Tag: people

2013 Deck – Week 07

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography1 Comment

When shooting an Event, it’s usually important to try to get photos that cover the gamut, spans the diversity, from the beginning to the end, so that viewers can get a sense of the whole, but amidst all of that I am usually on the lookout for that one shot that stands out, that transcends the transformation from reflected light, to digital data on a sensor to pixels on the screen and finally to ink on a page.

Does this image from the recent Children’s Mashramani Parade do that for you?  I know it does it for me.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, along with the other images for the Deck Project so far for the year.

Mashramani 2013 – Children’s Parade

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

Since I started carrying my daughter out to see the Children’s Mashramani Parade, I try to go every year.  It is shorter, it’s more entertaining and generally more fun than the Adult’s Parade, partially because you’re not bombarded by boomboxes every 10 feet, or trampled by revelers and spectators alike, as compared to the main parade on Republic Day.

I was disappointed by this years crop of photos that I got, but that’s because I compare it to my previous years’ takings, as well as having a bit of focusing issues with the camera, but I can’t blame the camera alone, I definitely missed the mark somewhere this year.

I still think I came away with some nice ones in the mix, click on the image below to see them in the Gallery, and I look forward to any and all comments  🙂

Maybe I’ll get something better from the Adults Parade  🙂

To all Guyanese, at home and abroad, have a Happy Mashramani this weekend!

A walk on the beach

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography12 Comments

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

Get them out!

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts3 Comments

If you are serious about making the art of photography a pillar in your life, if you want the work that you do to be seen and recognised as being worthy of use or even just of praise then you have to get your work out there.

I came to this realisation late, but it is true, whether you use Facebook to just upload some images to albums and share with your family and friends, or the Flickr community to have a wider reach, or you are feeling more demanding for larger space and go for your own website, just get your images out there, it is doing you no good sitting on your hard drive (or worse yet, on your memory card in the camera)

I started with Webshots, which, before it was bought over, had a good community and lovely photo Challenges to inspire you… then that went south… and recently it went out, I think it’s called Smile now.  I had also begun uploading to Flickr since I already had a Yahoo account, I figured what was the harm, I might as well use the service, but when I wanted somewhere online to store high-resolution images (as well as make them available for friends to see) Nikhil suggested Zenfolio.  That was a great decision!

What is great about having people see your photos?  For one thing, you open yourself up to not only praise, but also criticism, which helps you grow, it makes you see the work as other’s see it, through their eyes and not just your own.  For another thing, it gives a wider group of people a chance to see what you are doing, not just your friends and family, but other photographers, other artists and even the business community.

I like to think that my more “artistic” types of photos are the ones that are important to me and the ones I hope others like and appreciate, but the others that I take seem to demand equal or greater attention, the ones from events, such as Mashramani, Diwali Motorcade, Easter and others.  Were I to confine myself to just making available for viewing those that I want to “promote”, then these others would never be seen not appreciated for what they are.

This year my images made it into three calendars in local firms; Maggie’s Snackette and Catering Service, and NT Computeac both used images which were more to the artistic side, but the company that surprised me was Banks DIH Limited, and this is the one I am drawing reference to.   While both Maggie’s and NT Computeac chose what I thought were aesthetically pleasing images, Banks DIH chose images that were more representative of the events that they wished to highlight, even though those I would not put as my best images, it appealed to them and probably to those viewing it too, those images are worth something to someone, and had I not uploaded them for others to see, then they would never have made it into the Calendar.

They did a twelve page Calendar, and of those monthly pages, Dwayne Hackett and I got half, with images that represent our culture and our life as Guyanese.

Don’t let your photos sit idly on your Hard Drive, Get them Out!

2013 Deck – Week 03

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Although I like to think of myself as a photographer who likes to take Landscape photos, there is not a lot of scope for that living in the city, but I’ve always had an interest in capturing images of buildings, especially old ones that may not survive due to neglect or just continued development (or any number of other reasons)

During the third week of the year, I had an inexplicable desire to take some photos of St Rose’s High School, just before attending a presentation by Hew Locke (an artist with some amazing work), Nikhil and I took a walk around the block, and I got my chance to take a few images.

To emphasize the building more, I used an “orange filter” setting whilst processing, this darkened the sky and made the building more pronounced.  Although I did not intend to combine “street photography” into it these two boys strolled past just as we were there.

As always, click on the image to see it in the Gallery

An image for Mash

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography12 Comments

Recently, I was fortunate to have a photo of mine selected and used for the cover of the Caribbean Airlines in-flight magazine – Caribbean Beat (November – December 2012), and they have also used another to accompany an article in the current issue (January-February 2013)

Click on the image above for the full PDF article by Vidyaratha Kissoon along with the accompanying image.

Amazingly it was an image that I liked, but not one that got a lot of attention  🙂  Getting great images during the Mashramani parade is not easy, I’m thankful to come away each year with more than a few that I like.

Here’s the image: Click to see it in the Gallery along with a select set of photos from last year’s Mashramani

In Quiet Solitude

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts5 Comments

As I was processing this photo a poem began to form in my mind, but by the time I had finished processing, I had lost it… that’s how it goes.

The title of the photo is the same as this post “In Quiet Solitude”, yet as I thought about it, I wondered how accurate it was,

it wasn’t that quiet…  there was the sound of birds chirping, the rustle of leaves as the monkeys jumped from branch to branch, the gurgle of the water as it flowed from the creek to the lake, and the subtle but distinct snap of a camera behind him  🙂

By the same argument, he wasn’t alone, remember the birds, the monkeys and the photographer….. (or the monkey behind the camera) 🙂

But I still stick with the title, sometimes you can just stand beneath the trees, with a gentle breeze blowing, and be thankful to be away from the noise of traffic, the voices and machines of city life, the constant ping and ring of mobile phones, and maybe even the conversations that you were listening to but not really hearing.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

A Good Photo

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Commentary, Photography, thoughts6 Comments

For my Deck Photo last week I used a black and white image of a bird walking across a wet expanse, one of my friends and fellow photographers told me that she didn’t like the photo, because it made her feel sad and lonely

When she told me that she didn’t like the photo, I was a little disappointed to tell the truth, but when she told me that it was because it made her feel sad and lonely, I was elated.

One of the things that makes a good photograph is the conveyance of some sort of emotion to the viewer.  For most photos, we look at them and move on, it was a photo of a sunset, or a flower, or an insect, or a door, or a building, or a bird, or any other subject you can think of, but when someone can say that a photo of mine made them reminisce or feel happy or sad, of any other emotion, then I feel that the photo was not only good, but better than I’d hoped for.

Each photo has the potential to reach past the optics of the viewer and into their emotions, when it does, then the photo was worth taking, it was worth the pixels that were spent on it, and the time it took to take and process.

None of these photos are new, but each one has had an emotive response from a viewer, it may not do it to everyone, but to me, that is what makes photography a challenge, to reach into as many of the viewer’s hearts as possible, but to even reach one, is usually enough for me.

As usual, click on the images to see them in their respective Galleries in the Collection.

Working With Wides

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography12 Comments

Well, I wanted to say “Playing with a Wide-angle Lens”, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration. 🙂

The word wide is relative, so I’ll describe how I use the terms, these are probably not industry accepted descriptions, so don’t quote me 🙂   Your basic entry-level DSLR usually comes with a kit lens that has a range of focal lengths from 18mm to 55mm, this I consider to be a wide telephoto lens, at the widest end (18mm) you get a nice wide view and at 55mm you get closer to close up of the subject, I consider somewhere around 33mm (on the crop-sensors) to be somewhere around “normal” (mind you, I’ll be talking from the stand-point of an APS-C sensor or crop sensor, a full frame or micro-four-thirds is an entirely different scenario)

Since this is the standard kit lens that most people get, we don’t often see it as wide, so that’s when we go Ultra-wide.

My favourite wide-angle lens (OK, the only one I have in the Ultra-wide category) is the Sigma 10-20mm, this produces pleasing images for me, and I love working with it.  You get some amount of distortion at the wider end (understandable) but this tends to be good in certain circumstances.

Often, in architectural photography, you can use wides and ultra-wides to capture more of the interior, and convey more of the sense of space and more of what encompasses the room.

At other times, you can use them closer to the subject to give an increased sense of distance, even accentuate the distortion by being close (do this with people’s faces, and you’ll get some weird effects)

I used the ultra-wide to capture the corner of this building (New Building Society), along with parts of the sidewalk and sky (and a pedestrian) 🙂

There are many things you can do with a wide, many of which I don’t do, I don’t normally put it right up to people’s faces and click, but I’ve seen those photos, and it’s a neat effect  🙂

What I did in this next image was to use the ultra-wide to adjust the sense of scale, I used a fire-hydrant in the foreground to dwarf a three-story building in the background.  One thing that I liked about this shot was that I didn’t have to worry about electricity wires!

The best way to see what your wide-angle lens or your ultra-wide angle lens can do is to put it on the camera and go have fun.  Sometimes it makes compositions tricky as it tends to include everything, even things you may not want, but like working with any focal-length, it’s up to the photographer to adjust framing and composition for these things.

I mentioned using wide-angle lenses for interior architecture, well I doubt if a tent falls under the category of architecture, but I suspect the engineers who came up with the idea for this tent would appreciate the use of the wide-angle for impact  🙂  And would you look at the view!  🙂

All images above were shot with the Sigma 10-20mm on a Canon body, Click on the images to see them in the Collection along with others in their respective Galleries.

A place to rest

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

As the year draws to a close, I think that while we’re celebrating the end of a year, be it a successful one or just surviving one with our sanity intact, we should reflect on what we have, what we should be thankful for and what we have accomplished, whilst still looking forward to what is to come in the new year.

We should also remember those who are not as fortunate as we are, who have lost loved ones, those who have lost their jobs, those who have lost their homes, those who have lost their sanity (I often joke about coming close to doing that myself, but thankfully, it’s just a joke).  If you want to give to those who are in need, give selflessly, give anonymously, give generously.

A photo from 2010.  Taken on High Street, opposite the Parliament Buildings.