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.
An outside view of the Hotel,
I had dropped by hoping for a nice “blue hour”, and took some exterior photos of the hotel. Tripod in hand, bag on my back, I kept moving from position to position for more than an hour… I think the guard was getting suspicious even though he was aware of what I was doing 🙂
Got there maybe 5:30pm, took my first shot by 5:45pm… this one was just about 6:30pm
2013 | Cara Lodge, Quamina Street, Georgetown, Guyana
A look through the doors of the Bottle Restaurant at Cara Lodge.
The original building was built in the 1840s, now it is one of the handsomest (is that a word?) Hotels in Georgetown… I’ve dined at The Bottle Restaurant and I can say without hesitation that the food was always delicious!
2013 | The Bottle Restaurant, Cara Lodge, Georgetown, Guyana.
Landscapes and Seascapes… maybe even Cityscapes… that’s the kind of thing that I like shooting, Yes, I photograph lots of subjects, but this is what drives me really… at least that’s what I feel.
So…. when I see a sky with lots of detail (that apparently most other people don’t see) I almost have a compulsion to grab the camera and seek out a suitable scene.
While this spot might be considered overdone… the changing elements will always make it photogenic for me 🙂
2015 | Kingston Roundhouse
Click on the image to see it in the Black & White Gallery along with many other BW images in the collection.
Georgetown, the Garden City; our fair city, once replete with Victorian and Colonial architecture, dutch built and inspired drainage canals reminiscent of European cities, and tree-lined streets and avenues, now laughingly referred to by it’s denizens as the Garbage City, floods with the slightest rain, governed (I use that word as loosely as is possible) by a city council that was elected two decades ago (although faces have changed, but not through any democratic process that I know of), and, sadly, losing it’s trees through neglect, sabotage, and lack of foresight (or hindsight it seems).
Most of the trees lining our streets predate us, they were planted, nurtured and cared for by colonial masters (and slaves) before our independence, before the Republic came into being, before self-governance and the long road that led to where we are today.
As we have travelled that road through time, our leaders, our people, we ourselves have forgotten or ignored what it was, what it is that makes Georgetown a place we want to live in, to visit, to be proud of… We as people, are not as welcoming as we should be, we as humans are not as caring of our environment as we should be.
Saving or replanting trees is not THE answer, but it’s a small part, one that is likely to go unnoticed or ignored.
Yesterday, Kamal Ramkarran wrote (on his own family’s place in our past and present):
As clichéd as it is, the lives of the six generations who followed them is the history of Guyana (from 1875 anyhow). All of us from here are, in a very real way, part of the history of this country. The history of Guyana is our own story, whether we know that story or not.
Since we are part of the story then, the story happening around us and through us, it ought to follow that we should make ourselves responsible for its present and future, just as we try to make ourselves responsible for the present and future of our own lives.
What part are we playing? Will what we do stand the test of time as those trees still standing attest to the work and acre of our predecessors/ancestors?
2013 | Tree in St Joseph Ursuline Convent compound, Camp and Church Streets.
Technically, the tree is in the portion of the compound now housing the St Angela’s primary school, the Ursuline compound also houses the St Rose’s Secondary School. Schools once run by the Ursuline Sisters, but were “nationalised” under the PNC government.
Every year I have a photography project that I call The Deck, it’s basically what other photogs refer to as a Project 52, one photo for every week of the year. The main reason I do it is to keep me shooting, with work and family life it is easy to sometimes put the camera down and not shoot anything, and I prefer not to have that happen, some weeks I get good stuff, other weeks I get a load of crap, even in those weeks the “crap” has to have something salvageable, and I find that in those instances I find myself seeking out the basics of the composition and putting the little artistic portion of my mind to work for the best processing possible to make it worthy of the project, failing which that would be the end of the Project, and I don’t really want that.
In shooting images all year round, I get more than I need for The Deck, and out of these I’ve been able to narrow down some to my Oniabo collection, I intend to keep the Deck Project going, and hopefully get more smaller collections developing.
I decided that for January 2015 I want to also try and photograph (not exclusively) around a sub-theme: Square. I started using Instagram (see my last post) and the square composition, while at first very ill-fitting for me, has become a bit more appealing, so my first week’s image will be an Instagram photo, and I hope to include “square” into other images for the month, not necessarily as the crop ratio, but maybe as elements in the composition.
Since you’ve probably already seen the last post I did, and in there is the image I chose for this week’s Deck photo.
Respect – Samsung S5 Mini Duos | Instagram
In Guyana, we have many cultures that have merged into this cook-up that we call our “One People”, and many are from the east, as in Asia, most eastern culture have in their traditions or as part of their religious beliefs the habit of removing one’s footwear when entering a home.
I’ve always seen this as a sign of respect, but I also know that in some religions it is mandatory, and in some cultures such as in Japan it was originally a hygiene/health habit (not tracking dirt and germs into the space that you eat and sleep).
In many parts of Guyana, this is how we’ve been taught, but the western culture has slowly crept in over the years and the respect we the dwellers show the visitors to our homes is one of acceptance, in that we may ask them to take off their shoes, and they may refuse, often we let our own judgement dictate who to ask and who not to.
In this photo, I also show respect for the change in photography as it widens its doors to an acceptance of non-traditional devices, processing and distribution methods, my older phones would produce some real crap, but with my current phone, I think I can produce acceptable images.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.
That photo I used for Week 44 was different, yes, I think it’s good, is that what I want to be doing at this time?
So, back to our regular programming… a high contrast monochrome from the seashore. I was hoping that the fisherman/sailor would just sit and stare at the sea for a while, at the time I shot this I think he was securing the bow line.
This is a scene that was a no-brainer for me, it had everything I usually want… Jhandi flags, a boat, a fisherman, a good sky and little garbage in sight within the frame 🙂
24mm, 1/1250s, f/5.0, ISO 200
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project
Winslow Craig is one of my favourite local sculptors, his work appeals to me more than most, probably because I know so little about the art-form that I cannot appreciate the intricacies of others (particularly those that bested him in the 2012 GVACE; he placed third)
I was at Moray House for his recent retrospective presentation, and took a photo that I quickly grew fond of, and so did someone at Moray House; although I originally processed it in monochrome, they requested a coloured version for their inaugural magazine “Ku’wai”, as a non-profit organisation and one that supports the Arts in Guyana I really couldn’t say no, and I was honoured that they wanted it for the cover of the magazine.
Since I had only uploaded the monochrome processed version to Facebook, I decided that the coloured one worked nicely and I would also use that for the Deck Project.
Moray House, 21st October 2014 | Sculptures on display by Winslow Craig
The piece on the table was loaned to the presentation by the current owner, the one in the background is called “Saving Seeds”, it was the piece that placed third in the 2012 Guyana Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition; to my understanding, it is a wire-framed structure covered with a material that Winslow made called Sawdue (sawdust and glue).
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, and to see Winslow’s current entries in the 2014 GVACE, visit the GVACE 2014 Exhibition which opens on Thursday 18th December 2014, exhibition of pieces are likely to be at Castellani House and the National Museum.
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.
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:
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.
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
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
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