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.
I had just decided to upload this, and then I gave it a title… Giving it a title brought forth a torrent of emotion. Yesterday I said farewell to my sister-in-law and niece, Areza and Ariel, and in a few months I will be saying the same to my brother André. They have lived at Ogle for all of Ariel’s life and as soon as I titled that image “Sunset at Ogle” I realized that their family is having their sunset at ogle all too soon.
Ariel is my first niece, Areza is my first sister-in-law, André is my first brother, it is strange how those things happen. My parental family may not be the perfect family, but we grew up together, had and have our differences, but at day’s end we are family. I count myself fortunate, in that my brothers and sisters are not just my siblings, they have grown to be my friends, André and Nicholas are the closest of these, but that’s because we grew up like the Three Musketeers, inseparable, always fighting, always in mischief.
If you click on the image and see it at the site slightly larger, you’ll see three figures walking towards the sunset, two adults and a child. Serendipity. This photograph is not of them, but I dedicate it to them, as the sun sets on Ogle.
I never thought that so many people would like my monochrome photographs, but it turns out that many family members and friends like them. Over the last few years of taking photographs, I have come to realize that some photographs just render better in one monochromatic form or another than in colour. Most of the time when I post a monochrome photograph it was intended that way from when I pressed the shutter button, but sometimes the coloured version just does not do the scene justice and rendering it in black and white or another form of monochrome like sepia, usually brings out more tonal differentiation and character from the image.
When I used the Canon PowerShot S5, there was a dedicated mode for these types of photographs, and I used it rather than converting after, mainly because, as I have mentioned, I take certain scenes with the full intention of them being black and white or sepia. When I moved on to an SLR, the Canon Digital Rebel T1i does not have that feature, which is probably a good thing 🙂 Using RAW mode shooting I have found that I get a lot more processing ability, some people call this editing, but I look at it as getting more out of the photograph, the information is there, I’m not adding or removing, just revealing.
Of the four monochromes below, only two were intended as monochromes, the other two just rendered better that way 🙂 Click on them to see them at the site.
Although not a true sepia, I put this one in that category because, well, I had nowhere else to put it I suppose. I used one of those Lightroom presets and did some exposure and fill light adjustments.
Alexander Street, Bourda
This building I will have to revisit another day, there were just way too many vehicles around for a nice wider shot, but the building intrigued me enough that I think this worth posting up.
Camp and Charlotte Streets, Georgetown, Guyana.
Some things attract your attention and trying to convey that in a photograph can be… difficult, at least for me. This bird was “riding the waves”, standing on that branch and just bobbing and weaving with the rise and fall of the incoming waves.
Riding the Waves
And finally, this scene I had done in a previous post on Georgetown, Guyana. It is a familiar scene to anyone who has driven along the Clive Lloyd Drive, its been there since I was a little boy, a quaint little cottage amidst some palm trees, while the previous photograph was in colour, this one was taken with the monochrome idea and the result was quite nice.
Have I been taking numerous photos of buildings recently? Yes I have, and it’s all Nikhil’s fault! As usually happens, when we take a walk, it’s usually centred around a small area in Georgetown, and what else is there to photograph in Georgetown except buildings? Maybe some trash on the road-corner, but that’s not my style of photography (well, not yet anyway).
Georgetown has a very wide array of “architectural styles”, so you can often go around one city block and come back with a nice diverse set of photographs, while I may photograph the entire structure most times, it is usually a combination of the smaller features that really draw my attention.
Combinations of both wooden and concrete portions are somewhat common to see these days, usually because of “additions” to the original structure, but sometimes it is a deliberate architectural decision.
Even buildings constructed with one type of base material have very appealing little characteristics sometimes. Something I don’t see too often these days is the use of shingles, especially on the walls of a building, quite interesting to see that, especially when you’ve grown up in either wooden houses (with tongue and groove wood walls) or in concrete boxes with louvre windows like I did.
This blog-post is going to be particularly shot on words, but heavy on the photographs. I have six photographs of buildings that I wanted to include in this post, all taken in Georgetown, some from the wards of Bourda and Queenstown and one from the Kitty area, on Clive Lloyd Drive.
I am not sure how many residents of Georgetown (much less Guyanese) know where Clive Lloyd Drive is. It’s that little stretch of road from Vlissengen Road to Sheriff Street running along the Seawall, I think that it becomes the Rupert Craig Highway at Sheriff Street.
Now that I have filled up the space between these two photographs with words, I can now go on to show you the other photographs 🙂 Two are of the “Open Bible Church”, whose “building” is for sale, so it’s not likely to be there for much longer. One of my goals is to try to photograph some of the more interesting buildings around town before they disappear, and are forgotten. I have an open list, so feel free to send suggestions, and no, the concrete box with the louvre windows is not that photogenic, seriously!
Open Bible Church, Oronoque and Lamaha StreetsQueenstown, GeorgetownOpen Bible Church, Frontal viewThe Cottage - Clive Lloyd Drive
This past week I actually took 157 images, I only took these on three days during the time span. I know this stuff only because I had to pick a favourite of the week for a challenge on DP Review, so of those images, one jumped out for me, it may not have been the best image or the most spectacular, certainly not the most colourful, but it had some meaning, and it tells a story.
Now this is the thing about photography, I am just there to record the image, the image usually tells its own story, and like many other types of art, the story can be different for each viewer. A scene will evoke different memories, different reactions, different emotions in people; none are right nor wrong, simply different.
This is my photo for the Deck, the twenty-fifth week of the year 2010, you may like it, you may not, but you will have some reaction to it, let’s just hope it’s a good reaction.
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