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.
When the new owners of the Central Garage building began their renovation works, I asked permission to take a few photographs inside the building and also from the roof. Although I took quite a few, this one always nagged at the back of my mind (I’ve yet to process that set completely).
The front of the building was windowed in sections, and at the time of my visit the windows and their frames had been removed from the eastern wall, this wall has now been remodelled and houses large glass panels, so the view may be similar 🙂
I had originally thought that the new owners would remove the old building and replace it, but they chose to retain the existing steel structure, remove and replace the old wooden and asbestos outer walls. Although they changed more of the facade than I’d have wished, they retained more of the original building than was expected 🙂
This view shows mainly City Hall, which itself is in danger of crumbling, you can also see part of the ACME building, and part of the Victoria Law Courts. I liked the contrast between the darker interior of the building and the brightly lit City, framed by windowless orifices.
Please click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, this Gallery also holds other photos from around Georgetown, Guyana.
Getting out to take photographs seems harder recently, but living on the coast means that there is always the seawall 🙂 I took a drive up to Enterprise to pick up something and thought I’d just drive up to the wall and see what, if anything, there was to photograph. There were a couple boats out there, but it didn’t move me, but there were two bicycles left near/on the wall where two boys had left them to go over the seawall.
This posting is somewhat appropriate as I (that is, my family and I) are about to go to a family reunion. So, while we will be leaving the comforts of our home, the familiarity of other family and friends near to us, we do so knowing that the material things we leave temporarily are being taken care of by people we know, and the people we leave behind have their own family and friends to keep them occupied while we’re away 🙂
Travelling in and around Georgetown, many of the larger Canals / Trenches are populated by the lotus flowers, that comes in really handy for a Jhandi! I wrote a blog post once on the flower, its leaves and some of its uses.
Being accustomed to seeing it (lots of them are seen on my route to and from home) I was somewhat surprised when I saw that some of the ones I saw growing in the “country area” were somewhat “pinker”, or more pink, than those I was accustomed to (it was on a trip to Berbice that I noticed it and then also on a trip to Essequibo).
So for those of you accustomed to seeing the nice pink ones around the Demerara area, don’t be surprised when this image looks more saturated, it really wasn’t my doing 🙂
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery where you can see other floral photos in the album.
Nikhil does more unusual cropping than I do, often times he’ll use the cropping to help emphasise the subject, and this is something I don’t often do, usually when I crop I try to keep the same proportions as the original image, and I try to crop very little, usually only as a corrective method (to rotate the image correctly of to remove something at the edge(s) that shouldn’t be included). I often forget that I can crop for emphasis and to strengthen the composition.
This week’s image is such an example, I originally thought that it was a good image, but for some reason it wasn’t as strong as I’d originally thought, so after some monochrome work on it I tried an unusual crop, and I think it worked.
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery.
I’ve often wondered at the diversity, and often strangeness, of the photographs that are taken by people It is sometimes good to let the mind wander and indulge in thoughts and theorems about what prompts a photographer to photograph a particular subject, or to do so in a particular way, and then to further process it in a particular style.
What makes a photographer chose to render his image in monochrome rather than colour, what made them choose to use the “rule of thirds” or break them? What would make a person (of relative sanity) walk the streets of Georgetown to take up Street Photography, or spend months in the Rupununi areas of the interior?
As each photographer takes more photographs they tend to develop a style, a particular slant to their work, some are even known for creating Genres, Nikhil says I have a “style” although I find it hard to identify, and I can usually identify his photographs (except where he deviates from his norm)… so… where does this photo fit in? 🙂 I know it’s mine, would you have said it was?
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery
For many students in the trimester system, it is now the end of the school year, the end of projects and assignments, the end of homework, the last of the tests and exams until the next academic year begins.
I find it fitting that the image I chose reflects some of this; hands raised in joy as the sun sets on another day. The end of one thing usually marks the beginning of another, soon we begin the “August” or summer holidays, although those in the semester system have already begun theirs 🙂
Recently, one of the younger photo enthusiasts in the Guyana Photographers FB group, uploaded a photo and mentioned that she was “Adding to the clothes-clips shot collection”, and it carried me back several years to one of my earlier photos (back when almost everything was a family snapshot). It was one of the earliest photos that Nikhil thought has some artistic merit, or as Naseem might say “artsy”.
For me, photography was “I shoot what I like”, but as the years went by it became more about trying to shoot what I like “a little better”, pay more attention to composition, to the elements in the photo and to the way I process and present the photograph.
So here is the photo from 2007, back when I had started shooting the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, although it is not an SLR, it gave me more control than a compact point and shoot (although at the time it didn’t seem to matter that much to me, it was just fun)
A Drive up the Rupert Craig Highway carries you past the villages of Plaisance and Sparendaam on the East Coast of Demerara. My dad had once pointed out that what most people referred to as the “Catholic Church in Plaisance” was actually situated in Sparendaam (this would be the Church of St John the Baptist), and I couldn’t help but notice that the Saint Paul’s Anglican Church at Plaisance is also in Sparendaam.
I suppose that quibbling about the name of the location is minor since the street that marks the division of the two villages is the same street that both churches are on. Now the street, that has name issues of its own…
As with most of the place names in Guyana, they reflect our past colonisations and our change from Colonial rule to Independence, the name Plaisance is of French origin, and Sparendaam comes from the Dutch. Our last colonial masters were the British, when our country was known as British Guiana, and the two main streets running the length of Plaisance were (and to some extent still are) Queen Victoria Road and Prince William Drive.
During the “Burnham years”, one of the changes (some might call it an attempt to eradicate our history) was to rename streets that held “colonial names” to names that were more meaningful to a country emerging from colonial rule and striving for successful Independence. In Georgetown one of the more notable changes was the renaming of Murray Street to Quamina Street. John Murray was the Lieutenant Governor of Demerara from 1813 to 1824, Quamina was a slave involved in one of the largest slave revolts in Demerara during that time (in 1823 actually).
In Plaisance, Queen Victoria Road was renamed to Ben Profitt Drive, and Prince William Street was renamed to Andries Noble Avenue. Ben Profitt was a notable village chairman of Plaisance, and Andries Noble is touted to be one of the best midwives of Guyana, there’s probably very few people over the age of 35 from Plaisance and Sparendaam whom she didn’t help bring into this world.
Although the name changes were made more than a couple of decades ago, the streets are still referred to by many using the original names, although most people who have grown up in the villages know them by both names, So St Paul’s Anglican Church is sometimes referred to as being on Queen Victoria Road, and sometimes on Ben Profitt Drive, likewise it is also sometimes referred to as being in Sparendaam, as well as being in Plaisance..
I started this blog post just wanting to say something about St Paul’s Anglican Church other than “Here is a photo of the church with it’s cemetery as seen through a gate in its fence”, one thing led to another and now the post is almost 500 words long.
Without further ado; “Here is a photo of the church with it’s cemetery as seen through a gate in its fence” 🙂
St. Paul’s Anglican Church
Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery, along with other images from this year’s Deck Project.
In my youth, which sometimes seems not so far gone (and the rest of this sentence will tell you how far), I looked forward to Saturday afternoon to see an episode of Airwolf, a television serial about a high-tech helicopter, it starred Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine. I was recently reading an article about the Harpy Eagle and it was referred to as the “Flying Wolf”, and I thought Flying Wolf = Airwolf.
Of course, I would not have had an opportunity to photograph the “Airwolf” of the Television series, so this blog post is obviously about the Eagle 🙂
The Harpy Eagle (Harpia harpyja) is one of the largest and most powerful birds of prey in the world (one of the reasons it is sometimes called the Flying Wolf), it is a grey bird, its plumage consisting of feathers from slate-black, to grey to white. They make their nests high up in the canopy of the Rainforest in the forks of the trees, and are a monogamous species, mating for life, they raise one chick at a time, providing for that chick for up to ten months before sending it off on its own.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing a Harpy and its young in the wild, and of being able to view a young one up close (not in a cage in the zoo), they are marvellous birds, with talons that certainly scare me!
I’m not sure which would be scarier, seeing Stringfellow Hawk in a chopper diving towards me or one of these guys swooping, wings pulled back and talons poised…
I’ve heard people say (this would be either in person, in books or on television) that they can tell a lot about a person by “certain things”, like their shoes, their watch, their friends, what they read, etc. etc. etc.
I’m sure some psychiatrist / psychologist / psychic can probably try that, I won’t even think of trying, given the wide range of books that I’ve read so far, I’d probably be classified as insane or at least as having no particular taste…. I was going to indicate here what I have read, in a broad sense, but I think I’ll keep the idea of me being insane to a minimum for now.
Recently they were tidying and packing up some books that belonged to persons of significance in Guyana’s history, the books belonged to Forbes and Viola Burnham. They have both died, Viola outliving her husband by a number of years. Forbes (Linden Forbes Sampson) Burnham, was the second president of Guyana, although he preferred to be known as the first Executive President, that made Viola the First Lady of the time. Under his presidency our country saw a lot of change, mainly the change that means losing what was then known as British Guiana to the new identity known today (and I use “today” to span the last 30 years) as Guyana. The politics of it I will avoid, as there is no end to that type of discussion (it’s as bad as or worse than discussing religion).
A few books on the table caught my eye and I took a photograph, I just thought it strange to see those titles together, or maybe not so strange? 🙂
Forbes was quite likely Guyana’s greatest orator, one of the brightest, some of the books I saw were prizes won by him through his school years, and all looked “read”, not for show.
Due to the condition of the dust covers, some of the titles are not complete; they are: Picket and the Pen, Jurisprudence, Mauritania and Profile of a Prodigy.
For anyone trying to “read” anything into this, it’s just a photograph, honestly!
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