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.
How I started the project for the 2010 Deck, the photographic week ends on a Thursday, this last Thursday also happened to be the day before a national holiday in Guyana, a Hindu festival called Diwali or Deepavali (pronounced Deepawlee). There is also an annual event on the night before Diwali, the Diwali Motorcade, featuring lots of illuminated vehicles.
Although the image I have decided to use for this week’s Deck Photo is not the best image for the week, I thought that I should use something representative of the Holiday. Moving night photography is definitely not my thing 🙂
This is a portion of the winning “float” of the night, it was from the Edward B. Beharry Group of Companies, and executed beautifully by Andrew Arts.
Oloneo just extended their current Beta version of their software to December, and I remembered that I had wanted to experiment with a single image in their software and see what lighting possibilities there were, so this week I chose a photograph that I had wanted to do some minor lighting adjustments and colour saturations to. As Oloneo can work directly with the RAW file I actually got quite a lot of noise in the process, and I then used some noise reduction before uploading.
As a stand-alone RAW processor it is not bad at all, nowhere close to Lightroom, but then nothing is. I like the slider controls and I would recommend it for HDR work, and if you like experimenting, it has a unique “Relighting” HDR feature, for controlled shooting conditions, check out their site if you get the chance.
I only took 86 photos this week, but for the small number I had a slightly hard time choosing one, I think it is just because of my experimenting in Oloneo that I chose this one 🙂
This was taken at Diamond (village) on the East Bank of Demerara, the cane fields are in bloom, the sun was about to go into its daily descent for sunset and some of the clouds were reflecting the sun’s glow nicely. Oloneo stripped out the EXIF information from the file, I hope they fix that in the final version.
I seriously doubt that I should classify it as an exhibition, but failing to find another name for it, that’s what it was in essence. There are a series of events held under the patronage of the local tobacco company, the Demerara Tobacco Company, where they associate their premium brand of cigarettes, Dunhill, with various forms of art, featuring local artists. I understand that prior to the event at which I was involved, there was one where they showcased a local painter, some of his finished work as well as one he was working on at the event itself.
The event planners had shortlisted a few up-coming local photographers, you know, the ones who aren’t famous locally as yet, and we were invited to a meeting to discuss the event. At the end of the meeting they had decided that this would most likely be the first photographic exhibition event they were doing and since both Nikhil and I had a “portfolio” each to choose from, they would like it if we did the event. Our portfolios were originally sent to the event planners by another photographer (he’s the Professional one) Dwayne Hackett, so a big thanks to him.
At first we were flattered, and then we were panicked, as we had to choose (together with a representative from the sponsors) and print the images by the next day.
Amazingly we managed to do it all, and even helped to mount the images, with LOTS of help from the guys who work with me at the sign company (DD Signs), without their help it would not have come off, definitely not!
The event itself was…. not too bad. It was held in the Blue Lagoon Bar at the Hotel Tower, we had to contend with lots of music from a separate event outside, the portable AC units were not doing the job of cooling the room, and we were asked to wear formal attire (I think the last time I wore a suit before that was to my sister’s wedding). The attendance was poor, but that might have been a good thing for two very nervous photographers, we had less chance of embarrassing ourselves 🙂
We had our cameras, but they were mostly there to identify us as “The Photographers”, and I don’t think either of us took much more than a few token photographs.
For our regular readers, we decided that since we didn’t bother to actually take photographs of our photographs on display, we’d link a few here on the blog post 🙂
Nikhil’s Set
My Set
And here’s one taken by another up-and-coming photographer on the scene, Troy Parboo, in it we are graced by the presence of Ms. Shannon de Haas, another of the short-listed photographers.
Michael, Shannon and Nikhil
It may not have been the ideal coming out party for a photographer, but it was exposure, none-the-less 🙂
Thanks for all the encouragement and well wishes folks.
I almost didn’t get to sort out this last week’s photos, and I may have already used my best image for that last post 🙂
This week’s image has a little novelty, a small moon in the background. While this week’s image may not be too special, today is special for myself and Nikhil, we were both chosen as “Featured Local Photographers” for an event being held by the Demerara Tobacco Company as part of the Dunhill Experience, so a few of our images will be on display at a semi-private event and we are expected to be there to discuss our photography with the guests. This is a first for me, my fifteen minutes of fame (or shame, if I can’t put two words together correctly). Wish me luck, I am not too worried about my friend Nikhil, he’s a lawyer, he’s faced worse people 🙂 I think that they will feature other photographers at later events, so we’re like the opening act 🙂
Anyway, here’s the photo of the Susamacher Methodist Church 🙂
Do you see the humanoid looking speck at the top of that hill?
That’s my brother Andre, also known as The Lunatic. Always willing to go the extra mile or the extra climb for that perfect photograph, We were already on top of a hill and could see a nice view and a good distance, but Andre just had to go for a higher vantage point.
That’s my brother for you! When he was a teenager he rode from Georgetown to Lethem, he will tell you that he actually didn’t start riding until Linden, but that’s like saying the glass if fifteen-sixteenths full and not full all the way. Anyone who has travelled the trail in recent years knows that its rough, well that trail didn’t exist in that state when he rode it, it was rougher, with steeper hills and swamps.
He is the kind of person who will run towards the tornado to get a good shot, instead of running for cover like the rest of us, he will hang off the edge of cliffs looking at waterfalls, and jump out of a moving vehicle on a precarious hillside just because he sees a photo opportunity, leaving the rest of us panicking in the vehicle, worrying more about him than ourselves.
When Andre makes up his mind to do something, he’ll move mountains to do it, and accomplish it with style and a smile on his face.
Why am I saying all these things about him now? Men in our family generally don’t express that much emotion to each other, we acknowledge things like pride and love with a nod of the head and a small smile. Andre is the second member of our family to migrate this year, Joan married and migrated a few months back, none of the family have done so before, and the feelings are bitter-sweet. We are happy for them and wish them well in their lives, a future that is unsure as always, but sure to be filled with many things new and wondrous, yet we are sad that we are losing them, it is hard to say goodbye to someone who has been a part of your life for all of memorable time.
When this blog-post goes live, I will be at the airport saying goodbye to my brother, my friend. Vaya con dios! Hasta la vista!
This week was fairly good as photography goes, I took a lot of photographs, 311 of which I’ve downloaded, the remainder were from a wedding that I was helping my bother Andre out at.
Choosing an image for this week’s deck proved more difficult than I would have thought, but that is mainly because the image I wanted to use, I decided to relegate to another blog-post for tomorrow. The image I eventually decided upon was chose for the unusual perspective, at least for me, I am usually more of an angular person when it comes to the direction from which I generally point the camera, Nikhil is usually the one who goes for “head-on” views.
I had the Sigma 10-20mm Wide angle lens on my camera, and I thought that the image would look good from a head-on view facing the horizon, unfortunately the shoreline and the horizon were not exactly parallel at this point, but I think I got the image to where I wanted it 🙂
This was taken along the seawall somewhere between Montrose and Le Resouvenir on the East Coast of Demerara.
I decided on the name before I realised that I have one that was actually taken in October, but since I am unable to come up with a new creative sounding name, it remains as September Monochromes.
I want to start off with a Sepia image, it’s not necessarily a great image, but I liked the elements; seashore, people – young and not-so-young, and a fishing rod.
Afternoon After-school
The next is the first of the Black and White images, it is one that I recently entered into a DP Review challenge called Clouds, I was experimenting with a borrowed Canon 80-200mm lens and most of the images came out very low contrast, so like the Sepia one above, most of the rest I’ve rendered in monochrome. This one came out much better than expected, I had to give it a title for the challenge, so that’s how the title came to be.
Sail-winds and Silhouettes
Along the seashore, you are sure to find a coconut washed ashore by the waves, this one was partway up a concrete sloped walkway on the seawall, maybe washed there but probably kicked there by some youngster.
Coconut
The final image is the one taken in October, after our Robbery ordeal and we daringly went right back to the Kingston Promenade, I like the clouds in the sky and thought that the lighthouse silhouetted against it would look nice 🙂
They were doing some renovation work to the lighthouse, so you might notice the scaffolding on the sides of it there.
Sometime back I had mentioned to Bob Zeller, who is a superb bird photographer, that I had taken a few photos of birds in my journey as a photo-hobbyist. They are nothing as good as Bob gets, but I like to think they have a little merit 🙂 Another photographer who also has superb photos of birds is David Fernandes, who doesn’t have a blog that I know of, but has some lovely images on his site. If you get a chance please check out Bob’s blog and David’s site, especially if you are a bird watcher!
Some of you may have already seen these images, as they are not new, the last “birds” I shot was a pair of ducks wobbling along the road.
I don’t have one of those nice 400 or 500mm lenses that do such nice jobs of bird photography, so I have to rely on being luckily close to the bird or just crop the image to get a nice final composition 🙂 I thought that I wouldn’t try to lump them all into one blog-post, and being inspired by Bob’s photography and Bob Marley’s song “Three Little Birds” I thought that three images would be just right for this post. By the way, I don’t think the two Bobs are related.
First up is a little fellow that visited the house across the street from me whilst that house was under construction, I suppose that it should be no surprise that with the wood around for construction, he and another pal visited, and when the word was done, I never saw them back there again 🙂
The Wood and the Woodpecker
The second is the ever popular Kiskadee, one of the mobile telephone companies here even used them once as part of a campaign for their pre-paid mobile card vendors with the slogan “They’re just about everywhere”, more descriptive of the bird than the vendors, but we got the point 🙂 This one I took up at Good Hope Village on the East Coast of Demerara.
Kiskadee, Good Hope, East Coast Demerara
Finally there is this elusive little black and white bird that is so flighty (excuse the pun) that it is hard to get close to him for a good photo 🙂 I came out of my vehicle one day and there he was along the gutter, without trying to open my gate or anything, I reached into the vehicle for the camera and snapped off as many as I could before he flew off 🙂
Black and White
As you can probably tell from my nomenclature and my evasive naming of the birds, I am no bird watcher, and even with the general biology degree, the identification of bird species was not on the syllabus, so if anyone can help me with the names, scientific and local I would be grateful. 🙂
It wasn’t until I previewed this blog-post that I realized that all the birds are facing left, quite a coincidence!
UPDATE:
Bob has informed me that the first photograph of the woodpecker is a Pileated Woodpecker. Thanks Bob.
Something has changed… although I am not sure what it is, it has affected my photography, or maybe it has affected how I see my photographs. I was very disappointed with this last week’s photographs, either I have lost the zeal or I am more critical of the images, or I have simply taken bad images this last week. Of the one hundred and five images taken over the last week, there was one that I was somewhat pleased with, a location that I had photographed before, but never posted an image of it for The 2010 Deck.
We revisited the Kitty Market Square, and I took this image, I liked it in colour, but I also liked it in monochrome… after some consultation, the monochrome edged out the colour 🙂
I took photos on three days of the last week (from last Friday to this Thursday) but most of it is not worth even processing. The day that I took this photograph was eventful, so I will mention some of that after I put the photograph up. I was going to just put the photo up and leave the rest of the story out, but many people are expecting the story, so I will put some of it up.
The photograph is one of those Sunsets where the area around the sun is now warming up (so to speak) and the remainder of the sky is a cooler blue.
Kingston seashore, Georgetown Guyana. 5:37pm, September 28, 2010
Nikhil and I were out on the Kingston seashore photographing driftwood, waves, and whatever else caught our eye, including the setting sun and the resulting effects in the sky. Approximately 10 minutes after I took this photograph, we were back on the Promenade area around the area by the “Roundhouse”, there are usually some homeless men living in the Roundhouse. We were looking in that area for other things to photograph when we noticed that the sunset had changed to a much more orange and red cast and decided that we would return to the end of the promenade to photograph it. Just about this time two young men on bicycled passed us and stopped their cycles on at the end of the Roundhouse and disappeared behind the wall there. As we approached the end to photographed the sunset, we noticed that they were urinating and we naturally averted our gaze and concentrated on the sunset.
We were focused on the scene before us when they finished their business and walked behind us towards their bicycles, the next thing I knew I was falling to the ground and being attacked about my body by one of the men who now had a piece of wood in his hand. We were being robbed. My spectacles had fallen off and I could barely make out the man now shouting at me and hitting me, I told him to stop hitting and just take whatever it was he wanted, we were not going to fight them. It seemed he didn’t believe me and shouted to his companion to throw the gun. I repeated myself and seemed to get through to him, he searched my pants pockets and took all my cash and my cellular phone. He threw my wallet and licence on the ground and demanded that I not get up and try to follow them.
Nikhil helped me to my feet and also to find my spectacles, I really am useless without them. Some of the homeless men were returning to the Roundhouse after their evening bath in the sea and were shocked that in the short space of time that they had gone, we were attacked and robbed. Of course, we then called for help using the cellular phone that I had in my shirt pocket which they missed, we went to the Police and now one of them men has been captured. I learnt from NIkhil that although he was not assaulted with a piece of wood, the man who robbed him had a pistol. Amazingly, I still had my camera, but Nikhil’s camera was gone.
Fortuitously, one of the photographs I had taken earlier had captured the two men when they had passed us, that photograph assisted the police to identify the men and thus far apprehend one of them.
We are both fortunate to be alive. I have always been told by people wiser than myself that in a robbery, do not be a hero! Give them what they want and live. Some of that advice must have sunk in since that is what I did after the initial resistance. Of course, a few blows to the back of the head and neck puts one in a more submissive mood.
The photograph may not be great, but it certainly is not the last Sunset that I have seen.
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