In the beginning…

On July 13, 2017 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

Well, maybe not “the” beginning, just “a” beginning.

It was probably around 2007 that I began to pay more attention to what went into the frame, to what it was I was taking photographs of. Prior to that it was mostly point, click, “look, isn’t that pretty??” Most probably weren’t pretty at all, but family and friends always say “yes, it is” – In 2007, somewhere amidst the generic photos, there began to emerge a few that stood out, and I think that I was seeing things, the things around me, differently, and in so doing I was capturing them differently, light was beginning to take on lifelike characteristics that would change how everything looked, and how everything could be captured on a few thousand pixels.

It was now not so important to capture every detail, but just the ones that would help tell the story, using light and dark, contrast and brightness to illustrate an idea, a concept, a feeling… It was time to pay more attention to the composition rather than just the subject.

I decided to take a look back at the photos I took ten years ago, to see what, if anything, was worth sharing. Most of the images I took were family oriented, so those didn’t count, but I was experimenting, looking around me and trying to capture something out of the ordinary (ordinary being the family photos, nothing captured can compare to even the ordinary of professional photographers, much less fine-art photographers).

I even tried my hand at pointing the camera at strange people, out in public, although I was still much more comfortable pointing at non-human subjects, those that might not complain or make a fuss.

And its also the year, I did my first Photo-Walk, not what would really be considered a photo walk, but myself, my brother, Andre, and two friends, Nikhil and Naseem. We went for a drive “over the river” up to Wales estate on the West Bank of Demerara and I think up to Windsor Forest on the West Coast of Demerara, stopping every now and again to take some photos.

That photo-walk was somewhat of an eye-opener as well, in a relatively short distance, there was quite a lot to see, and a good variety of subjects and scenes to photograph as a result.

This isn’t a retrospective of any kind really, just taking a look at some photos with an eye that has had a decade of shooting, and processing them anew. They were all shot on a bridge camera, or an advanced point-and-shoot camera, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS, a 6 Megapixel camera with a 1/2.5” CCD sensor, so there’s not a lot of post processing I could do without delving into the realm of editing.

Back then I was mostly all about colour, vivid vibrant popping colour, so the monochromatic versions (BW) you see are how I see them today, not then.

I chose ten images to illustrate what I had accomplished that year, I don’t think I would have found very many, if any, more that are worth sharing. I hope you enjoy a few.

All the images were reprocessed, and cropped. Click on any image to see them in the Gallery.

Tower

On January 7, 2017 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Back when it was still called Hotel Tower.

There has been a Hotel with the word “Tower” in its name on this spot for more than a century. I can’t find enough online historical evidence, but before the current name “Tower Suites”, it was the Hotel Tower for many years, and prior to that it was the Tower Hotel. I saw an 1909 Ad that claimed that “The Tower is the oldest and Best Hostelry on the Northern Coast of South America”. 🙂

Hotel Tower | 2009 | Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Sigma 10-20mm

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 50

On December 29, 2014December 29, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

In week 50 of 2014 I took a lot of photos, however most of them were on a photo shoot for a family, who specifically asked that we (Fidal and I) don’t share publicly, I don’t do those types of shoots normally so I was looking forward to it, and I think I got a few nice ones 🙂

So since practically all my photos for that week were scratched I fell back on one I took that was during the shoot but not of the family 🙂

If it messes with your eyes, it’s doing the same thing to mine… cool!!

47mm, f/4.0, ISO 800

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 33

On November 27, 2014November 27, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Christ Church was doing some fund-raising, a friend of mine asked me to take a few photos of the church to use in the press release. The only time I had to make a pass by the church was an early morning on the way to work.

I was thinking that it’s only for a press release, so it doesn’t have to be that good, right?

I was in a bit of a hurry, but I snapped a few, then jumped back in the car and headed to work. There was some nice clouds behind the church from one angle, and kept remembering this as I downloaded the images to process, I knew that my attitude toward the shot was less than optimal and I had deliberately exposed for the building and not the skies (since it was just for the press), as the sun was rising behind the church, all that detail would be blown out.

I thought that this would be a good time to experiment with what I had read about prior to acquiring a full-frame camera, that it can capture a very wide dynamic range in one exposure.

True enough, the entire sky was blown out in the exposure when I downloaded it.

But remembering what I had just seen in the sky, I worked the sliders to see what sky detail I could retrieve from the RAW file:

And I was amazed, so I decided to process it better than I had originally intended. I made slight adjustments in Lightroom to bring some detail back in the sky while retaining the detail and brightness of the building. Then I took the image into Nik HDR Efex with the express intent to use a single exposure black-and-white tone mapping technique on it, and the results were great. After a few minor adjustments once I took it back to Lightroom, this was the result:

Christ Church, Waterloo St., Georgetown, Guyana

Someone asked me it I “photoshopped” it, well, I didn’t use photoshop, I used no masks, no layers, nothing like that, just what I described above. Everything I needed was in the RAW file, if I weren’t in such a hurry and treating the action of taking the photo so lacklustrely, then I may have actually taken multiple exposures for a proper HDR 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

Pier

On January 7, 2014January 7, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, Poetry4 Comments

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, along with many others in the Black and White Collection

Standing posts, by day’s light
Beaten by the waves
bleached by the relentless sun
Dwelt upon by snails

By moonlight, a ghostly pier
Appears ‘neath the moon
A vision that’s never seen
In day’s high noon

Stretching out into the deep
Walked upon by wraiths
boats with ancient passengers,
On the pier he waits…

Eyeing all who step ashore
Some will never leave,
Captain of his merchant ship,
Lord of the seas

Each night he walks the pier
Beneath the moon’s light
Each night the slaves come again
Reliving ghostly plight

The wraiths leave with the dawn
At peace once more
Until the rising moon
Brings them back to shore.

Every Tool

On August 28, 2013August 29, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts6 Comments

I’m not a purist; I don’t hold the belief that whatever JPG comes out of the camera is the reality that existed in front of the lens. I do, however, believe that there is a certain amount of “truth” in my photographic work. Friends and colleagues, other photographers and budding photographers in the Guyana Photographers’ Facebook group have heard me make the distinction between Processing and Editing many times. And I will briefly make it here again…

Since I shoot in RAW format, the camera does no processing to the file (whenever you shoot JPEG the camera applies certain adjustments to the image, contrast, brightness, etc.) so I have to Process it in software, often referred to as Post-processing. This usually involves adjusting sliders in a software like Aperture, AfterShot, Lightroom, LightZone, etc., things that are adjusted range from brightness and contrast, to hue and saturation, cropping, temperature, white balance, noise levels and more. Although this is usually applied over the entire image, some software allows you to do it to parts as well.

Where I draw the distinction between Processing and Editing, is when the image is altered so as to become a new image, distinct from the original in content. Simply put, if I add something or remove something from the original photograph, then it is no longer the same, it is now a work of graphic design, not only photography.

Do I Process my images? Always. Do I Edit my images? Sometimes. I’ve cloned out trash that otherwise marred the scene (the lone plastic bottle on a grassy stretch), but have often left in loads of trash because it was part and parcel of the scene. I don’t have anything against editing, but I don’t think its fair to call it a photograph after you’ve added in entire clumps of trees, removed several utility posts and added muscles to an individual… that is definitely in the realm of photo-illustration or Graphic Design.

I am also a big proponent of using every tool that you need to get the image that you saw with your eyes, and in your mind across to the viewer. Whether its special filters on the lens to get a mood or effect, an angled lens in the developer of a dark room to create a distorted view, using Black and White (Film or processing) for an aged or structured look, using long and super-long exposures for light trails or flowing water, external flashes and reflectors for extra lighting on a subject, gels and filters for colour enhancements, or even doing some of this on the software end, I am for it, but I believe in being true to the original vision as much as possible.

Fancy processing and editing is no substitute for a good original image. I am no expert or professional, many of my images come out of the camera looking very disappointing, and I often discard or simply not process them. Yes, you can “save” them, I have even done so on some occasions, simply because I believe that they were worth saving, but they had to have something good in them to begin with; a good composition, a relatively good exposure, and maybe even compelling elements to the composition.

I’ve rambled enough… time for a photo. This is one of those photos that I “saved”… The original was good, maybe better than good, but it was not what I wanted…. I wanted more detail in the sky, more of a structured appearance than the original coloured version, and (because of an architectural quirk) more symmetry.

Canon EOS 60D | Tamron 18-270mm | 21mm, 1/160s, f/7.1

I used Lightroom to create five different exposures from the original, each 2 stops apart in exposure, then I used Nik HDR Efex Pro to merge my new exposures and coax the detail I wanted from the overall scene, then I used Photoshop (I know, I’m a horrible person) to skew the perspective ever so slightly to gain some symmetry.

Although I did not add or remove anything, I normally would consider this edited since I used Photoshop to change the original proportions of the image, but in this case I’d let that slide 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with others in the Black and White series.

2013 Deck – Week 05

On February 8, 2013February 9, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Maybe it’s because I am a coast-lander that I feel the draw of the sea, but I keep going to the seawalls, if not for a photograph then just to feel the breeze, and hear the sounds of the waves.

This photo was taken at Ebb Tide, when the tide was beginning to recede from the shores, and as I stood there I could feel the wind around me, hear the sound of the waves as the crashed upon this rock and smell the salt in the air (which was probably not good for the camera)

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

The Disappearing Cinema

On June 21, 2011June 21, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Commentary, Photography15 Comments

Demolition of the Globe — 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.