Tag: leaves

High-key Bird

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Just about two years ago I had taken about four photos of a bird sitting on a branch, he was against the brighter light (sunlight) so the portion of him directly facing me was in shadow, not having a flash to fill-in with, I had thought at the time that I’d use post-processing with the sliders in Lightroom to retrieve the detail I wanted.

I was checking for some other images today when I came across the set and decided to process this one, I had now changed my mind slightly about the processing and was not thinking of a high-key style, giving some delicacy to the image, I think the light colour of the bird, the leaves behind him and the textured bark of the branch gave me the idea.

Click on the image to see it in the Black and White 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 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.

Sea-breeze Sleeper

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

After posting Week 22’s photo, I did go back and look at the other photo from the week that had caught my eye…

Asleep under what little shade is offered by the tree so wanting of leaves, a man is kept cool by the sea-breeze in the hot midday sun.

I did some dodging/burning in the area where the sleeper was 🙂

50mm, 1/2000s, f/4.0, ISO100

Click on the image to see it in the Black & White Gallery along with many other black and white images.

2014 Deck – Week 16

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

The evolution of each photographer never really stops, and by this I mean their knowledge of the craft, their view on what makes a good composition, their approach to colour, their use of tools… it is a process that each of us goes through, and it really doesn’t stop.

We may settle into a favoured style, and we may be known for things such as capturing facial expressions, or the use of colour in portraits, or known as a black and white street photographer, but often these are not things a photographer does to the exclusion of all else, but merely a focal point (pardon the pun) at a given period in his/her evolution as a photographer.

While I have read about this before, the realization was brought home to me when I was preparing images for my recent presentation at Moray House, and I went in a somewhat unexpected direction (for myself, anyway), I presented all black and white images of areas along Guyana’s coast, and I liked what I chose… I really did (although the worry was still there that no one else would like it).

So, after all that rambling, today I veer in the opposite direction, to an image that I think helps define how I think colour should be used in a photograph, not just to be there as part of the whole, but to make a point.

Canon EOS 60D  |  Canon EF40mm  |  1/100s, f/3.5, ISO100

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

2014 Deck – Week 12

On 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:

IMG_3953-2

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 10

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography, Poetry2 Comments

Once called the Garden City, now laughingly referred to as the Garbage City, Georgetown was known for it’s tree-lined Avenues and streets, and the tree-lined canals and trenches that divided the wards of the city and provided drainage for a city that was built upon land reclaimed from the ocean, and sits six feet below sea-level.

Today many of those drainage canals have been filled in for pedestrian walkways (most notably those running north-south such as along High Street, Carmichael Street, Waterloo Street and Camp Street).   Many of the trees that lined the avenues, streets and canals have died (or been cut down) and have not been replaced.  For many of us, we still see the trees that line our streets as being numerous, but this was a much more verdant city, we see it in the old photos and paintings.

Some of the older trees remain and provide some shelter from the tropical sun that bathes our city daily, some are even large enough to help provide shelter from the sudden shower of rain that cools the land and washes away the surface dirt that blankets the city, mainly from our own daily activities.

Walking down the Avenues that are still lined with these sentinels, I often look up at the canopy of lace-like branches and leaves that provide a respite from the midday sun and often ponder on what might make a good composition.  I often take photos, but they just as often fail to live up to the ideals that reside in my mind’s eye.

Here’s a simplistic version that I favoured among the many that I took 🙂

Lacy Leaves

Leaves and branches adorn the sky
An organic filigree
Earthen wrought and weather tempered
It’s not just a tree.

Intertwined and interlocking
like a spider’s gossamer
A lacy parasol that once was
the city’s glamour.

Click on the photo to see it in the Gallery.

Midday Meditation

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

If I had the time in the middle of the day, I’d probably be doing just like this fellow in the photograph… sit and just stare out to sea for a while; but I was taking a walk and taking some photographs 🙂  (The walk ostensibly for health reasons and the photos for my sanity) I’ve photographed this spot many times, I was going through an old album when I came across this one and thought that a square crop would work nicely, then I saw the faint details of the clouds and thought that some tone-mapping would give me more detail and a monochrome version might just look nice, and voila!  I got a bit of haloing, but I can live with that 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images in my Sepia Collection

Tree on the Avenue

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, Poetry4 Comments

I had taken this photograph of one of the many trees lining the Main Street Avenue, it struck me that I could look up at these canopies along the avenue and feel a sense of calm and even tranquility but when I look back down and around me I am surrounded by rushing people, rushing vehicles, horns blaring and exhausts fuming.

Whilst processing the image I couldn’t think of much to say about this to put on the blog here…  and I thought I’d take up a suggestion someone once made about using a Haiku Poem to accompany it (for some reason the image gave me an Oriental vibe).  I read up on Haiku and realised that anything I attempted would likely come out wrong… and probably be laughed at by anyone who knows about Haiku, so I decided to at least put in these two paragraphs to accompany the photo, and yes I will put the attempt at Haiku under the photo…  If you don’t know about Haiku, then I’ll be fine, if you do know about Haiku… just don’t laugh out loud 😀

Fresh scents, a clear day
Trees adorned with other life
A busy street thrives.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

A Walk on the Conservancy

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography6 Comments

We recently had a Photowalk  for willing members of the Guyana Photographers’ Facebook Group, it was ostensibly called “Canal #2 Photowalk”, that just meant we met at the western end of Canal #2 on the West Bank of Demerara, right where it meets the Conservancy, from there we chose a direction to walk (by default we headed North).  Each member is initially allowed three images to upload to the album on the group, and Fidal Bassier wanted us to put some emphasis on “Composition” for this PhotoWalk, so there was some discussion about it… and I chose these three photos for certain reasons.

First image:  House  – 14-1649

I was mentioning to someone at the beginning of the walk (or a few someones) that it is important to know what makes a good composition, read as much as you can on things like the Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, and other compositional aids, rules and guides.  Once you know these things it makes composing a decent image all the easier, but it also allows you to realize that some scenes will allow you to “break” those rules.

For this image I pretty much threw the Rule of Thirds away… the main compositional aid being a Leading Line – the bridge leading you to the house, but even this is muted a bit by the shadow across the early portion of the bridge.

Second image:  Sit – 14-1654

Initially the impulse was to zoom in to avoid all the clutter in the photo to simplify the scene down to the man, the boat and the conservancy behind him; but I thought that including the rough woodwork and using the low sun as a backlight would make for a nice silhouette shot or at least a more inclusive rather than exclusive composition.  The low-hanging branch also helped enclose that corner of the frame.  Shooting into the sun naturally desaturates a scene, and I used this to advantage in the colouring of the image.  I also again ignored the Rule of Thirds and relied on the leading lines of the wood and the bright sun to lead you to the subject.

Third image:  Prelude to Sunset – 14-1698

It seemed that although a few of us wanted to stick around to see the sunset, others preferred to get going… so I took a Prelude to Sunset photo.  When I first started taking photos, I would be happy with just a plain nice sunset, but as I began to appreciate some more the images that actually made me look twice at them, I came to realize that some Sunset images (and most landscape ones, come to think of it) needed a foreground object in the composition to hold your attention as well, so I tried to include a portion  of a rusty pontoon.  I exposed for the sky and had already decided that I would be doing some post-process fill-light to regain some detail in the pontoon.

I hope I didn’t bore anyone with all of that… overall, I think it was a good Photowalk.  Click on the images above to see them in the Gallery along with other images in the “Out and About” album.