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.
When taken from a low perspective with an utra-wide-angle lens, scenes take on a different look 🙂
The bright whites at the top of the wood are harsh reflections from the one o’clock sun.
Canon EOS 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 1/125s, 10mm, f/8, ISO 100
Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery, along with many others in my Black and White Collection.
Getting the subtle colours out of a sky opposite the now setting sun isn’t easy…. but I think I caught this one at the right time…
In the distance is a Koker and boat offsetting the foreground rock, the rock shows some of the warm light of the setting sun coming through the clouds to the back of me.
I often think to myself that if I keep revisiting the same spots then I’ll not find new photos to add to my collection, but although I do come away with many similar photos that often never see the light of day, I do get one or two that are different and worth sharing 🙂
Canon 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 10mm, 1/60s, f/5.6 | Lusignan, E.C.D, Guyana
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery with the other images from this year’s Deck Project.
This week, I’m adding a new image not only to the Deck Project but to my slowly growing (as yet untitled) Seascape project.
It may be more a combination of landscape and seascape, you can see the road and the seawall, but I still consider it part of the Seascape set 🙂
Canon EOS 60D | Sigma 10-20mm | 10mm, ISO100 | Red filter in Post-process
Click on the image above to see it in the Gallery.
The Driftwood.
Have you seen the driftwood that climbs the rocks,
and basks in the midday sun?
The one that crossed two oceans and a sea,
Yes, that’s the one.
It was cast adrift by a little boy
who threw it from the shore
To see if it would then return
back to him once more
He watched it bob among the waves
until it was lost from sight,
Then away he ran to play among
the children of the night
Upon many beaches it took a rest,
then washed to sea again
until it touched upon our shore
and bathed in sun and rain
I doubt that you will find it now
for I passed a hobo this morning
And I thought I smelled some fish broth
and the scent of driftwood burning.
The clouds, they roll toward distant shores,
O’er seas and lakes, past engines and oars,
horizons mean nought, but a curve of land
that changes but slight, by nature or man
The sun shines on, through fog or haze,
O’er stormy skies, or clear summer days
It beats upon the land beneath
or upon the clouds, spread like a sheet
The sands, they move with the ocean’s might,
on ebb tide or flood tide, all day and night
valleys are made, with wondrous ease
and disappear as quickly as a deity’s sneeze.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with others in my Black and White album
Photograph and Poem copyright to Michael C. Lam, all rights reserved.
Turn back the clock 5 years and 4 months… I was doing one of those things that the manual says not to… shooting towards the sun… but in this case I didn’t point directly at the sun. Since I was pointing towards the late afternoon sun, all the colours in the image became washed out leaving an almost sepia-toned image, so I carried it that extra step further in post-processing and made it a Sepia-toned image.
What had caught my eye was the light glaring off of the water that remained after the tide had receded, it made for a nice high-contrast image.
March 2nd, 2008 | Canon PowerShot S5 IS
Shot on the lonest end of the camera’s 12x Optical zoom.
Click on the image to see it larger in the Sepia Gallery, along with many of my other Sepia-toned photos
I was taking some photos out by the seawall at Lusignan, and although I think I came away with some nice ones, there was one that I really wished I had taken a different approach to. I saw a dramatic sky behind a stand of Jhandi flags, and I took a few photos, then moved on, then the thought struck me that I should have tried multiple exposures for an HDR. By that time it was a little late since the clouds had changed significantly.
When I downloaded my images I was still struck by that scene so I decided to try an Pseudo HDR Technique on it, and this was the result.
Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery
A few Fridays back, I joined a few other photographers on a walk down to the large jetty (pier/groin) that marks the end of the Kingston seashore and the beginning of the Demerara River mouth.
As with all walks with photographers you go hoping to come back with a good image, or even a great one, yet when I downloaded my haul I was very disappointed, maybe I was hoping for too much.
Does this mean that the walk was not a success? No. It was what it was… a walk on the beach. To be with friends, people with a similar pursuit, and enjoy the conversation, the breeze… that was enough.
All the photos were not horrible, but not jumped out at me, yet I decided to process at least one to make a show of reaping something from the toil of the harvest.
As I look at the image I processed, I wonder if this scene will get worse or better with the development of the new Hotel on the seashore.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other Seawall related photos
Lunar Perigee and the 2012 Supermoon
In 2011 and 2012 there was much reference to the term Supermoon, which is an astrological term, as opposed to the Astronomical term Perigee. What was so Super about it? Well, I was out there and it looked like a regular full moon, but we’d all love to believe that we could see it larger and brighter than at other times 🙂
Perigee is the time at which the moon is closest in its orbit to the earth (doesn’t matter what phase it’s in), while the Supermoon refers to a New or Full moon that occurs when the moon is within 90% of its closest approach to the earth in its orbit. So I suppose that the perfect Supermoon would be a Full moon at Perigee 🙂 (incidentally, the time when the moon is furthest away from the earth in its orbit is called Apogee)
The Perigee varies from around 357,000km to 369,000km (in roundish figures), and while a difference of 12,000km sounds like a lot, the difference to the naked eye is negligible.
On May 5th, the moon was at its fullest at 1 minute to its perigee, so that’s about as perfect a Supermoon as we can get I suppose.
Anyway… on May 5th this year, I was up the coast near Lusignan when this year’s “Supermoon” was supposed to occur, two things happened (well, more than two, but two that are relevant to this post); I had lent out my telephoto lens, so getting a close-up was out of the question, and the clouds were conspiring against me, So I ended up with a wide shot full of clouds 🙂
After playing hide-and-seek with the moon for several minutes I gave up and headed out, one that I took would work, so this is one that worked 🙂
Click on the image to see it better in the Gallery.
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