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.
There were various refueling spots on the trail, and one of them was set on a lonely spot just off of Monkey Mountain.
As we were refueling, I took a moment to take a few photos of the scene.
I liked the loneliness of the scene, the discarded fuel drum, the hut and the distant mountains.
I try not to do single image HDRs, that is, using a single exposure and tone-mapping it for greater detail throughout the scene, but sometimes I can never quite seem to get the processing on an image quite right in colour, and sometimes its an image that I would prefer not to use as a monochrome, so then I tone-map it in an HDR software to bring out that detail that I know is there.
This photo is of the Moravian Church in Queenstown, Guyana. It is more than a hundred years old.
It stands at the junction of Anira Street and New Garden Street, and there are utility posts and wires on two sides of it, I composed this to minimise the effect of those wires.
Often enough, I happen to see a beautiful sunset when I’m in the middle of a housing area or similar, with lots of utility posts and wires mangling the view, or a very plain area with nothing of interest other than the sky itself.
Last week, it happened again, and as I was driving out I decided to stop at the closest thing approximating to a “nice” scene, and get a shot including part of the sunset that day. 🙂
I think Week 50 was the worst photographically for me this year…. I have one photograph. According to Dwayne Hackett even if I took a hundred shots of the same subject that day and I used one, it’s still only one photograph, I didn’t take a hundred photographs, just a hundred attempts 🙂 I took three photographs of the same subject that week. Three!
If I thought things couldn’t be worse, I had forgotten to reset the settings on the camera… so they were taken in bright sunlight at ISO 1600.
Reminder to self (for the thousandth time) always reset your camera immediately after a shoot (or whatever session) or else you have to live with whatever the camera hands you next time!
This building is right behind DeSinCo Trading (Sheriff Street), in the little side street, I think its Craig Street, I had never noticed it before, I was waiting in the vehicle while my better half was in DeSinCo, I just couldn’t help myself after staring at it for several minutes, just got out of the vehicle and snapped three shots just to satisfy the little voice in my head that said “go take the photo, go take the photo!”
Its a sad sight to see places of worship that become abandoned, usually because of a lack of attendance over the years, I don’t know the story behind this one, but I was reminded while writing this post of my most recent experience in church, I was saddened at the poor attendance to Christ mas Eve’s Midnight Mass. I remember when I was younger (much younger) the Midnight Mass at the Cathedral was always packed, maybe some of the pews in the wings would be empty, but the centre of the church would be filled. Have we lost the faith that we once had or has the commercialisation of Christmas finally overtaken the true meaning for the Season?
Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery.
UPDATE: I was told by Dave that the property is now owned by DeSinCo, Frank (owner of DeSinCo) built a new church for the parishioners on Middleton Street (a short distance away), so this one was not closed for a lack of attendance but for a more practical and financial reason. 🙂
Monuments. That is basically what a tombstone or tomb-marker is, whether it’s a simple slab with a name on it or an obelisk, it’s a monument to the person interred, a reminder to the living of a person now dead.
These markers fade with time, and people forget, generations pass and the dead are lost to the living. Some are forgotten entirely, some are just names on a family tree. Do we all want to fade from memory like dawn fades to day, once there, once unique, never to be seen again, never to be remembered and referred to?
Most of us will do just that, but the few who are exceptional will live on as legends and icons of History. Whether we are remembered as tyrants or dictators, philanthropists or inventors, pioneers or adventurers, famous artists or infamous criminals depends on the decisions we make daily.
At times like this, when my thoughts stray to these realms, I remember two phrases from my early High School days. I attended St. Stanislaus College, it was a Catholic School before the government took everything over under early PNC rule in Guyana. Some things had remained as part of the teaching and tradition of the school.
The two phrases I remember were from different sources.
One was given to us as four letters to be written at the top of every page, I believe it was handed down from the Jesuits who taught at the school when it was a Catholic School; the letters were AMDG, a shortened form for Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, which meant “For the Greater Glory of God”, it was meant to encourage you to try to make everything you do, everything you say be geared towards that goal.
The second phrase was the school’s motto, Aeterna non Caduca, literally translated to “eternal non perishable”, but we were told that the motto translated to “Not for this Life, but for Eternity”. Whatever we do should not be just to have an effect now, in our lifetime, but for eternity.
Taken together they can be a driving force for a truly spectacular life, a life of meaning, unfortunately, not many would adhere to such a strict code.
Many people who happen to drop in to read my blog-posts are fellow aspiring photographers (in one way or another), we may never be an Ansel Adams or a Nick Brandt, a Frank Horvat or Mario Testino, an Irving Penn or a Steve McCurry, a Joe Rosenthal or a Don McCullin, an Henri Cartier Bresson or a Vivian Maier, but what we can do is aspire to show to anyone who will look, how we see the world through our eyes, our view-finders, our lenses, make them feel what we feel through visual stimulation (and if necessary a few words) 🙂
Can I do that? Can we do that? I don’t know, but I am sure going to give it a try!
This was taken during a photo-walk arranged by the Guyana Photographers Facebook group, lots of people thought it strange to arrange a walk in a cemetery 🙂
Click on the photo to see it larger in the Gallery.
Many times on a walk in the city I would take a photo of The Lodge, I don’t think I’ve ever used any of the photographs before, and since this week had very slim pickings, I chose one that I took in passing. Actually I had a choice from eight subjects, this one just seemed better than the rest. 🙂
This is one of those photos that when writing about it I feel very silly. I don’t know anything about this place and I’ve seen it all my life. Its one of those places that everyone just refers to as The Lodge, and they give you a knowing look, so I never asked, and was never told. I’m sure those conspiratorial glances were more ignorance rather than knowledge.
So it seems to me that maybe I should ask someone… what is that place and what really goes on in there? Do you think I’ll get answers on the blog? 🙂
Making Time. If anyone has ever figured out how to get more hours out of the day, please let me know 🙂 Once in a while you just have to stop, and slow down. Back in August (yes I’m writing this blog several months late) I was visiting with my in-laws and we decided to take a drive/walk out to the seawall at Lusignan. I took some photos (many left to be processed) but I processed two sequences that I had intended for HDRs, and was somewhat satisfied with this one.
I think that I was still standing in the village of Lusignan, but I was looking towards Annandale, I was told that somewhere ahead of me was an area known as Courbaine Park and (probably more to the left) is an area called Sand Reef. As usual, when taking outdoor HDR images I tend to go for the clouds, there was a very nice layering and depth (or height) to the clouds.
I used Nik HDR Efex to merge and tone map the image.
I’m hoping to sneak in a blog post or two to catch up before the end of the year 🙂
I’m behind quite a bit in my posting and my blog reading, so before I get even further behind I thought I might as well just post this one before the work begins to pile up.
It’s a single image tone-mapped to get more detail from the scene. It was taken in the early morning at Bounty Farm at Timehri.
Click on the image for a larger view at the gallery.
The sky that day was a photographer’s dream, nice variety of clouds, a slowly setting sun, as Nikhil mentioned once “even a monkey could have gotten good photos that day”. I’m not entirely sure about the monkey, but I know we came away with some good ones.
For me, I liked this one because of the clouds, and then there’s the lone man walking along the wall, and the lone bird soaring in the sky.
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