2012 Deck – Week 2

On January 16, 2012January 16, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2012 Deck, Photography7 Comments

This week’s photo is not a great one or even a good one in my opinion, but as I began writing this post, some news was delivered to me and the photo somehow seemed… appropriate.

Recently my friend (if she permits me to call her that) Reshi, wrote a post titled “Colour me Pretty”, and it had me thinking about many things, one was the effect of darker colours on a photo, the effect of shadows and light in photographs as Nikhil so masterly does them, and about the duality of emotions, and the different faces that we show people.

This post is dedicated to Godfrey Chin, many or most Guyanese will know him as the prolific writer of his “Nostalgias”, he numbered them. I came to know Godfrey only in recent years, and he has made an impact on me. He did so much in his life that I think someone will have to write a Nostalgia about him. I don’t know enough to do that to any degree of adequacy.

I know of his costumes and “floats” for the Mashramani Celebrations during his more youthful days, and I saw a bit of his style when he did some decorating for a party, and as I explained to someone, it was all about the look, it was a façade just to give the impression of the intent and not to be something that lasts forever, just for that party for those moments, yet his “Nostalgias” were vastly different, trying to scour the depths of his memories of his times in Guyana and write them down for others to share and reminisce, trying to capture those, maybe not for eternity, but at least that they live on for some time more.

Godfrey Chin was found this morning at his home in Guyana, he died sometime this weekend. Stabroek News called him a “Social History Icon” and a “Culture Enthusiast”, both descriptions are possibly very accurate, but I can attest to the second one better.

Why did I think that this photo was somehow appropriate for him? like the pointer-broom in the photo, Godfrey would sweep up and tidy up his memories and give us the sparkling finished product as a “Nostalgia”, like the light and shadows, he would help to reveal aspects of the past hidden to one or the other; if it is too bright you can’t see clearly, nor if it is too dark can you see at all.

Godfrey had asked me to give him some photos for an exhibition he was to do this Mashramani, they are on my desk, but now he will never see them, he was a fan of my work, maybe because we both thought of ourselves as family, I am thankful for his encouragement.

Godfrey came into our office during the Christmas Season and made his rounds, had a few “gaffs” and before he left, dived into his bag, took out some gold tinsel and proceeded to further decorate our Christmas Tree.

For Godfrey Chin, may his soul rest in peace, and if Heaven has a Parade we know what he’ll be doing. In Godfrey’s words “Ya think it easy?”

2011 Deck – Week 52

On December 31, 2011December 31, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography6 Comments

The final week of the year, and the final photo for the Deck Project for this year. This one I can say I like, it has been “edited” a bit in addition to the standard processing, I added a “purplish” gradient to the sky for effect.

Another year has ended, I am a bit disappointed with myself, and I think I need to refocus for the new year, I plan on restarting the Deck Project, it gives me a sense of purpose for my photography, so I wouldn’t want to stop it. I think that Nikhil may be re-starting his 365 Project that he did a year ago, I look forward to that.

As we end this year and look forward to 2012, I present a photo that I think represents many Coastland Guyanese, a typical afternoon on the coast, enjoying the winds of the Atlantic and just “Shooting the Breeze” (chatting, talking, gaffing!)

Insects

On March 24, 2011March 24, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography16 Comments

Interestingly enough I had loads and loads of photographs of insects when I shot with the Canon S5IS bridge camera, but since I have been shooting with the T1i SLR, I have very few, very very few, as a matter of fact this is the first that I’ve uploaded to my site and I had to create a gallery just for it 🙂

I think that because the S5 had a very good Macro mode and an even better Super Macro mode, I experimented more with them and with the usual victims of those modes, insects. Also, I had bought “add-on” macro lenses from Raynox that really had me doing some nice experimenting 🙂 Now that I use the SLR, I am longing for a good Macro lens, and I dream about the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro regularly 🙂 (anyone feeling generous, I won’t refuse a gift)

Anyway, enough of the dreaming, here’s the insect I mentioned…

: Hang on!

Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, he’s there all by himself.

I took this the same day last week when I took the one I posted for the Deck, so some might say this is more appealing, but the Lotus Flower fit my mood at the time 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 11

On March 19, 2011March 19, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography14 Comments

I’ve been feeling a bit depressed this week, probably a combination of factors, and not a feeling I am familiar with. I need to leave it behind, but maybe the photo for this week will reflect some of that in it.

As befitting the week, I only shot photos on one day, so I didn’t have much of a variety to choose from, there were two I favoured, so I chose one and hope that someone other than myself would like it, although it is the more “depressing” of the two, I preferred it overall, I will post the other image in a later post.

Three for the weekend

On September 4, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography9 Comments

I really really thought long and hard for a title for this post, and couldn’t come up with a single thing worth using, so here’s three for the weekend…. Three photos, that is; this is a blog about my photographs after all.

The first is a building that I have had my eye on for some time, I seldom ever see it without a few to several vehicles in front of it, and I didn’t want the vehicles in the photograph, at least not this photograph, I wanted the building. Of course getting a nice composition is challenging, especially with the many wires crisscrossing the street in front of the building. Whenever I saw it nice and clear, the lighting would not be optimal, and whenever the lighting was right, the place was very very busy, well I finally saw it clear and with a nice morning light.

It only takes a small rain shower to ensure that pedestrians walk on the roads instead of the pavement, especially on Avenue of the Republic, it probably only rained for about ten minutes the morning I took this, normally I wouldn’t be tempted to take a photograph, but the sun had come out and the colours were popping and it was even evident in the reflections in the water 🙂

Two days ago, Nikhil did a very nice close up shot for his 365 Project, and while I was also captured by the colours of the structures, I decided to wait and see what else about the scene would capture my attention, as it turns out I liked the house and tree more than the structures 🙂 This is also a move away from the norm for me, I usually do proportionate cropping if I crop the image, but in this case I found a square crop to be optimal for the image (that and I really needed to crop out the other buildings on the left without losing some of the elements in the shot)

Hadfield Street and Brumell Place (taken while standing in Louisa Row)

It seems I forgot to mention that all three are in Georgetown, Guyana. Three different days and three very different images of Georgetown 🙂

The Deck Weeks 31 and 32

On August 12, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography1 Comment

I have to play catch-up this week, since I missed out on uploading my Deck photo for last week, so this week is a double upload and blog. I had already decided what photograph I would have most likely used for the Deck, but I did not get a chance until this week to process the remaining images from my vacation.

The Deck photo for Week 31 is a parting shot from St Martin, over on the French side, on the beach front near Marigot, we were waiting for the boat to arrive for our final adventure, a chance to see the corals and fishes under the sea through the transparent underside of a “glass-bottomed” boat. My underwater shots came out terrible, but I loved this scene from the shore:

In the last week, I took photographs on three occasions, one was at a funeral, the other two were on afternoon walks with Nikhil, but for some reason I was not getting the “feel” for the scenes or subjects. My final photograph of today turned out to be one that I was pleasantly surprised with, I took another shot at the New Thriving Chinese Restaurant. The image is a pseudo-HDR, since I also wanted to try out a new software that Nikhil had recently introduced me to, it is still in the Beta (testing) stage, but I am rather impressed by it. It introduces a new type of HDR called HDR ReLight as well as doing the regular tone mapping type HDR, but it also processes RAW files, which I shoot primarily. This was the portion that I wanted to try, and I was rather pleased with the result, the software is Oloneo PhotoEngine, give it a try if you like HDRs or you shoot in RAW.

Here’s the photo for the Deck Week 32, I hope you like it.