Some photos have a way of leaving you feeling unsettled, or just not quite right…
Awry 15-9930 | Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, Guyana | 2015
Click on the image to see it along with others in the Black and White Gallery.
Photography; I shoot what I like, and sometimes people like what I shoot. All photos are copyright to Michael C. Lam unless explicitly stated otherwise.
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.
On a recent photo-walk with Nikhil and Sharon on the seawalls up the East Coast of Demerara, I found myself looking at the scenes around me and shooting without really thinking too much about it, almost on automatic. I saw things to photograph, they caught my eye and I took a few snaps.
I wasn’t inspired, and I thought to myself that I’d be coming away with something “normal”, something that I would be happy with but not overjoyed.
On the walk back to the vehicle, I happened to walk under a fisherman’s shed, and the scene that caught my eye was different in a few ways from all that I had seen, nothing spectacular, but just different enough for me, and I stopped, took the time to set up the camera for a few bracketed exposures, and took two sets of exposures for later HDR-processing.
This was the result: At Rest.
Click on the image above to see it better in the Gallery.