Tag: grass

2014 Deck – Week 44

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Looking for more meaning.

Although I did not intend for this photo to be associated with these thoughts, this is where Fate stepped in.

I have finally gotten to have a series of photographs that I think embodies an idea that I can convey through a collection, and then I had a very short but enlightening (maybe even a little dampening) conversation with Mr Carl Hazelwood, the chief judge at the 2014 Guyana Visual Arts Competition.  He basically told me that while I have “nice” photographs, the ones he sees lack that little something extra that would make it more than a pretty picture… and here in the last two years I thought I had gotten past the pretty picture stage 🙂

This man knows what he’s talking about, and if he says that I don’t make the cut, then I don’t, and I am grateful for that honesty, I may never make that transition, but I will surely try.

I processed this photograph last week (I only had this conversation last night with Mr Hazelwood), and I almost chose a different photo, one more in keeping with my seascape series of recent,  but this one had a few elements that appealed to me a little bit more, and I wanted the diversity for the Deck Project 🙂

This one probably would not hang in a gallery among great works of art, but I ask myself if I would hang this on a wall, yes I would, but would you?

Seashore – Canon EOS 6D, Canon 24-105, 105mm, f/9.0, ISO200

Click on the image to see it in the gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 41

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

People write all sorts of things in the sands at the seawalls… and beaches worldwide, from Love Letters (Pat Boone sang about this), to drawings, to directions to the nearest Qik Serv, to Hearts with cupid’s arrows through it and the Lovers’ names inscribed, all to be washed away with the next high tide.

Those messages are as transient to us as we are to the timeless sea; and yet, we keep making those markings and the sea wipes them out again.

I snapped a photo in passing this fellow as he used quite a long stick to mark out something in the sand, I have no idea what it was he was drawing, maybe it was a message to an extra-terrestrial ship 🙂

Midday Markings – Kingston Foreshore, Georgetown.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 38

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

This photo was included as part of my extended Oniabo collection  which I presented at Moray House in a slide-show presentation in October.

The Oniabo collection started as a collection of 6 images, but when I was offered the opportunity to present something at Moray House, I revisited the idea and extended the collection to 16 Images.

I now have a better grasp of the collection and what I want it to be, and by early next year I hope to have concluded the set, omitting some that are there now and including others that are still in the making 🙂

Compositionally I was going for the three layers that I saw; the cloudy sky beyond the horizon, the mud-flats and the receded sea, and the rocky foreground,  it was fairly dark already, but I knew that the some-what even lighting would make a good shot.  A couple being there helped to make this shot even better.

“couple”  –  Lusignan, East Coast Demerara

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, also the visit the Oniabo collection as presented at Moray House.

2014 Deck – Week 35

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography5 Comments

Exploitative or Journalistic?

The question with regards certain street photographs is usually whether the resultant image and its use are exploitative or journalistic; this is not a question for viewers or critics, it is a question for the photographer; anyone says otherwise is trying to be self-important; yes, a fallacy, I don’t care.  🙂

I saw this chap sitting in what seemed a dejected and sad position, and I “had” to take a photograph, but carefully, surreptitiously, so as not to make him too aware of my intentions;  wanted the scene as I saw it to be portrayed as I remembered it…

In the shadows cast by the trees along the avenue, in the bright midday sun, one man, sitting, alone, almost overlooked, in the heart of Georgetown.

I titled this one “In the Shadows”, because that is how I see many of our fellow citizens living; in the shadow of oppression, in the shadow of others who walk along with a brighter present and future than he may have, in the shadow of trees and buildings that have existed longer than he has, in the shadow of a life that could be better, but isn’t (reasons unknown).

Cropped to 3:4 from the original

1/125s @ f/7.1, 24mm, ISO 200

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

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2014 Deck – Week 33

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Christ Church was doing some fund-raising, a friend of mine asked me to take a few photos of the church to use in the press release.  The only time I had to make a pass by the church was an early morning on the way to work.

I was thinking that it’s only for a press release, so it doesn’t have to be that good, right?

I was in a bit of a hurry, but I snapped a few, then jumped back in the car and headed to work.  There was some nice clouds behind the church from one angle, and kept remembering this as I downloaded the images to process, I knew that my attitude toward the shot was less than optimal and I had deliberately exposed for the building and not the skies (since it was just for the press), as the sun was rising behind the church, all that detail would be blown out.

I thought that this would be a good time to experiment with what I had read about prior to acquiring a full-frame camera, that it can capture a very wide dynamic range in one exposure.

True enough, the entire sky was blown out in the exposure when I downloaded it.

IMG_2724

But remembering what I had just seen in the sky, I worked the sliders to see what sky detail I could retrieve from the RAW file:

IMG_2724-2

And I was amazed, so I decided to process it better than I had originally intended.  I made slight adjustments in Lightroom to bring some detail back in the sky while retaining the detail and brightness of the building.  Then I took the image into Nik HDR Efex with the express intent to use a single exposure black-and-white tone mapping technique on it, and the results were great.  After a few minor adjustments once I took it back to Lightroom, this was the result:

Christ Church, Waterloo St., Georgetown, Guyana

Someone asked me it I “photoshopped” it, well, I didn’t use photoshop, I used no masks, no layers, nothing like that, just what I described above.  Everything I needed was in the RAW file, if I weren’t in such a hurry and treating the action of taking the photo so lacklustrely, then I may have actually taken multiple exposures for a proper HDR  🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 30

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Street photography (next to event photography) is probably the least predictive sub-genre in Photography, and that’s one of the things that draw a certain type of photographer to it.

I was on Sussex Street one Sunday and this car parked in front of an old vine-covered shed/shack caught my eye.  Behind that scene was the old Gafoor’s warehouse (not sure if it is still occupied by them).  I had taken a landscape oriented shot, then thought that I’d prefer more of the building in the background and recomposed a portrait oriented shot when this cyclist pedalled into the frame 🙂

1/400s @ f/5.6, 58mm, ISO200

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 29

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Sometimes, subjects are so imposing that you just have to use them, you walk past them and they just beg to be photographed.

Take this truck, for example; we had walked past it and I noticed it’s unusual form, you just don’t see a truck like this around Georgetown every day, I kept thinking that there’s a photo there somewhere…  On the way back I kept glancing at it, then noticed it’s swivel up windows and it’s snorkel-like exhaust system, and all the other rough-and-tough parts at the front, all of this set against a comparatively delicate victorian/colonial styled wooden building in the background.

Of course, including the policeman in the frame was deliberate 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

Photographs and Memories

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts2 Comments

Karran Sahadeo recently did a presentation at Moray House with this title, when I chose this photo for this week’s entry for the Deck Project, it popped into my head.

Often, all we have of moments and events of our younger days are memories… with the current deluge of photos being taken with various cameras, smartphones, tablets, webcams, etc., the current generation may have a different take on it in 20 years.

I can look back at what might be considered a relatively large amount of photos from my younger days, relative to the general population at the time in Guyana at any rate, and I can sometimes remember the moment, the event, the atmosphere, the sounds and other tiny things that made the moment memorable, but there are many more points in my life that have no such record, and all I have are memories.

I was out on the seawall on the way to work one morning when I saw the sky to the south as I approached the portion of the wall right behind my old school ground (Saint Stanislaus College), as I stopped to take the photo, memories of times there came back to me.

I’m not a sportsman, never really was, but I do remember trying a few sports, simply because the teachers said you had to “try”…  I remember being left behind in the 100m sprint, I remember being lapped once in some one of the longer runs, I remember wanting to try the shotput, but being a small fellow, no one would let me, I remember trying the long jump and not doing too badly (as in, at least one other person fell shorter than I did); I also remember getting sunburnt, falling in the grass and bruising my knees, climbing the pavilion steps, eating snow-cones and icicles, and drinking Blackcherry Soda… (Both Banks DIH and DDL had lost their Cola franchises, Banks brought out the ICEE Blackcherry to fill the void), I could go on, but my point is, I can look back on “this” photo and have those memories renewed even though I don’t have photos of any of those moments to look at.

While this photo can mean that to me, for you, it may just be a very plain, very empty black and white photo; for me, the field is filled with students; the pavilion with teachers, students, parents; the gateway and fence lined with vendors selling snow-cones, tamarind syrup and green-mango 🙂

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm | 1/100s @ f/7.1, 10mm, ISO100

Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery from the Collection, while there, take a look at the other images in the growing Black and White Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 25

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

For reasons of my own, I prefer not to take on Photography as a working professional, meaning “photographer for hire”.  One of those reasons is that I’d then have to think primarily of the customer’s satisfaction, and for events that have so many “moving parts” where anything and everything can go wrong, guaranteeing that you come out of the event with photos that the customer will love is probably impossible.

But, IF I were to do events such as Weddings, it would be for the photos that I see, my vision…  as such, I only shoot weddings for Family and friends, and even then I encourage them to get someone else to be the primary photog, mainly so that they can take the blame for the “missed” shots 😀

Every so often I come out of a wedding knowing that I’d gotten what I thought of as a great shot, for me anyway.  At Alisia and Sammy’s wedding I think I came away with two that I considered great, but this one that I am sharing here, is what I like to think of as “my type” of photograph  🙂

Canon EOS 6D, Canon 24-105mm  |  24mm, 1/200s, f/9.0, ISO200

I had done an article regarding Shooting Weddings for the GuyanaPhotographers.com page, if you’re interested, you can give it a read. 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.