Terminal

While other parts of the world are attempting to record every bit of information for Historical reference, and digging up (sometimes literally) any old records and references to people and places long dead and almost forgotten, I find that in Guyana, there are few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 Calm – LBI HDR

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

A Touch of Colour

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

The Branching Tree

OK, most trees branch, I know.  But I had a difficult time coming up with a title for the photo, and this one seemed appropriate somehow.

This is a tree on the northern side of The National Park, towards the Carifesta Avenue side.  It possibly fell and continued to grow, growing across the waterway and then branching upwards and out.  It creates a nice shady area, on this overcast day, there was very little light under the tree’s canopy, and I thought that an HDR would be a nice idea, I didn’t have my tripod with me, so I had to hand-hold the camera for the exposures.  The re-alignment didn’t come out spot-on, but it has a softness to the image that I liked.

I’ve had this one since last September to process and finally got around to it, I did no pre-processing in Lightroom, simply carried it into HDR Efex Pro and did the merging there, then a slight crop and rotate in Lightroom, then some saturation shifts and clarity adjustments to finish it off.

It is not a spectacular HDR, but it was geared towards revealing more detail in a very gloomy area  🙂

 

The Branching Tree
The Branching Tree: 3 image HDR

Three for the weekend

I really really thought long and hard for a title for this post, and couldn’t come up with a single thing worth using, so here’s three for the weekend….  Three photos, that is; this is a blog about my photographs after all.

The first is a building that I have had my eye on for some time, I seldom ever see it without a few to several vehicles in front of it, and I didn’t want the vehicles in the photograph, at least not this photograph, I wanted the building.  Of course getting a nice composition is challenging, especially with the many wires crisscrossing the street in front  of the building.  Whenever I saw it nice and clear, the lighting would not be optimal, and whenever the lighting was right, the place was very very busy, well I finally saw it clear and with a nice morning light.

On Waterloo Street, Georgetown, Guyana

It only takes a small rain shower to ensure that pedestrians walk on the roads instead of the pavement, especially on Avenue of the Republic, it probably only rained for about ten minutes the morning I took this, normally I wouldn’t be tempted to take a photograph, but the sun had come out and the colours were popping and it was even evident in the reflections in the water  🙂

Pavement, Avenue of the Republic

Two days ago, Nikhil did a very nice close up shot for his 365 Project, and while I was also captured by the colours of the structures, I decided to wait and see what else about the scene would capture my attention, as it turns out I liked the house and tree more than the structures  🙂  This is also a move away from the norm for me, I usually do proportionate cropping if I crop the image, but in this case I found a square crop to be optimal for the image (that and I really needed to crop out the other buildings on the left without losing some of the elements in the shot)

Hadfield Street and Brumell Place (taken while standing in Louisa Row)

It seems I forgot to mention that all three are in Georgetown, Guyana.  Three different days and three very different images of Georgetown  🙂

HDR – International Conference Centre, Guyana

Opportunity Knocks.

On Saturday, I had to take the vehicle to the mechanic for a strange “shuddering” that was making driving a bit nauseating, I get motion-sick it seems.  Synchronizing for someone to collect me from the mechanic was not too easy, especially as I seem to make an earlier start than most folks I know.  So, instead of waiting around outside the mechanic shop, I decided to start walking towards town, and get picked up on the way.  It was one of those times that opportunity knocks, the sky over the Conference Centre at Liliendaal was very nice and I looked at the whole scene for a minute and finally decided to try a HDR of it.

After taking two sets of three exposures I continued my walk, I have other photos from the walk, but this post is abut the HDR, so that is the only one I will link to for now.

As most photographers, whether hobbyists or professional, have discovered (sometimes the hard way), it is important to always have your camera with you, you just never know when opportunity will knock.

International Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Guyana.