Tag: flora

Insects

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography16 Comments

Interestingly enough I had loads and loads of photographs of insects when I shot with the Canon S5IS bridge camera, but since I have been shooting with the T1i SLR, I have very few, very very few, as a matter of fact this is the first that I’ve uploaded to my site and I had to create a gallery just for it  🙂

I think that because the S5 had a very good Macro mode and an even better Super Macro mode, I experimented more with them and with the usual victims of those modes, insects.  Also, I had bought “add-on” macro lenses from Raynox that really had me doing some nice experimenting  🙂  Now that I use the SLR, I am longing for a good Macro lens, and I dream about the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro regularly  🙂  (anyone feeling generous, I won’t refuse a gift)

Anyway, enough of the dreaming, here’s the insect I mentioned…

 

Hang on!

Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, he’s there all by himself.

I took this the same day last week when I took the one I posted for the Deck, so some might say this is more appealing, but the Lotus Flower fit my mood at the time  🙂

2011 Deck – Week 11

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography14 Comments

I’ve been feeling a bit depressed this week, probably a combination of factors, and not a feeling I am familiar with.  I need to leave it behind, but maybe the photo for this week will reflect some of that in it.

As befitting the week, I only shot photos on one day, so I didn’t have much of a variety to choose from, there were two I favoured, so I chose one and hope that someone other than myself would like it, although it is the more “depressing” of the two, I preferred it overall, I will post the other image in a later post.

 

Losing it

Cricket, lovely Cricket!

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography14 Comments

In the Caribbean and Guyana, this is our game, Cricket!  Played by more countries than baseball, but less recognised by the “west”, the only thing played more and enjoyed by more around the world is probably football, NO, not that thing played by Americans, where they hardly use their feet except to run (with amazing speed actually), I’m referring to the real football, also called Soccer worldwide.

In cricket there’s variations of the game,there’s the one called Test Cricket, where everything is tested from the players endurance to the spectators’ patience over several days, usually five but it could be seven, then there’s the One-day Cricket, or standard 50-over matches, the World Cup for which is actually being played now.  The newest forms of the game have been Twenty 20, or a twenty over form of the game, shorter and more exciting, and adopted by the governing cricket body, the ICC, as a new standard form, and here in Guyana, we have the yearly 10/10 games now sponsored by local telecommunications company GT&T.  But those are the structured forms, as children growing up, other than the usual school-yard cricket we knew of three types of cricket, Cricket-in-the-street, Cricket-in-the-rain and the one that none of us could play but loved through the Dave Martins and the Tradewinds song, Cricket-in-the-Jungle!

As much as I’d love to catch a photograph of Monkey batting, the Elephant bowling, the umpire Parrot and the rest, I have to settle for the ones I can find, and I was fortunate to recently see a group of youngsters playing Cricket in the Street, in the Rain!  Can’t beat that combination!  I would have gone down to get closer photographs, but two things held me back, the camera isn’t weather-sealer and I hadn’t walked with the zip-lock bag as suggested by others, and if they saw me taking photos, it would lose some of the natural feel to it.

As always, click on the photo to see it on the site larger!

Chips!

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography19 Comments

I’m a bit under the weather, so just a quick one to tide me over.

In almost every village area in Guyana, you either have walking, riding or driving vendors crying out their “wares”, I think some of the famous ones are “Broom Here!!!”, “Papers! Papers!, Kaieteur, Chronicle, Stabroek, Times! Papers!” and of course “Chips! Chips! Chips!, fresh chips!”

Maybe I’ll get the others another time, but for now here’s one of the Chips salesmen  🙂

 

Chips!

Click on the image to see it larger on the site, and of course, browse the sight at will  🙂

On the corner

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography20 Comments

Although Nikhil is no longer pressured on a daily basis for a photograph since he completed his first 365 project, we still manage to go for a photo-walk every now and again.  One of those walks took us into Campbelville, and although it was mostly for him to get some Nas-inspried photographs, I came away with a few goodies  🙂

One was also somewhat inspired by an image I once saw from a controversial photographer called Ken, although my photographs may never become as “professional” as Ken’s I learnt a lot from reading his blogs and rants 🙂  So, I titled this one “Ken”, it was taken at the corner of DeAbrue and Duncan Streets (north-west corner)

 

Ken

The second one, I wish I had spent more time on, the scene reminded me of a photograph I once saw from Errol Ross Brewster, and I am ashamed I let the rain chase me away from this spot without getting more out of it, but there you go, the Canon T1i isn’t weather-sealed.  This is at the corner of William and Middleton Streets (north-east corner), it is a single image, but I used HDR Efex Pro to recover some detail in the clouds, in the shot it was totally blown out.

 

The House on the Corner

Terminal

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography22 Comments

While other parts of the world are attempting to record every bit of information for Historical reference, and digging up (sometimes literally) any old records and references to people and places long dead and almost forgotten, I find that in Guyana, there are few records of places and people from our historical past (at least easily accessible records), whether of the recent past or a few generations back.

With the current alarming rate at which the older buildings, some with lots of history and character, are disappearing, I fear that a lot of the history and folklore that may be attached to those buildings will also disappear.

Much of what I know of Georgetown, was “told” to me by family and friends or teachers or just people who had something to say.

I was born after the trains disappeared from our shores, but I was told that this building was the Terminal (of course, there’s not much of a building left, so all I took was the side of it that has nice palm trees along the trench).  It also served as the Bus Terminal after the train no longer ran.  I vaguely remember the “Big Buses” that once were “the public transportation” of Georgetown, or as we grew up calling them; the Tata Buses.

This building also either houses or housed a foreign mission office, I remember seeing a crest or coat-of-arms on the High Street side some years ago.

 

Lamaha Street, looking down from the High Street end.

The Parallel Project – Starburst

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, The Parallel Project20 Comments

There are special filters that you can buy to create those “star-burst” effects from very bright points of light, but you can also do this by using a small aperture, the aperture rings in the lens will help to produce this same star-burst effect without you going out and buying those filters.  Of course, the filters do give some very neat effects  🙂

I had intended this experiment for a night scene, but as I was in the park accompanying Nikhil, I thought I’d try it out using the sun as my source of bright light.  (I even took shots with a larger aperture to make sure it was working as it should)

 

The Tree in the Park. 1/30s, f/16, ISO 400, 18mm

100

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography13 Comments

Normally on a Friday, I post the newest photo for the Deck Project, but I will have to post that tomorrow.  This is my one-hundredth post since starting this blog, so I was looking for something special to do to mark it.

I decided to go through the photos that I’ve taken since using this current camera, the Canon EOS Rebel T1i, and I found three images that I thought would mark the occasion nicely.

Firstly, an image taken on the one-hundredth day of 2010, I only took photos on one subject that day, so I had to choose one from those, and one that I had not already uploaded.  I may never see Washington DC (especially when the Cherry Blossoms are blooming) so this tree is our Guyanese version  🙂

Secondly, the one-hundredth photograph, or more specifically the one-hundredth shutter-activation of the T1i.  This was from a project I did for Banks DIH, they were soon to open the new fine-dining restaurant and bar now known as OMG!  This scene is from inside the restaurant,  This is among the first experiences I’ve had with a Digital SLR camera.

Thirdly, I had reached and surpassed nine-thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine shutter actuations on the camera, and the numbering had started over, so the next photo is the second one hundredth image by number on the camera, so technically it’s the ten thousand and one hundredth image.

I started this blog with a post called “Before Our God”, with an image taken at the funeral of my maternal grand-mother, coincidentally on the one-hundredth post, an image from that same day is numbered 100.

For all those who have gone before us, those with us and those to come after us, most of us eventually realize that photography is more than just clicking the shutter-release button, it’s about the Moment, the Memory and the Meaning of the scene you have captured.

A Touch of Colour

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography18 Comments

I often remark to Nikhil that he should start a collection called “A Touch of Colour”, or in his case “A Touch of Red”.  He usually finds these scenes where there is one item of colour, usually red, that stands out in his compositions 🙂

While processing these two images I remembered what I so frequently tell him and decided to title this blog-post with this same concept.

The first image is an image that has been selectively desaturated to emphasize the Red, the processing is unusual for me but I rather liked how it turned out this time.

 

Red Cap - selective desaturation

The second image was not treated in the same way, it was of some gaily coloured flowers against an old almost colourless background, I went close with my zoom lens and worked to get some nice bokeh from the background.

 

Cat-tails