Old(er)

On June 7, 2012June 7, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

Age is a relative thing, something (or someone) is either younger (or newer) or older than another by a certain amount of time, whether it is by minutes, days, years, decades, centuries, etc.

I’ve grown up knowing the Hand-in-Hand Insurance Building (and others of its time) and they’ve become landmarks to me, that makes them old, or older than the stuff that went up in the last decade anyway.

They may not be of the Victorian era, so their architectural aesthetics may be less appealing, but they are certainly a lot more appealing than many of the concrete boxes that are being erected these days.

The Hand-in-Hand building always reminded me of a concrete and stone attempt to look Victorian, or maybe semi-Greco-Roman, but I’m not an architect and my terms may be far off the mark.

I had always admired its arches, the wrought-iron fence, the wrought-iron “fret-work” that created the arches between the columns, the low-sprawling style of the building.

When I took this photo I never intended to process it in Sepia tone, yet that is what appealed to me when I began processing, and to help the age along a bit, I added a light vignette (hopefully not too noticeable)

So this building is Newer than Victorian, but probably older than I am 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 27

On July 25, 2011July 25, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography6 Comments

In the last post I mentioned that I was thinking about the past and the future, and this post was to be the photo about the “future” I was thinking about.

I recently spent a very packed week doing some “sports” photography, something that I don’t do. I was volunteered to assist with the photography of the Junior CASA (Caribbean Area Squash Association) Squash Tournament. Squash is an indoor game, played on a “closed” court, and in Guyana, there is very little area available for viewing, much less photographing the game. The lighting on the courts is not exactly geared towards photography either, the courts are lit by flourescent lights (some more than others), three of them have glass backs, but the reflection in the glass are an obstacle by themselves!

I took photos in each of the five courts, two of them I had to shoot through the glass, no choice, two others have no glass wall, and I had to shoot from the spectator area above the back of the court, and the last court I shot through the glass, from the spectator area at the back of the court, and from windows high on the side of the court.

For simplicity I used the smallest lens I had, the 18-55mm, and since none pf my lens are particularly fast, it didn’t matter too much, I had to play a lot with ISO and shutter speeds 🙂

The photo I chose to use from that week is of one of the first round games of the tournament, as photos go, it’s not spectacular, but it shows the angle from which I was taking photos (up at the window), some athleticism demonstrated by the players, a small piece of the glass back-wall to the far left; it was taken at ISO800, with an aperture of f/5.0 and a shutter speed of 1/320. During the afternoon I actually got up to those speeds, but as the time passed 5pm the light changed and getting any shutter speeds in the 1/200 vicinity was lucky 🙂

It was a learning experience, hours on hours shooting, hours and hours sorting the photos looking for acceptable ones, playing with camera settings just to get the shutter speed up! The full gallery of photos from the tournament is at their home page, there are contributions from at least three photographers (all amateur) including myself.

I guess what made me think of the future for this photo, was that it was a Junior Tournament, so maybe some future great squash players, and for some of them (the players in the Under 19 category, like these two) it is their last year as Juniors, their future in Squash is with the Seniors.

The Deck – Week 50

On December 17, 2010December 17, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography13 Comments

After three successive monochrome postings for the Deck project, I decided this week, that regardless of what the weather was like I wanted a coloured image,and I finally got something in keeping with the season, Demerara Mutual Insurance company lit up their building very nicely, and I took a few images at night to try and capture the spirit 🙂

Here’s the resulting image. Demerara Mutual has it’s main office on Avenue of the Republic in Central Georgetown, to the right of the photo, you can even see a portion of City Hall.