Palm Sunday 2012

On April 20, 2012April 20, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography6 Comments

This year I was away from town for Holy Week. I was on the tenth Pakaraima Mountain Safari, and although I have not yet sorted all my photos from the trip, nor written any sort of account, I did choose this image for Palm Sunday to share.

It was taken at “58 Mile”, an area known for being 58 miles out of Linden, and for the “pit stop” establishment there know as “Peter and Ruth”, anyone heading to Lethem, or Kurupukari, or Mahdia usually stops here.

The photo is not of Peter & Ruth’s establishment, but of a little church opposite 🙂

Co-incidentally I was back in this spot on Good Friday at 3pm (most Catholics will know the significance of that) 🙂

So, although I got a lot of flak for not covering the Palm Sunday Mass (it seems there are some who look forward to my photos from that), I did manage a fairly nice shot that day anyway 🙂

Please click on the image to see it larger in the Gallery.

Pakaraima Mountain Safari – Destination Orinduik

On April 6, 2012March 29, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

The endpoint or destination of the Pakaraima Mountain Safari is Orinduik Falls, so I thought I’d end this series with one of my favourite photos of the Falls itself.

Orinduik falls is a series of small drops, This is a small portion that I thought was framed nicely.

Hopefully this year I come away with some nice photos again 🙂

In 2009 I was shooting the Canon PowerShot S5 Superzoom bridge camera, it was shortly after this photo (in time and shots) that I fell and damaged the camera. This year, I’m trying for surer footing (maybe my additional weight will help keep me stable as well) 🙂

Since I had damaged my camera, my brother loaned me his Nikon D80, my first shots on an SLR 🙂 I took the liberty of including one with him under the falls 🙂

Pakaraima Mountain Safari – The Falls at Kato

On April 3, 2012March 29, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

There’s a place called Kato, that has a Waterfall that’s very beautiful to a traveller, I was so enthralled and excited that I have to admit to taking very lousy photographs of it.

In this photo you can see some of the travellers enjoying the refreshing waters of the falls, this is a short drop, there was a larger one not too far off (not too large though 🙂 )

200

On March 19, 2012March 19, 2012 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

Just over a year I took this photo, I wasn’t very satisfied with it then, but then there was another image that had pulled most of my attention away from that same day. There’s just something about fishing boats that pulls your attention though, for this image I had wanted to incorporate the rocks, the boats, the heavily clouded sky, try as I might I could not get all the lines parallel, so I went for an image of divergent lines.

This post will mark the 200th post for this blog (I think that counts the “Hello World” post as well. I suppose if I did a daily photo project and blogged each one I’d be way ahead in count 🙂 For me, its not enough to just post a photo, I want something else to go along with it, some of my thoughts, or insights (or lack of)

There were some little things that I liked about this image; the water pulling away from the area just in front of the rocks, the waves breaking on the lower wall, the two boats at rest and, of course, the clouds 🙂

Be sure to lick on the image above for a much better view in the Gallery.

2011 Deck – Week 51

On December 29, 2011December 29, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography4 Comments

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.

2011 Deck – Week 22

On June 8, 2011June 8, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography8 Comments

Although when I first started trying my hand at Photography (you know, snapshots that looked awesome, even though they were probably mediocre) I was never inclined to monochromatic images; the black and whites and the sepia-toned images, but as I learnt more about the art, and as I came to appreciate the works of others, there has always been scenes that seem to render better in monochrome than in vivid colour.

I have found recently that I like to work in “special” fields of photo processing, I like playing with Panoramas, HDR (High Dynamic Range) images, tone-mapped images (using the same HDR software but on a single image and not using bracketed images as in a true HDR), and monochromatic images, more towards black and white or sepia-toned images rather than cyanotypes and the other tones available.

At any given period of my photography, you’ll probably notice a certain “type” of image popping up, so don’t be surprised by today’s monochrome. This was taken on the Georgetown Seawall towards the Kitty pump station, the building is Celina Atlantic Resort (I am not sure how the word resort got in the name, but its more a Restaurant and Bar)

2011 Deck – Week 20

On May 20, 2011May 20, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography6 Comments

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 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 7

On February 21, 2011February 25, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography20 Comments

For the seventh week of the year, I fell ill from the Tuesday and didn’t catch myself until the Friday (almost, I was still a little out-of-it through the weekend), so I effectively had one photographic day of that week, so one of the images HAD to work for the Deck. As fate would have it, I didn’t get to process any of those images until today, so I am a little late this time around for the Deck, but better late than never, as they say.

For that week I took a total of thirteen photos (that number alone should have told me it would be a bad week), of those, seven were snapshots for a pre-valentine’s day dinner that my family had and those went up on Facebook, and the remaining six were all from a walk that Nikhil and I took to the seawall, so I just picked one that seemed marginally better than the rest and processed it.

The Parallel Project – Creative White Balance

On January 11, 2011January 17, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, The Parallel Project11 Comments

I’ve been considering a parallel project to this year’s 2011 Deck Project, but I am still not sure if I am going to go through with it. It was my thought to experiment with different techniques and use the results from those experiments to do the project.

In the event that I do go through with it, this would have been my first image for it 🙂

It uses the idea of using a “wrong” white balance for a scene, to give a different temperature impression, usually to give the “right” impression.

When I was at the wall the place was very cool, breeze blowing in off the ocean, and the rain clouds scattered across the sky, with some blue showing. The sun was beginning to set and was casting a few (not many) warm colours on the eastern clouds. To give the cooler impression the white balance was adjusted to give a cooler or “bluer” image. In the old days this was called “camera tricks”, but it gives the “feel” of the scenery and sometimes that is what is important 🙂

2011 Deck – Week 1

On January 7, 2011January 7, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography11 Comments

My first photo for this year’s Deck Project. I received so much support, feedback and appreciation on the last project that I decided to do it again this year. I called it The Deck because I was doing one photograph per week of the year (whether it is the best for the week or not), as a year has 52 weeks, and a deck of standard playing cards has 52 cards, not counting the Jokers, I thought the name The 2010 Deck sounded better than “A Photo per week for 2010” 🙂

I also think I learned a little more and got more familiar with my camera a lenses during the year.

Up to now I’ve only taken 42 photographs this week (and I doubt that I’ll take any more today) and those photos cover only 10 subjects, two of which were not meant for the project in the first place, those being some family photos and a house interior sequence. That left me with only a few choices this week, and you would think that would make it easier to choose, but it made it harder, I was down to four choices, and while I can usually pick one out rather quickly, this week was harder, either the images were all good, or all mediocre 🙂

I ended up choosing this one below for it’s content, I liked how all the pieces fit! It’s hard to see on the small image here on the blog so click on it to see the image on the site larger. The afternoon rainy clouds, whiter clouds, an aircraft, a sail-boat, the rock line, a man and his dog, all in one image. I hope you like it.