Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery, along with all the other entries for this year’s Deck Project.

2012 Deck – Week 18

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2012 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Lunar Perigee and the 2012 Supermoon

In 2011 and 2012 there was much reference to the term Supermoon, which is an astrological term, as opposed to the Astronomical term Perigee.  What was so Super about it? Well, I was out there and it looked like a regular full moon, but we’d all love to believe that we could see it larger and brighter than at other times 🙂

Perigee is the time at which the moon is closest in its orbit to the earth (doesn’t matter what phase it’s in), while the Supermoon refers to a New or Full moon that occurs when the moon is within 90% of its closest approach to the earth in its orbit.  So I suppose that the perfect Supermoon would be a Full moon at Perigee  🙂  (incidentally, the time when the moon is furthest away from the earth in its orbit is called Apogee)

The Perigee varies from around 357,000km to 369,000km (in roundish figures), and while a difference of 12,000km sounds like a lot, the difference to the naked eye is negligible.

On May 5th, the moon was at its fullest at 1 minute to its perigee, so that’s about as perfect a Supermoon as we can get I suppose.

Anyway… on May 5th this year, I was up the coast near Lusignan when this year’s “Supermoon” was supposed to occur, two things happened (well, more than two, but two that are relevant to this post); I had lent out my telephoto lens, so getting a close-up was out of the question, and the clouds were conspiring against me, So I ended up with a wide shot full of clouds  🙂

After playing hide-and-seek with the moon for several minutes I gave up and headed out, one that I took would work, so this is one that worked  🙂

Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery.

The Calm – LBI HDR

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography24 Comments

For anyone who has followed my through my blogging, you’ll have seen Nikhil’s name popping up with some regularity, we’re friends, and he’s also my photo-buddy.  In September of last year he came out with a spectacular image which has since been used by Kriti in their publication of the 2011 Scotiabank (Guyana) Calendar, it’s an amazing image, he titled it Resting Drama (if you click on the name you’ll see it on his site).

I was left stunned with his image and had not processed any of my images from that day, they will all pale in comparison.  Today I decided to process one, (I’ll get to the others eventually) this one was a three image HDR, whilst he faced north, I faced east, into the slowly setting sun.

I want to explain a few things; firstly, it’s a three image HDR (High Dynamic Range) trying to get the most detail out of the scene.  Secondly, it’s about the scene as it is depicted, I tried as much as possible to keep the image as “natural” as possible, sometimes HDRs can go overboard and look over-processed or even cartoonish.

The sky was cloudy, so we were in a shadowed setting with some cloud coverage overhead, heavier as you looked eastward,but far towards the east the sun was setting, and fewer clouds were in the sky that far east giving the sunlight entrance to the scene.  The sunlight bathed the seawall mildly or gently, You can see the wetness towards the sea reflecting the light, even the grass shoreward was lit to a degree.

I think I may be using too many words, I should just let the photo speak for itself.

 

The Calm - La Bonne Intention, East Coast Demerara. 3 Image HDR, 27mm, ISO 200

The Deck Weeks 31 and 32

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography1 Comment

I have to play catch-up this week, since I missed out on uploading my Deck photo for last week, so this week is a double upload and blog.  I had already decided what photograph I would have most likely used for the Deck, but I did not get a chance until this week to process the remaining images from my vacation.

The Deck photo for Week 31 is a parting shot from St Martin, over on the French side, on the beach front near Marigot, we were waiting for the boat to arrive for our final adventure, a chance to see the corals and fishes under the sea through the transparent underside of a “glass-bottomed” boat.  My underwater shots came out terrible, but I loved this scene from the shore:

In the last week, I took photographs on three occasions, one was at a funeral, the other two were on afternoon walks with Nikhil, but for some reason I was not getting the “feel” for the scenes or subjects.  My final photograph of today turned out to be one that I was pleasantly surprised with, I took another shot at the New Thriving Chinese Restaurant.  The image is a pseudo-HDR, since I also wanted to try out a new software that Nikhil had recently introduced me to, it is still in the Beta (testing) stage, but I am rather impressed by it.  It introduces a new type of HDR called HDR ReLight as well as doing the regular tone mapping type HDR, but it also processes RAW files, which I shoot primarily.  This was the portion that I wanted to try, and I was rather pleased with the result, the software is Oloneo PhotoEngine, give it a try if you like HDRs or you shoot in RAW.

Here’s the photo for the Deck Week 32, I hope you like it.