The Deck – Week 36

On September 10, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography5 Comments

It wasn’t a very good week for me as photography goes, but of the few good ones I did put aside, I had a hard choice as to which one I would be using for this week’s Deck photo. What I ended up doing was displaying them all on the screen and see which one jumped out at me, whether it was just different because of colour, composition, content, or if it was just very different to what I’ve taken recently, this shot stood out from the rest.

It is simple, but I like it 🙂 In Guyana, this is called “Bora”, taken at one of the stalls on Merriman’s Mall by Bourda Market.

The Deck – Week 35

On September 3, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography9 Comments

I took very few photographs this week, I am not sure why that is, I just took very few. So out of twenty-five photographs total over seven days, I had to choose one for The 2010 Deck. As it turned out, I found some I really liked, and the choice would have been hard had it not been for this particular image in the set.

All the elements just fell into place for this one, and I was very happy with the final shot.

In observance of the holy month of Ramadan I give you this week’s Deck photograph:

The Deck – Week 34

On August 27, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography13 Comments

I have always been fascinated by the “Kissing Bridges” in the Botanical Gardens, ever since I was a child and saw paintings of it on someone’s wall or prints in the old GTC telephone directories. These bridges have been photographed and painted for decades and I find it hard to do a current photograph of it, I have tried a few times and never been satisfied with what I came away with.

It may also have to do with the time of day that I’ve tried 🙂 recently it has always been midday, I really should try an early morning or afternoon and see what comes of it.

I was back in there again this week with Nikhil, trying to get his photo for his 365 Project, and there I was faced with the bridge again. This time, I came away with something that I was happy with, it may not be the iconic images that live on in my memory and on canvas, but I think it speaks for itself.

My photo for the 2010 Deck for the thirty-fourth week of the year: The Kissing Bridge

Kissing Bridge - 5732 — Kissing Bridge, Botanical Gardens, Georgetown, Guyana.

The Deck – Week 33

On August 20, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography8 Comments

At the risk of looking like a total idiot, I went onto the road at midday yesterday for this week’s Deck photograph, walked under a few of the trees lining Avenue of the Republic, stood as close to centre under each as I could get and pointed the camera upwards. Needless to say, I drew a few stares, lots of people wondering if the chinaman had finally lost all his marbles, or if there was a cat up the tree (we don’t see many cats up trees in Guyana, must be a northern thing)

This was one of the few “planned” shots, I usually wing it, go out and see what there is to see, but this was something I genuinely wanted to try out, so I took several photographs under the trees, trying to get the composition that was in my mind’s eye. This is why I do not plan these things, you never get what the mind’s eye conjures up. After several tries I got what I thought was the one I was looking for. I still went out later with Nikhil, to take a walk and see what else I might get for the day, unfortunately the light was not co-operating with us at all yesterday, if you are one of those people unfortunate enough to get my personal email updates you’ll see some of the other image I retrieved from the day 🙂

Now, without boring you with too much chatter about the other images I took, here’s this week’s photo for the 2010 Deck:

The Deck Weeks 31 and 32

On August 12, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography1 Comment

I have to play catch-up this week, since I missed out on uploading my Deck photo for last week, so this week is a double upload and blog. I had already decided what photograph I would have most likely used for the Deck, but I did not get a chance until this week to process the remaining images from my vacation.

The Deck photo for Week 31 is a parting shot from St Martin, over on the French side, on the beach front near Marigot, we were waiting for the boat to arrive for our final adventure, a chance to see the corals and fishes under the sea through the transparent underside of a “glass-bottomed” boat. My underwater shots came out terrible, but I loved this scene from the shore:

In the last week, I took photographs on three occasions, one was at a funeral, the other two were on afternoon walks with Nikhil, but for some reason I was not getting the “feel” for the scenes or subjects. My final photograph of today turned out to be one that I was pleasantly surprised with, I took another shot at the New Thriving Chinese Restaurant. The image is a pseudo-HDR, since I also wanted to try out a new software that Nikhil had recently introduced me to, it is still in the Beta (testing) stage, but I am rather impressed by it. It introduces a new type of HDR called HDR ReLight as well as doing the regular tone mapping type HDR, but it also processes RAW files, which I shoot primarily. This was the portion that I wanted to try, and I was rather pleased with the result, the software is Oloneo PhotoEngine, give it a try if you like HDRs or you shoot in RAW.

Here’s the photo for the Deck Week 32, I hope you like it.

The Deck – Week 22

On June 4, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography2 Comments

On Wednesday last (June 2nd), my friend launched his Blog “Bad Light, Good Light” (http://badlightgoodlight.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/origin-of-a-name/) with a post regarding the origin of the name of his blog. It just happens that the image he used to illustrate the point he was making in the post was one from a walk we went on the day before, and on that walk I took what would become my photo for the 2010 Deck for this week, and it is of the same location as his, although I’ll admit his image had a lot more artistic merit. 🙂

I’ve always been told “don’t shoot towards the sun”, and, by and large, this is usually good advice, but there are times when doing just that results in some nicely silhouetted images that have their own appeal. What I particularly liked about this scene was the portion of land to the right with the vegetation and the two boats anchored to the left, these made excellent silhouetted areas that contrasted nicely with the mostly clear sky, the low clouds were nicely “haloed” by the afternoon sun and that pretty much competed the scene for me.

I have always been an admirer of paintings by a local artist named V. C. Budhram, his renditions of water ans skies were always impressive, for that reason alone the ripples in the water reminds my of his work. His compositions, of course, were never like this, always more vibrant, full of life, and far more colourful.

This weeks entry for the Deck: Serene.