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.
Lucky number 13? I don’t know, but the thirteenth week of this year was filled with activity… it was Holy Week in the Christian Calendar, and in the Hindu calendar it also held the festival of Phagwah (or Holi).
I got many photos, mostly from the Church activities for my own satisfaction, but I’ll definitely share some.
On Phagwah day I usually don’t get many photos of people playing / celebrating Phagwah, as I tend to keep my camera safely away from the waters and powders that abound. Nearing the end of the day, I was sitting with my family on the seawall, and along came these young ladies fresh from playing, and I couldn’t resist snapping a shot, one even posed 🙂
Click on the image above to see it better in the Gallery!
I’m not a Street Photographer, but on a recent PhotoWalk with other members of the Guyana Photographers’ Facebook Group down Regent Street, that type of photography was the primary aim of the walk.
I got a few images that I like, but this one, while not tack sharp was my favourite, there was a loud exchange of words between a few women across the street, then I noticed one of them running down the pavement, quickly snapped a shot 🙂
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with the rest of the Deck Photos for this year 🙂
I had started processing this photo about two weeks ago, then left it off. I had cropped, rotated, and dropped the saturation a bit, but wasn’t satisfied. I pulled it up this morning, tweaked the highlights a bit and decided that it was done… that simple! Sometimes, all it needs is a little time 🙂
I noticed these at the side of the trench when I parked my vehicle, they were lower than the road, and the side of the trench was slippery, so I couldn’t get a foothold to get down to the level I wanted, so I adjust my settings on the camera and held it down to try to get the composition I wanted… never got the perfect one, and quite few were unusable, but this one I liked (after rotating to correct my badly angled dangling camera 🙂
Click on the Image to see it in the Flora Gallery in the Collection
Most of my photographs from the recent Mashramani parade for Georgetown were of one particular style, but somewhere in the middle of all the fast flying shots that I took I managed to capture one that was quite different from the wide shots of the floats or the half-body close-ups of the revellers
I don’t know if it’s the photography book I have been going through, but for some reason this image stands out from the plethora of photographs that I took on Mash Day.
The book is “Through the Lens – National Geographic Greatest Photographs”, and it contains some truly amazing photographs. I am certainly not claiming that any of mine can class with anything from National Geographic, far from it, but the “feeling” that I got from this one was different from the rest, and I think that it is a better photo for that.
You have to see it large, please click on the image to see it in the Gallery.
For me, this shows a woman lost in the moment; it’s just her, the music, the rhythm, the motion… alone in a crowd, part of the band bu apart from the band all at once. This is “the moment” for Mashramani 2013. I hope you like it.
I know that most people’s Mashramani photos are already out there, and I have to say that this year saw a large increase in not only the amount of photos out there but also an increase in the quality of the photography of the event.
In trying to “cover” the event I take a lot of photos, which means I then have to process those photos. This year I used two cameras, I had a wide-telephoto Sigma 17-50mm on the Canon Rebel T1i body and the slightly longer telephoto Canon 18-135mm kit lens on the Canon 60D body (my favourite lens for the event, the Tamron 18-270mm, has an issue I cannot resolve as yet, it’s slow to focus, which is not good for moving subjects). My favourites from these events have always been close shots rather than wide, but I decided to try to get a variety anyway.
As I expected, my favourites are still the close-up shots 🙂
Click on the Image above for the full Gallery
For a hand-picked selection, click on this Link, I selected my favourites, not necessarily the best ones, just the ones I like 🙂
When shooting an Event, it’s usually important to try to get photos that cover the gamut, spans the diversity, from the beginning to the end, so that viewers can get a sense of the whole, but amidst all of that I am usually on the lookout for that one shot that stands out, that transcends the transformation from reflected light, to digital data on a sensor to pixels on the screen and finally to ink on a page.
Does this image from the recent Children’s Mashramani Parade do that for you? I know it does it for me.
Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, along with the other images for the Deck Project so far for the year.
Since I started carrying my daughter out to see the Children’s Mashramani Parade, I try to go every year. It is shorter, it’s more entertaining and generally more fun than the Adult’s Parade, partially because you’re not bombarded by boomboxes every 10 feet, or trampled by revelers and spectators alike, as compared to the main parade on Republic Day.
I was disappointed by this years crop of photos that I got, but that’s because I compare it to my previous years’ takings, as well as having a bit of focusing issues with the camera, but I can’t blame the camera alone, I definitely missed the mark somewhere this year.
I still think I came away with some nice ones in the mix, click on the image below to see them in the Gallery, and I look forward to any and all comments 🙂
Maybe I’ll get something better from the Adults Parade 🙂
To all Guyanese, at home and abroad, have a Happy Mashramani this weekend!
On some photo-walks you just never know what you’ll come away with. We were walking around the area near Parliament Buildings and Big Market (Stabroek Market), when we noticed this building.
It was aging, had a nice muted colour (due to faded paint by the harsh sun), and the paint was peeling. If only I had caught someone leaning on the building! But I still think it’s a nice shot, even without the person leaning on it 🙂
If you are serious about making the art of photography a pillar in your life, if you want the work that you do to be seen and recognised as being worthy of use or even just of praise then you have to get your work out there.
I came to this realisation late, but it is true, whether you use Facebook to just upload some images to albums and share with your family and friends, or the Flickr community to have a wider reach, or you are feeling more demanding for larger space and go for your own website, just get your images out there, it is doing you no good sitting on your hard drive (or worse yet, on your memory card in the camera)
I started with Webshots, which, before it was bought over, had a good community and lovely photo Challenges to inspire you… then that went south… and recently it went out, I think it’s called Smile now. I had also begun uploading to Flickr since I already had a Yahoo account, I figured what was the harm, I might as well use the service, but when I wanted somewhere online to store high-resolution images (as well as make them available for friends to see) Nikhil suggested Zenfolio. That was a great decision!
What is great about having people see your photos? For one thing, you open yourself up to not only praise, but also criticism, which helps you grow, it makes you see the work as other’s see it, through their eyes and not just your own. For another thing, it gives a wider group of people a chance to see what you are doing, not just your friends and family, but other photographers, other artists and even the business community.
I like to think that my more “artistic” types of photos are the ones that are important to me and the ones I hope others like and appreciate, but the others that I take seem to demand equal or greater attention, the ones from events, such as Mashramani, Diwali Motorcade, Easter and others. Were I to confine myself to just making available for viewing those that I want to “promote”, then these others would never be seen not appreciated for what they are.
This year my images made it into three calendars in local firms; Maggie’s Snackette and Catering Service, and NT Computeac both used images which were more to the artistic side, but the company that surprised me was Banks DIH Limited, and this is the one I am drawing reference to. While both Maggie’s and NT Computeac chose what I thought were aesthetically pleasing images, Banks DIH chose images that were more representative of the events that they wished to highlight, even though those I would not put as my best images, it appealed to them and probably to those viewing it too, those images are worth something to someone, and had I not uploaded them for others to see, then they would never have made it into the Calendar.
They did a twelve page Calendar, and of those monthly pages, Dwayne Hackett and I got half, with images that represent our culture and our life as Guyanese.
Although I like to think of myself as a photographer who likes to take Landscape photos, there is not a lot of scope for that living in the city, but I’ve always had an interest in capturing images of buildings, especially old ones that may not survive due to neglect or just continued development (or any number of other reasons)
During the third week of the year, I had an inexplicable desire to take some photos of St Rose’s High School, just before attending a presentation by Hew Locke (an artist with some amazing work), Nikhil and I took a walk around the block, and I got my chance to take a few images.
To emphasize the building more, I used an “orange filter” setting whilst processing, this darkened the sky and made the building more pronounced. Although I did not intend to combine “street photography” into it these two boys strolled past just as we were there.
As always, click on the image to see it in the Gallery
The Michael Lam Collection's Blog 