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.
I had shortlisted four images for this blog-post, two of them were too much in keeping with the general theme of the last few weeks, so I discarded those (for later publication) and one was somehow reminiscent of photos I’ve seen from Nikhil and some other local photogs, so I ended up with this one.
I titled it “Ritual at Dawn” because I had inadvertently caught some people in the frame, I think they may have been Hindus out to perform a seaside ritual (I think I should enquire more about this)
I was a bit dissatisfied with the original capture, but was taken enough by the scene to try to “salvage” the image. I tried a single image HDR tone-mapping, but that didn’t work out as I expected. I then decided to go for a pseudo-HDR, since I hadn’t actually taken multiple exposures, I created the multiple exposures in Lightroom (using a 1.5ev on the original image) In the image with the +1.5ev I wanted to get more detail from the rocks on the shore, so I used a gradient to adjust the exposure in that area. Using the three new exposures I did an HDR process in Nik HDR Efex Pro, and although the full-coloured resulting image was OK, I thought that in this instance I would get a better image using a black and white HDR rendering.
I think that Christmas Carols (and Christmas music in general) lends to the “feel” of Christmas as much as many of the other traditions associated with the Day and the Season. Whether its Carollers on the street or in the church, the chorus of voices or the clarity of the soloist singing those traditional carols (or the new songs) helps get me in the Christmas Mood.
This was a photo taken at the annual Festival of Carols held at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Brickdam Cathedral), it is one of the few times I’ve attempted higher ISOs on the Canon Digital Rebel T1i, although there’s a fair amount of noise it wasn’t too bad for the shot, and I did a bit of noise reduction in Topaz 🙂
Because I am behind schedule posting my Deck images this year, it is co-incidental that the image for the 48th Week is actually appropriate for today, the day I am posting it…
Everyone has beliefs, even if you say you don’t believe in anything, that in itself is a belief. I believe in Santa Claus! Maybe not the person, but the idea, the idea of giving, of making children happy, even of the stories and the legends that surround this figure.
I like to be a child again every Christmas and believe in the magic of giving, in the magic of the gift that was the Christ-child.
To all my friends and family, to anyone who happens across this page, whether you believe in Jesus, in Allah, in the pantheon of Hindu gods, in the Buddha, in a Supreme Being or in no particular power, I wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings!
Sometimes we just take a walk out to the seawall for, well, a walk 🙂 We go to see the boats, walk in the water, enjoy the breeze… well, the children go walking in the water anyway.
This photo was taken on one of those walks, there’s a spot at Lusignan where the boats that have finished their day’s fishing are moored, the fishermen are finishing up their day’s work, where the catch of the day is off-loaded and packed for sale, it was at this spot we walked to, my daughter and her cousin are down at the water’s edge, and I’m walking ahead to look back and, or course, snap some photographs 🙂
I could try saying a lot more, but I think in this instance the photo can speak for itself 🙂
Partial remains of the Globe Cinema, demolished this year, 2011
It recently dawned on me that there may be only one functional cinema left in Georgetown, possibly only one left in Guyana. While the television and computers, handheld media players and the internet have certainly impacted on how we watch our movies, the cinema has always had a big draw for people, however the cinemas in Guyana have steadily gone into disrepair and certainly some have disappeared. While we can place a lot of blame of the modernisation of media viewing, the owners and promoters of our cinemas have to take some of the blame, even when I was much younger, and the cinemas were full of moviegoers, I remember the sordid states of the seats, the persevering smell of urine, and the sound of the rodents running around the aisles.
Starlite Cinema, Pouderoyn, West Bank Demerara. Closed and abandoned
They never did the little things that made you WANT to go to the cinema, why suffer through all that when you could wait a few months and see it in the comfort of your home? It was the experience, it was the “event” of going to the cinema with family or friends to watch a new (or old) movie in the company of others there to enjoy the experience, the camaraderie, the joy of the big silver screen, unfortunately the experience was not always a good one. And the cinemas are disappearing, one by one, by one…
The Astor Cinema, still functional as of this year, but attendance makes it hard for the proprietor to keep it up.
I was re-reading an article written by Godfrey Chin on the Rise and Fall of Guyana’s Cinemas, I believe this was part of his “Nostalgias”, and while I am not old enough to know of some of the cinemas or even the movies he mentions, it hits home. He, of course, goes back to even before we gained our Independence, back to the days of British Guiana, and he brings us into the modern era, where instead of Cinemas modernising to keep up, they just kept going, stagnated in time, except for the titles of the movie releases 🙂
What prompted this blog-post was the sudden nostalgia I got (I am probably getting like Godfrey) when I was processing a photo I took of the partly demolished “Globe Cinema” and an image of the abandoned Starlite Cinema. Both of those images are included in this post. As the Astor is the last remaining cinema, I think that I should make an effort to get permission to do some photography in that establishment before it too disappears.
Formerly the Strand Cinema, now the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God
There are at least two other Cinemas that I know of which have been converted into places of worship, it seems to be the thing to do 🙂
Click on each image to see them larger in their respective galleries.
One year ago, I wrote and posted my first official post on this blog, I am not counting the “Hello World” that Word press starts me off with. It might seem morbid to some that the first post was about the death of my maternal grandmother, and a photo of the same, but to me it’s not only the scenes that capture our eyes as photographers that may appeal to viewers, but the feelings and emotions that we can convey or arouse from others viewing our work.
One year has passed, and I have had “ups and downs” in blogging, recently a lot of “downs”, time seems to be an elusive creature, and I have not put as much into the blogging or reading blogs as I think I should. But I think that I have kept up pretty well, and The Deck project certainly gives it some impetus.
Recently there have been other deaths as well, not a good way to celebrate one year of blogging, but it is what it is. My daughter recently lost one of her teachers from last year, Teacher Gillian, and only this week we lost “Mr. Terrific”, Flavio Commacho, who was very instrumental in the conversion of our system of measurements in Guyana from Imperial to Metric, I remember from when I was a little boy listening to “Swing to Metric” on the radio (yes, radio. Televisions weren’t quite the thing as yet)
Also this month we lost Sister Rose Magdalene, there is so much to be said for her, and there is a lovely Tribute page on Facebook. What I remember of Sr Rose is her love for music and pageantry. She wrote, she sang, she danced, she lived and loved with music in her heart. I always will remember the special Christmas mass at the old Sacred Heart Church (now burnt down), the traditional readings were replaced by a pageant telling the story of the birth of the Christ child, and at the heart of it all was Sr Rose. This photo in today’s blog was taken at the memorial mass held in Guyana at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (Brickdam Cathedral) for her, the people in it are a few of the members of the Marigold Children’s Choir that she formed many years ago.
This was meant to be a simple (hopefully artistic) photograph, but for me, it has a depth of emotion also.
I thought to myself this week that maybe I should just put up as good a photo as I could get up to today before I let another week pass by and then I would be behind again in this project… and since I went with Nikhil to the Kingston Promenade yesterday photo-hunting, I came back with a few decent shots, so here’s to the twentieth week of the year.
It was one of those uninspiring afternoons, nothing seemed to leap out at you, at least not photographically. I did get a shot of a crab before he scampered back into his “hole” (is there a name for those?), but he isn’t super-sharp, I may yet post it up. The beach was littered as usual, and the sun was shining so brightly I almost couldn’t look eastwards, and the glare off the water and sand wasn’t helping any either.
Fortunately I did manage to see through the glare enough to spot a youngster playing near the waves, as it turned out I got more than I thought 🙂
I can’t seem to ever get enough photographs of this building, a heavy weight descends upon me when I go closer to it and see the effects of the neglect, the signs of disrepair, and the toll that the sun and rains take from this glorious wooden structure.
For last week I had not taken a single image for “artistic reasons”, I did do a snapshot of some newspapers for a Road Safety blog for The Alicea Foundation, but that’ wasn’t very artistic 🙂
Most of my HDR images usually use a fairly static scene, no moving elements, this week I decided to try one that included some movement, and try out the “ghost reduction” that Nik HDR Efex has built in, I think it worked very nicely.
This was the photograph I had in mind for last week’s Deck Photo, but then the horse-cart took over 🙂
I still find it amazing that in a crowded room or a public place full of people, I can be next to my wife, and feel as if we’re alone, just the two of us. It was one of those things you read about in poems and novels but didn’t quite get until it happened to you. For more than half of my life, that has been us, I can look into her eyes and we’d be alone wherever we were. I look forward to many more years like that.
Well, I took this photograph, so it’s not of us, but you get the idea 🙂 Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
Although the “Deck week” ends on Friday, I usually try to post by the Friday, but this week I held off, hoping to get some more photographs, but that didn’t work out 🙂 The main activity this week was the Festive Lantern Display that I blogged about for the eve of Chinese New Year.
I actually have another photograph from that evening that I favour, so that’s going to be the photo for the Deck this week. The Khom Fei is like other chinese (oriental) lanterns in that they are made of paper, it is lightweight, stretched on a frame and carries a cross-piece at the base for the heat source.
In this photo, a few people help to hold the Lantern while the lantern fills with the hot air, eventually it will get hot enough to rise on its own, much like a hot-air balloon.
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