2014 Deck – Week 13

On September 13, 2014September 13, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, PhotographyLeave a comment

It really wouldn’t matter what photos I took during week 13 of this year, I’d still choose this one. I could have gotten a spectacular milky way shot, or the best Kaieteur photo ever, even if I had captured the perfect Cock-of-the-rock photo, or gotten the chance to do a photo shoot of Bon Jovi, I’d still choose this one.

We welcomed our second daughter into our family, so I‘ll just stop jabbering and show you the photo I chose, although many of you might have already seen it on Facebook 🙂

Canon EOS 60D | Canon EF 40mm | 1/60s f/2.8 ISO200

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 12

On August 13, 2014August 13, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

For this week I actually had quite a few photos to choose from, mostly along the seawalls. Fidal Bassier had invited me along to shoot with him, he was doing part of a photo-shoot for Miss Earth Guyana, Ms Stacy Ramcharran, and even though I was late getting there, I decided to stop anyway and see what was going on.

The talented team from Bravo Arts under the direction of Steve Bravo had already done an amazing job of the body paint etc., and Stacy’s entourage were well in attendance and assisting her with all the necessaries.

Fidal was setting up on a mound on the southern side of the National Park, the winds had picked up a bit and he asked me to help hold one soft-box in position while I was there… but I’m a photographer, and I just couldn’t resist the urge to click the shutter button.

Whilst holding the soft-box in one hand (the wind was trying very hard to tug it out of position and out of my hands), I slung my backpack to the side and extracted the camera with one hand, the lens on the camera would have to work… it was the Sigma 10-20mm, so I suspected that cropping after was most likely.

I took only two photos, mainly because Fidal decided at that moment to switch locations, and by the time we had set up at the next spot, it was time for me to say adieu. One photo I had cropped and sent to Stacy, she ended up using it as the Cover image for the official Facebook Page for Miss Earth Guyana 2014:

The second one, I did not crop, it was the one I preferred, and I had decided since then that I would likely use it for the Deck project, so here it is:

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project

All-in-all, it was educational to watch these folks at work, and that I clicked the shutter twice, and got two photos that were usable, I feel good 🙂

2014 Deck – Week 08

On March 14, 2014March 14, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

This week was the week of our Republic Celebrations in Guyana, which I’ve shared photos from already, as is my custom, I look through those to choose one for the Deck Project.

This year there was no one image that stood out to me as much as this one did. I had processed it in Black and White and had decided not to include it in the original upload, I was still not sure anyone else would like it.

I like it, it seemed to me to be a moment frozen in time… something more sensual than what was occurring all around… maybe that is why I converted it to monochrome, to remove the distractions.

I hope you see something other than a Mash Photo 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery 🙂

Mashramani 2014

On March 5, 2014March 5, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

I’m not sure I ever come out of these events with the right photos… but I think I usually get a few that are nice, and once in a while, one that is very nice.

Mashramani was on a Sunday this year, making the following day a holiday, so it was more relaxed for me in a way, there were a few bands fewer as well, so the last band came earlier than normal, which is good, I always get a bit peeved when the last band comes and the sun is already getting low in the sky

I was without my flash this year, and shooting into the sun without fill-flash was a different experience for me. Also without my Tamron 18-270mm I felt a bit lost, but I stuck to my plan of attempting it with a borrowed Canon 55-200mm, and I think I did a fairly decent job of it.

I usually cull the set much more than this, but I think that these are fairly representative of the day, and I decided to keep almost all of the first draft.

Click on the image above to see the Gallery on the site for the full set, I will try to do a Select collection soon.

2014 Deck – Week 03

On February 5, 2014February 5, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Even though I don’t get out too often to take the landscape photos I yearn for, I do enjoy picking my daughter up from her Saturday “Revision Classes” on a Saturday and heading out to the seawall, she goes hunting for rocks and shells, and I hunt for photos.

This tyre with it’s bright paint caught my eye, and I was going for a simple photo then my daughter began running on the far side… resulting in an even better photo 🙂

I’ve been working in LightZone again for this one, and I really believe that it has a lot of potential, I really miss the gradient tool that I’ve become accustomed to in Lightroom, but it’s just like switching cameras, you just need to use the tools at hand to achieve a finished product that you can be satisfied with.

I used two localised masks in this one just to see how that would work, and it did a good job, I wanted some more clarity on the tyre itself without affecting the entire image, and I wanted to make local adjustments to the sky (I didn’t have a polarizer on the lens)

I hope you like it.

Clink on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2013 Deck – Week 32

On October 18, 2013October 18, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography6 Comments

This year, my youngest sister, Mary, got married, and interestingly enough, practically every photo from Week 32 had to do with her wedding 🙂

My sister had asked since more than a year prior that I ask Fidal Bassier to photograph the wedding, and I was glad that he was the main photographer, I got to shoot alongside him and my brother André and get some good photos myself 🙂

There was a short photo-session between the Ceremony and the Reception (while the guests were getting settled), and this was one of my favourites from that shoot.

Joseph Lewis had also consented to loan me his Canon 70-200mm L lens that was a joy to shoot with.

So a big thanks to Fidal and to Joseph!!

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery with the other 2013 Deck Images.

Click on this album link for the 25 select images from the Wedding

2013 Deck – Week 30

On September 20, 2013September 20, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography4 Comments

The Coastal Seawalls that protect us from the mighty Atlantic Ocean, are familiar to most Guyanese, that’s because most of the population lives on the coast… it is not surprise that many of my photos for the Deck Project this year are from the Seawalls.

I’ll let the photo do the rest of the talking…

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery!

Every Tool

On August 28, 2013August 29, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts6 Comments

I’m not a purist; I don’t hold the belief that whatever JPG comes out of the camera is the reality that existed in front of the lens. I do, however, believe that there is a certain amount of “truth” in my photographic work. Friends and colleagues, other photographers and budding photographers in the Guyana Photographers’ Facebook group have heard me make the distinction between Processing and Editing many times. And I will briefly make it here again…

Since I shoot in RAW format, the camera does no processing to the file (whenever you shoot JPEG the camera applies certain adjustments to the image, contrast, brightness, etc.) so I have to Process it in software, often referred to as Post-processing. This usually involves adjusting sliders in a software like Aperture, AfterShot, Lightroom, LightZone, etc., things that are adjusted range from brightness and contrast, to hue and saturation, cropping, temperature, white balance, noise levels and more. Although this is usually applied over the entire image, some software allows you to do it to parts as well.

Where I draw the distinction between Processing and Editing, is when the image is altered so as to become a new image, distinct from the original in content. Simply put, if I add something or remove something from the original photograph, then it is no longer the same, it is now a work of graphic design, not only photography.

Do I Process my images? Always. Do I Edit my images? Sometimes. I’ve cloned out trash that otherwise marred the scene (the lone plastic bottle on a grassy stretch), but have often left in loads of trash because it was part and parcel of the scene. I don’t have anything against editing, but I don’t think its fair to call it a photograph after you’ve added in entire clumps of trees, removed several utility posts and added muscles to an individual… that is definitely in the realm of photo-illustration or Graphic Design.

I am also a big proponent of using every tool that you need to get the image that you saw with your eyes, and in your mind across to the viewer. Whether its special filters on the lens to get a mood or effect, an angled lens in the developer of a dark room to create a distorted view, using Black and White (Film or processing) for an aged or structured look, using long and super-long exposures for light trails or flowing water, external flashes and reflectors for extra lighting on a subject, gels and filters for colour enhancements, or even doing some of this on the software end, I am for it, but I believe in being true to the original vision as much as possible.

Fancy processing and editing is no substitute for a good original image. I am no expert or professional, many of my images come out of the camera looking very disappointing, and I often discard or simply not process them. Yes, you can “save” them, I have even done so on some occasions, simply because I believe that they were worth saving, but they had to have something good in them to begin with; a good composition, a relatively good exposure, and maybe even compelling elements to the composition.

I’ve rambled enough… time for a photo. This is one of those photos that I “saved”… The original was good, maybe better than good, but it was not what I wanted…. I wanted more detail in the sky, more of a structured appearance than the original coloured version, and (because of an architectural quirk) more symmetry.

Canon EOS 60D | Tamron 18-270mm | 21mm, 1/160s, f/7.1

I used Lightroom to create five different exposures from the original, each 2 stops apart in exposure, then I used Nik HDR Efex Pro to merge my new exposures and coax the detail I wanted from the overall scene, then I used Photoshop (I know, I’m a horrible person) to skew the perspective ever so slightly to gain some symmetry.

Although I did not add or remove anything, I normally would consider this edited since I used Photoshop to change the original proportions of the image, but in this case I’d let that slide 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with others in the Black and White series.

2013 Deck – Week 21

On August 7, 2013August 7, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography3 Comments

I was perusing my takings for the week and I had pre-selected 16 photos that I was thinking of using for the Deck Project, some street photos, some seawall photos a few bird photos… you get the idea… Maybe it’s the mood I was in or just that most of them seemed “normal” to me, but I ended up choosing one that I knew was not necessarily a great composition, and then in processing I also did some unusual work with the sliders 🙂

All that being said, I don’t expect many to appreciate or like the final result, but to me the entire thing was so off-kilter that I ended up titling the image just that… “Off-Kilter”, and it grew on me. 🙂

Canon Rebel T1i | 18-55 Kit Lens | 1/200s, f/11, 30mm, ISO400

Processing notes: Selective desaturation and hue adjustment.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2013 Deck – Week 19

On July 30, 2013July 30, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, PhotographyLeave a comment

I had quickly browsed through the entire takings of this week’s photos and was about to go with a street photo for this week’s Deck Photo, when on scrolling back I saw this one tucked amidst some photos from a tea-party held at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the young ladies were using this part of the building as a staging area for their fashion show.

I had looked back towards the entrance of the compound for some reason and noticed her at the window and snapped two quick shots before she disappeared back into the building, and I rather liked how this one came out.

The building is aging and I thought that the processing should match that.