Tag: sand

Colour or Monochrome

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts2 Comments

When film (or plate) was the way to capture photographs, there were many many debates, just like there are now.  They didn’t debate sensor sizes, they debated film sizes (and that had so many I won’t even start on that), and just like many enthusiasts and professionals now debate colour vs monochrome, so it also went back then.

While there were specific films developed for both types back then, in the digital age we are pretty much guaranteed that the camera you buy, whether the one in your mobile phone, compact camera, mirrorless or DSLR camera, it will in all likelihood take the photos in colour, which you can then convert to monochrome (black and white, sepia, etc) in post-process, whether in-camera or in software on the PC.  This changed when Leica developed their Leica M Monochrom, it was the first major brand to produce a high-end digital camera that produced only black and white photographs, and rumor has it Sony is working on a black and white version of their RX 1.  I don’t want to get into a debate myself over the need or desire to have a camera that only shoots monochrome, I can only say that it is unlikely I would ever buy one myself, but that is probably only my wallet talking.

In the genre of Street Photography, there is usually a preference for black and white images, but there are many many great coloured Street Photographs out there, more than you’d think.  Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work in street photography was very definitive for the genre, and all his work was in black and white, he also experimented with coloured film but was never satisfied with the results; of course, he only had access to the types of film available then (the 1950s) and if you look back at coloured prints from those days you’d see the limitations of the coloured film of the time.  I dare say that if he had lived in a later era, he may have at least given the coloured films a chance.

When I first started taking photographs on a slightly more serious basis than just snapshots, I didn’t do much black and white processing, and even when I did, it was more for the novelty than because I knew why it should be done and to which photographs.  Now I do a lot more processing in black and white…

What have I learnt that changed my views?

I’ve learnt that not all photos look good in monochrome, the tonal range and subject matter is very important for an image to look good in monochrome.  Monochrome images tend to showcase textures, shapes and form better, and by removing colour from the image you are left with just the elements that make up the composition, and if those elements are not functioning correctly in the overall composition, it will feel off, or look cluttered.

When used correctly, colour will catch the eye and hold it, this works for some compositions, but for others, that same thing tends to shift the focus of the viewer from the overall composition and have them concentrate almost solely on one portion of the image.

I’m no expert, but this is how I see it; recently I took a few photographs of some Jhandi flags on the Kingston seashore, and I chose two that I liked, and I processed them quite differently, and primarily for the reasons stated above.

This one I chose colour, because the main subject and the focus of the image is the Jhandi flags themselves, the various colours chosen as they contrast with each other, the browns of the sand and the blues of the sky.

The second image I processed in black and white to articulate the relationship between the clouds in the sky with the sands on the ground, the change from dark to light in both the sky and the land as they meet at the horizon, the sharpness of the shadow from the midday sun, and the contrast between the flags on the pole so close to the viewer against what seems to be a smaller post in the distance to the left of the frame.

These are my decisions, they may quite well not be anyone else’s choice.

In the end, these are choices I make in how I express myself artistically now, it is not how I did it a few years ago, it may not be how I do it five years from now.

Click on the images to see them in their respective galleries.

Bask

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, PoetryLeave a comment

In going over older photographs, I usually have an easy time of picking out the ones I want to keep and those that I either will never use or would come back to later (eventually).

This one sort of nagged me.  I don’t think it’s a particularly great shot, but I kept going back to it, I decided yesterday to process it and see what developed, and although I still think it’s just a photo of a rock on the seashore, I’m partial to it.

Click on the photo to see it in the gallery along with others in the Black and White Collection.

Bask

Battered by the pounding waves
at times of high water,
stood upon as a refuge
from the swirling foam…
pinched by crabs as an anchor
from the pull of the receding waters,
Covered by shifting sands,
and uncovered by the waves,
ebb tide is past and
the waters are gone
basking in the warmth
of the sun, this fine dawn.

Noon

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Most photographers will tell you that the worst time to go shooting outdoors is noon, with the midday sun directly overhead casting deep shadows on people’s faces, or flooding subjects with overhead light giving it very little dimension, this applies to landscapes as well… As Lady Luck would have it, that’s when I get to go outside… at midday, whether it’s to accompany Nikhil on his walk or leaving work on a Saturday… it’s the noon sun I usually have to shoot under.

This one is not the type of thing I normally do, but something about it caught my eye and I shot it… left it to percolate for almost a year, then went back to it with fresh eyes.

Not something that many may like, but here it is anyway 🙂

Click on the image to see in the in Gallery with others from the Black and White Collection

2014 Deck – Week 11

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

This week’s photo is about Implied Motion.  OK, I lied, it’s a photo of a Jhandi flag at the Kingston seashore, but as it turns out it is one of those images that displays implied motion (at least for me)

Whenever we try to convey the idea of motion in a still photograph we usually do one of two things, we either have the main subject show motion blur with the background or rest of the scene in focus (such as light trails at night on the street, or a speeding cyclist, slightly blurred with the track sharply in focus)  or we do the reverse, with the main subject in focus but the background blurred (such as in panning shots, or a pedestrian in front of a speeding minibus – by “in front of” I mean with respect to the camera, not the business end of the minibus – although that would make a dramatic photo of a different sort).  🙂

Another method might be to blur everything, such as taking a photo from inside a moving vehicle, creating that “vortex” look (on a side note, using the zoom on the camera while standing still produces neat effects too)

Chrono Photography is also a neat trick used to convey motion, by capturing multiple instances of a moving subject and then layering them in your favourite photo software creates a good sense of the subjects path through the frame.

After babbling about all these ways to create a sense of motion in a still photo, I will just say that I used none of the above for this photo.

This photo is either serendipitous or pure photographer’s luck (hmm, maybe one has something to do with the other).  I had stepped out of my office intending to walk around a few blocks, upon looking up at the sky I notices the clouds in a lovely “blown” pattern, I decided to walk to the seawall instead.  I have taken many photos of the roundhouse before (and will probably take many more), I have also  taken many photos of Jhandi flags before (and will likely take many many more), but that day I saw the clouds in a dispersed pattern, a Jhandi flag blowing in the wind with the roundhouse as a backdrop, and I decided to compose and shoot it, I took a few exposures, then saw five birds flying from the roundhouse towards me… Serendipity!

I was also shooting with the Sigma 10-20 Ultra-wide lens on the camera, so I also got a bit of lens distortion at the edges that helped with the appearance of motion in the clouds toward the edges even more.

That’s a lot of preamble for one photo, but I hope I bored you enough that the photo is now more pleasing 🙂

Canon EOS 60D  |  Sigma 10-20mm

1/250s, f/11, ISO 100  |  6°49’34” N 58°9’45” W

Click on the image to see it in the gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project

2014 Deck – Week 03

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Even though I don’t get out too often to take the landscape photos I yearn for, I do enjoy picking my daughter up from her Saturday “Revision Classes” on a Saturday and heading out to the seawall, she goes hunting for rocks and shells, and I hunt for photos.

This tyre with it’s bright paint caught my eye, and I was going for a simple photo then my daughter began running on the far side… resulting in an even better photo 🙂

I’ve been working in LightZone again for this one, and I really believe that it has a lot of potential, I really miss the gradient tool that I’ve become accustomed to in Lightroom, but it’s just like switching cameras, you just need to use the tools at hand to achieve a finished product that you can be satisfied with.

I used two localised masks in this one just to see how that would work, and it did a good job, I wanted some more clarity on the tyre itself without affecting the entire image, and I wanted to make local adjustments to the sky (I didn’t have a polarizer on the lens)

I hope you like it.

Clink on the image to see it in the Gallery.

Singed

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts2 Comments

Have you ever latched onto a word with unusual fascination?  When I first read or heard certain words, there was an undue fascination that I got for them, one of those was “singed”…  No, it has nothing to do with singing, so no funny quips about that 🙂  Another one was “chaos”, that one was simply because I’d read it in a book and had formed this pronounciation in my head that turned out to be completely wrong.

So… back to “singed”

It was the first week of 2014, and I was walking the seawall looking for a few photographs when I came across the piece of singed wood… it was laying across another piece of wood forming a cruciform shape, the harsh midday sun cast a strong shadow and I decided that it might make a decent photograph 🙂

I also took the opportunity to try out LightZone to process it from start to end… I finally found how to straighten the horizon in it… using the crop tool just like in LightRoom (silly me couldn’t find it the first time I was processing an image in it).  I must say, that while there are some things I miss from this piece of software, it is a very powerful application, and the integration of the changes into the saved file (JPG or TIF) makes it easy to go back and adjust the processing.

LightZone also professes to be able to work as a plugin to LightRoom, so if you just want some of the neat features in LZ, you can try it as a plugin.  For an OpenSource (read that as FREE) software, it is powerful and user-friendly, this is not a stripped down software, but a full fledged product for RAW image processing.

Now… to the image.  It probably won’t rank as a great photograph, but I liked it and it gave me a good opportunity to try out LightZone

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm  |  1/160s, f/9, 10mm, ISO 100

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images in the Black and White collection

Bob

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography4 Comments

I was walking along the seawall last year when I spotted these three birds on the rocks near the waterline, I was fortunate enough to get off one photo of them together before they separated further (in no small part to my approach)

Whenever I see three birds together I always think of Brother Bob, Bob Marley, simply because of those words in the song… “Three little birds, Pitch by my doorstep”

The song was actually called “Three Little Birds”, but most everyone I know refers to it as “Don’t Worry” or “Every Little thing’s Gonna be alright”

So these aren’t exactly little birds, and they certainly weren’t singing sweet songs, but they still reminded me of the song.

Hope you like it:

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 17-55mm  |  1/500s, f/8, 50mm, ISO 100

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other Bird photos

2014 Deck – Week 01

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography4 Comments

Welcome back to my Deck Project, a photography project of one photo for every week of the year, giving me 52 photos for the year. (and there are 52 cards in a Deck of normal standard cards, not counting Jokers, hence the name Deck Project)

I start the year at a very familiar place, the seawalls, living on the coastland of Guyana gives us easy access to the sea and the extensive shoreline.

Recently there was a discussion about how Guyanese (among many others) prefer to use pirated software instead of paying.  This has primarily to do with a difference in income levels and the cost of many software can easily exceed the salaries of the average or even above-average Guyanese.  The cost of such popular photo-processing software as Adobe Lightroom and Corel AfterShot Pro has declined in recent years making it more affordable, but the habit of acquiring pirated copies persists.  After this discussion I remembered Nikhil posting about an Open Source photo-processing software called LightZone, and I decided to give it a good try (even though I do own and use Adobe Lightroom)

This photo for the first week of the 2014 Deck Project was processed primarily in LightZone (but since I use Lightroom to interface with my website, I used Lightroom to tag/keyword and upload the image)  LightZone is surprisingly versatile and powerful, I think I’ll be using it  a bit more to experiment with some features as well as to encourage those who can’t afford Lightroom or AfterShot to try something that’s Free but also pretty powerful.

Canon 60D, Sigma 10-20mm  |  1/125s, f/8, ISO100, 10mm

Seawalls near Thomaslands, Georgetown

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

Black Flag

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography3 Comments

When I saw this flag, I knew I wanted a good photo of it, but never really processed it until now.  This was taken on a photowalk that the Guyana Photographer’s Facebook group did in January of 2013.

I think I agree with Nikhil that my definitive photograph involving Jhandi flags was this one from last year’s Deck Project, but if you’re going to photograph along the coastlands of Guyana, you most likely will end up with Jhandi flags in some images.

I don’t see the Black ones as often as I see the Red, Yellow and White ones.

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm  |  1/200s, f/10, 10mm, ISO100

Click on the image to see it in the Collection, along with others from the “Out and About” album

2013 Deck – Week 52

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography, Poetry5 Comments

Skies above and oceans below,
Soar above the tethered boats
Down winding creeks and rivers brown,
Past piers, docks and abandoned forts.

Wind beneath my outstretched wings
Sun upon my feathered spans
Gliding, soaring, questing far
Over seas and distant lands.

See upon a curved horizon
Tree-lined coasts, and wave-swept beach
Flying high above ocean’s blue
Soaring forward, to sometime reach

A land with trees laden with fruit
Ponds and lakes with fish aplenty,
Seeking always rich lands afar
Always knowing, there will be many.

Returning home, back to my shore,
To mangrove clumps and fishing boats,
To fly along the creeks that wind
And from its waters, slake my throat.

Click on the image above to see it in the Gallery along with the entire collection for this Year’s Deck Project!