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
People write all sorts of things in the sands at the seawalls… and beaches worldwide, from Love Letters (Pat Boone sang about this), to drawings, to directions to the nearest Qik Serv, to Hearts with cupid’s arrows through it and the Lovers’ names inscribed, all to be washed away with the next high tide.
Those messages are as transient to us as we are to the timeless sea; and yet, we keep making those markings and the sea wipes them out again.
I snapped a photo in passing this fellow as he used quite a long stick to mark out something in the sand, I have no idea what it was he was drawing, maybe it was a message to an extra-terrestrial ship 🙂
Midday Markings – Kingston Foreshore, Georgetown.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.
A few Fridays back, I joined a few other photographers on a walk down to the large jetty (pier/groin) that marks the end of the Kingston seashore and the beginning of the Demerara River mouth.
As with all walks with photographers you go hoping to come back with a good image, or even a great one, yet when I downloaded my haul I was very disappointed, maybe I was hoping for too much.
Does this mean that the walk was not a success? No. It was what it was… a walk on the beach. To be with friends, people with a similar pursuit, and enjoy the conversation, the breeze… that was enough.
All the photos were not horrible, but not jumped out at me, yet I decided to process at least one to make a show of reaping something from the toil of the harvest.
As I look at the image I processed, I wonder if this scene will get worse or better with the development of the new Hotel on the seashore.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other Seawall related photos
I don’t know about anyone else, but I think this is the way to spend the last weekend of the year, with family and family friends, relaxing near a pool, sleeping under the stars (in a tent), far away from town, and I have my camera, spare batteries and spare memory cards 🙂
Click on the image above to see it in the Gallery along with all the other images for the 2012 Deck Project.
Reflecting on the year, it’s been great in some areas, specifically Photography. Even though my personal photography has not been great this year, and by that I mean I am not happy with the overall amount and scope of the photos that I have taken this year, it’s been a great year for my photography in the following ways;
Neil Marks lobbied and secured for Nikhil and myself the opportunity to exhibit some of our work in a joint exhibition at the National Art Gallery (Castellani House) early this year; our involvement in the Guyana Photographer’s group has brought us into contact with many many talented local photographers, and we have seen the group blossom and grow under the guidance of the Admins and our fearless leader Fidal; the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport revived the biennial art competition (after a 20 year absence) and included Photography as one of the new categories, in which Nikhil won Gold, Sharon won Silver and I won the Bronze medal, I had a photo of mine selected to be used as the Cover Image for Caribbean Beat, the official magazine of Caribbean Airlines (an MEP Publication), and three local firms are using a few of my images in their 2013 Calendars.
If my count is correct this is my 300th Blog post, also an achievement, since I never thought I’d have anything to write that anyone would want to read…of course, the photos help! 🙂 Now, I just have to make 2013 count! 🙂
Have a great Old Year’s Night, and a very happy and prosperous New Year in 2013.
Sometimes, in any art form, you have to break away from the norm, step away from the straight and narrow line that you’ve followed all along, and try something different.
I’ve broken the rule about shooting into the sun before, so this is not new…. but trying to get the palm tree and horse as the focus while doing so was different for me, and even then I was not ecstatic about it, when processing, I went for a duotone processing that I don’t do, and I though that the result was pleasing.
Although the original duotone processing had much more colour to it, I toned it down a bit to bring the focus back to the photo rather than the duotone, and the result; “sunset Liliendaal” 🙂
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery!
I have a few rules or guidelines that I try to abide by in my photography, and I’m not referring to the Rule of thirds or Rules of composition, I’m referring to ones that will guide me as a photographer and help me to get those photos that I want.
Rule #2: STOP and take the shot
Many times we regret not stopping, for one reason or another, to take the “shot” that we could see in our mind; we saw it, we thought of how to compose it, maybe even how to process it afterwards, but unless we actually stopped and took the shot, everything else is supposition and a wasted opportunity.
I was driving down the Railway Embankment heading home and saw the colours in the sky developing into what could be a lovely sunset, I saw the clouds low on the horizon and the sun dipping towards them and I knew I had to take a photo of it.
A photo of a sunset, is a photo of a sunset, unless you have something else in the photo that adds interest, then its just a photo of a sunset, and there’s a million of those. As I was driving down, looking for something to use in the foreground, I remembered the Chimney at Chateau Margot, and quickly diverted towards the main Public Road. As chance would have it, I ended up behind some slow moving traffic and could not get to the spot as quickly as I’d have liked, but I got there, didn’t try to change lenses, but grabbed what was there and just shot a few exposures to get it.
Although I could have gotten the sky as I saw it earlier, from the road with houses around and utility wires all over the frame, I spent a few precious minutes to get to a spot I felt better about, and I think I can live with that 🙂
Click on the image above for a better view in the Gallery.
I can’t remember where we were going this day, but I do remember wanting to get the photograph, although we were quite a distance away, so I used the long telephoto to quickly snap this.
This is where the City’s garbage dump meets the Body Dump, or more respectfully called the Le Repentir Cemetery.
The smoke was drifting across from the burning garbage (it apparently spontaneously combusts periodically), the excavator was clearing some paths and moving some garbage, and the birds were just hanging around for the “disturbed” earth and garbage. 🙂
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery!
One of the first things I tell people asking me about getting better at their photography is to get to know their camera, regardless what camera it is, and I tell them that one of the ways to do this is to “read the manual”, you don’t have to understand all of it at one go, just read it 🙂
Each manual has some safety precautions that they list, one of them is “Don’t shoot directly at the sun!”. My friend Nikhil repeatedly tells me that you have to know the rules and understand them, so that you’ll know when to break them 🙂
I hope this was one of those instances where it worked since I totally ignored that rule about the sun… and I even liked the lens flare I got in the process.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, along with the previous images in the Deck Project for this year.
Most times when I experiment with HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography, it is usually a static scene, with very little chance of movement between exposures, in as little of the scene as possible, like my recent Bamboo Grove image, this is to reduce ghosting and blurring in the final image, however, I do sometimes go for some scenes where there is movement, but these don’t always work out.
Last year I tried one and liked the results enough to use it for my Deck Project for the 19th Week, and whilst in Barbados I tried one down at the beach. At the beach there was more movement that I’d have liked, with “everyone” in the water moving about. As usual, I don’t try to be too ambitious, so I stuck with my usual three exposures for an HDR, each at about 2ev difference.
Using Nik HDR Efex Pro, I manipulated the ghost reduction feature until I had as little ghosting from the bobbing heads in the water that was possible 🙂 There’s really only one reason I chose this scene to try an HDR, the clouds! 🙂
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.
You can follow me on Facebook as well, I won’t refuse any “Likes” on my page 🙂
By the fourth day of the reunion I had gotten so far into the Family mode that as I was hunting through the photos from that day I noticed that I had only taken three photos that were not of the family at the reunion 🙂 So that’s what you’ll see today, those three photographs.
There’s a bridge that crosses a pool area between the “entertainment” section of the hotel and the “dining “ area of the hotel, it’s a Genuine Rope bridge, but with wide wooden planks for the base to walk on, many of the children (yes, and some adults too) quite enjoyed bouncing across the bridge to have it sway a bit 🙂
For some reason I took a photograph of a portion of a Palm Tree’s trunk, with the rock formations in the background, I blame Nikhil, he does this kind of stuff all the time, juxtaposing one thing in front of the other!
That evening we were sitting near the poolside and I took a photo just “to take a photo”, This area photographed is the general area where we sat and ate most of our meals, it is part of the buffet dining area, where every meal was a spread!
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