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.
During our recent spate of rainy weather, I chanced to be on the sidewalks waiting with my camera in hand and I grabbed a few photographs, of the set two stood out, but I only like one enough to use, so I chose here first before I post to Flickr.
Many of our pavements/sidewalks and streets in Georgetown flood as soon as the place gets cloudy, but the recent rains put a lot of pressure on our poor (excuse for a ) drainage system. 🙂
At least this fellow was prepared for the weather, not only with an umbrella, but with long boots as well. 🙂
I was about to title this post “The Monkey and The Camera”, because Nikhil might have been right about that day at La Bonne Intention, a monkey with a camera may well have managed to take a good photograph.
In hindsight, I really should have switch to my ultra-wide lens earlier that day, but even with the Tamron 18-270 mounted on the camera, I still got wide enough to capture the truly “awesome” sky that was prevalent at the time.
I’ll let this photo speak for itself. (Click to see larger)
For anyone who has followed my through my blogging, you’ll have seen Nikhil’s name popping up with some regularity, we’re friends, and he’s also my photo-buddy. In September of last year he came out with a spectacular image which has since been used by Kriti in their publication of the 2011 Scotiabank (Guyana) Calendar, it’s an amazing image, he titled it Resting Drama (if you click on the name you’ll see it on his site).
I was left stunned with his image and had not processed any of my images from that day, they will all pale in comparison. Today I decided to process one, (I’ll get to the others eventually) this one was a three image HDR, whilst he faced north, I faced east, into the slowly setting sun.
I want to explain a few things; firstly, it’s a three image HDR (High Dynamic Range) trying to get the most detail out of the scene. Secondly, it’s about the scene as it is depicted, I tried as much as possible to keep the image as “natural” as possible, sometimes HDRs can go overboard and look over-processed or even cartoonish.
The sky was cloudy, so we were in a shadowed setting with some cloud coverage overhead, heavier as you looked eastward,but far towards the east the sun was setting, and fewer clouds were in the sky that far east giving the sunlight entrance to the scene. The sunlight bathed the seawall mildly or gently, You can see the wetness towards the sea reflecting the light, even the grass shoreward was lit to a degree.
I think I may be using too many words, I should just let the photo speak for itself.
The Calm - La Bonne Intention, East Coast Demerara. 3 Image HDR, 27mm, ISO 200
This last week I took quite a number of photos, and the choice for the image for the deck was a little more difficult. In the end it came down to a choice of several from the Trip out west that Nikhil, Naseem and I took last weekend.
I will eventually process all my favourites from that trip and load up an album, but for now I will just give you the one I chose for the 2011 Deck as well 🙂
Of all the water crafts that were at the conservancy, one in particular caught my attention, it was a tug-boat (I think they’re called that), it was quite distinctive from the other shallow boats and canoes on the water, and definitely more appealing than the barge that was moored nearby 🙂 It reminded me of cartoons I watched as a child, and I fully expected to see either Bluto or Popeye on deck!
I was recently reminded that I am primarily a Guyanese photographer (yes, I just referred to myself as a photographer) and that my header image was somewhat inappropriate, it being a panorama from Sint Maarten.
So when Nikhil, Naseem and I went for a drive out West on Saturday, I made a point of trying at least one Panorama image to replace the header with.
The header is cropped to fit the available space in the theme I am using, so I’ve included the original below which you can click on to see larger at the site.
This is a scene of the Conservancy down at the back of Canal Number 1, West Bank Demerara, approaching Sunset and waiting in vain for the colours to get more spectacular. 🙂
After three successive monochrome postings for the Deck project, I decided this week, that regardless of what the weather was like I wanted a coloured image,and I finally got something in keeping with the season, Demerara Mutual Insurance company lit up their building very nicely, and I took a few images at night to try and capture the spirit 🙂
Here’s the resulting image. Demerara Mutual has it’s main office on Avenue of the Republic in Central Georgetown, to the right of the photo, you can even see a portion of City Hall.
This week sees a continuation of the monochromatic trend of late, but instead of just a straight BW, I went for a sepia with a vignette. It was on one of those walks with Nikhil, while looking for his Photo for his 365, and even though these waterways have been done, and over-done, I thought I’d give it a try, with the over-cast sky and perpetuating gloom of the afternoon this was pre-destined to be a monochromatic photograph.
After minimal processing in Lightroom, I did the monochromatic rendition in Nik Silver Efex, it came out rather nicely.
I am pretty much disappointed with this week’s photographs, I have one of my wife that I thought was a great shot and was very tempted to put as the photo for this week’s Deck entry, but she would never forgive me if I did, so I had to settle for this one.
I intentionally took multiple exposures most of this week because I intended to do some more HDR attempts, but this one didn’t come out as expected. For some reason my alignment was all wrong and there’s quite a bit of haloing as a result. I did intend a BW HDR, so this I used as much to my advantage as possible.
I did the HDR merging in Nik HDR Efex Pro, and also added a vignette to it there. The final touches were added in Lightroom using a BW POP preset I got from Eric Kim, who does really great Street Photography, I hope he doesn’t mind that I used it for something other that Street Photography 🙂
I rather liked the lone tree and it’s reflection, so that’s why this was my choice this week.
As has been the norm of late, my week was busy, I only got to take photographs on three days, but I did manage to get a very nice photograph that was actually enhanced by the crazy cloudy weather we’ve been having recently.
This week I give you a scene from the Botanical Gardens, I was in the central area of the Seven Ponds, where some of the Nation’s revered men have been laid to rest; including the first Guyanese Governor General, Sir David Rose, the First President of Guyana, Arthur Chung and the great Guyanese poet Martin Carter.
Facing the ponds is The Mausoleum where the body of the second president of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, is entombed. Linden Forbes Samson Burnham was the first Executive President of Guyana, and was called the Founder Leader during his tenure as president.
The Mausoleum is a recent addition to the Gardens being built in 1986, it has numerous sculptures on the interior walls done by Ivor Thom.
The reflection in the pond was what drew me to this scene, I hope you like it.
So, I’m figuring that if it’s not a photograph for The Deck, or something thematic like Monochromes, what do I do with the photographs? Nikhil came up with a brilliant idea for his blog, he started a weekly review of his photos for his 365 Project. That gave me an idea for these photographs that don’t fit into my regular type of blog post, here’s the ones that did not make it onto The Deck 🙂
First up is this image taken in the Gardens, I was off to get the photograph of the Kissing Bridge when I found this corner of the bridge interesting, so I shot it, I still can’t quite put my finger on the reason it interests me, it just does, so I tried my best to frame it right and get a decent photograph of it.
Corner column, Kissing Bridge, Botanical Gardens
Then, of course, there is the bridge itself! Although I preferred the one I used that week for the deck which was in Black and White, I did take one in portrait orientation that I quite liked as well, so I dropped that one into my “Georgetown,Guyana” album, and here it is 🙂
The Kissing Bridge, Botanical Gardens
I used to take a lot of photographs of flowers, that was when I shot with a Canon PowerShot S3 and S5, it seems that since I moved onto an SLR my focus has changed (excuse the pun), but every once in a while I still catch one in my viewfinder and get a fairly decent shot of it, like this one I saw on Brickdam.
Yellow on Green
And then, of course, there’s one of my favourite areas to photograph things, the Seawall. I often just thought of the seawall as just the Georgetown Seawall, but it extends along most of our coastline, these two were taken up near the village of Montrose, which is known most for the Starlite Drive-in, although I am not certain when it was exactly the they last showed a movie there.
Greens and BluesKoker Montrose
Well, now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can rest knowing that these have not been ignored 🙂 I hope you enjoy one or more.
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