Tag: trench

Goodbye Unity

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography8 Comments

Robb Street begins in Robbstown, down on the “waterfront” by the John Fernandes’ wharf area, both the ward and the street got their names from the man who designed the area in terms of the building lots and landscape, it ends at the famous Bourda Cricket Ground (Georgetown Cricket Club), on what is now Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, renamed to honour the achievements of one of Guyana’s great cricketers of the 1990s into the first decade and a half of the new millennia.  The original name of Shiv Chanderpaul Drive was New Garden Street, because Robb Street was to originally end at the new Botanical Gardens, but that was pushed back a further block (an area that is home to the Georgetown Cricket Club, Georgetown Football Club, Ministry of Agriculture, and Office of the President.)

At the end of Robb Street, on the northern corner, is the Our Lady of Fatima Roman Catholic Church (if you’re a Portuguese language speaker, you may want to check out their Portuguese language mass that caters to our growing latin/spanish/Brazillian population), in the southern corner is (or, in a few days/weeks, was) Unity House, a three story wooden house.

I don’t know enough of it’s history, but it once housed the chapel in which Holy Mass was celebrated while the church across the road was being built (on the middle floor), and for many years it was the headquarters of the United Force, a political party which has held parliamentary seats in Guyana up until two elections ago.   Prior to the last elections, also, there was some in-fighting among the executives, primarily as to who would lead the party, but that’s just politics.  As I write this the building is being torn down, let’s hope the party can last a bit longer 🙂

I was processing a photo that I had taken near the gate, but that would not enlighten anyone as to the structure of the building, so I went on to process a wider photo for elucidation 🙂

 

Closed – 15-9996  |  2015  |  Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm

Unity House – 15-9986  |  2015  |  Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm

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

Georgetown, Guyana

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography6 Comments

It’s been 50 years since some forward thinking people declared Independence for this little nation we now call Guyana.  They were looking forward to their futures, some idealistic land of self-rule and happiness for the masses I suppose.

I think by now, most of them have all gone and left many of us wishing we were still under colonial rule, it wouldn’t have been that bad, would it?  We’ll never know, and doing the whole “what if” dance is not going to help anyone.

Sadly, even though many of the idealist have gone, there remains some of the followers who can’t seem to open their eyes and realise that the old way can’t work and that the path the country is on is not the right one, that implementing old ideas, once discarded, will not bring about new changes.

I babble…  I’ve been staring at this photo for weeks and didn’t know what to write and now I write something quite out of character and from way out of left-field.

Here’s a photo  🙂

Wrong-way Rider 16-1092 |  Canon EOS 6D, Canon EF24-105mm f/4L |  Croal St, Georgetown.

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

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Weed

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography1 Comment

Well, I don’t think it might be a weed, but the title sounded better than “Plant poking through Planks”, actually, that sounds kinda nice…

I was looking through 2012’s week 3 folder and came across this one, which I thought salvageable.  🙂   Even though the histogram said I was fairly safe I got some blown highlights in the leaves… of course, this was three years ago, I hope I’ve learnt something since then.

2012  |  Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 18-270

I did some localised brush work on the “weed” in Lightroom, not something I normally do or that I am very good at… 🙂

Photographs and Memories

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, thoughts2 Comments

Karran Sahadeo recently did a presentation at Moray House with this title, when I chose this photo for this week’s entry for the Deck Project, it popped into my head.

Often, all we have of moments and events of our younger days are memories… with the current deluge of photos being taken with various cameras, smartphones, tablets, webcams, etc., the current generation may have a different take on it in 20 years.

I can look back at what might be considered a relatively large amount of photos from my younger days, relative to the general population at the time in Guyana at any rate, and I can sometimes remember the moment, the event, the atmosphere, the sounds and other tiny things that made the moment memorable, but there are many more points in my life that have no such record, and all I have are memories.

I was out on the seawall on the way to work one morning when I saw the sky to the south as I approached the portion of the wall right behind my old school ground (Saint Stanislaus College), as I stopped to take the photo, memories of times there came back to me.

I’m not a sportsman, never really was, but I do remember trying a few sports, simply because the teachers said you had to “try”…  I remember being left behind in the 100m sprint, I remember being lapped once in some one of the longer runs, I remember wanting to try the shotput, but being a small fellow, no one would let me, I remember trying the long jump and not doing too badly (as in, at least one other person fell shorter than I did); I also remember getting sunburnt, falling in the grass and bruising my knees, climbing the pavilion steps, eating snow-cones and icicles, and drinking Blackcherry Soda… (Both Banks DIH and DDL had lost their Cola franchises, Banks brought out the ICEE Blackcherry to fill the void), I could go on, but my point is, I can look back on “this” photo and have those memories renewed even though I don’t have photos of any of those moments to look at.

While this photo can mean that to me, for you, it may just be a very plain, very empty black and white photo; for me, the field is filled with students; the pavilion with teachers, students, parents; the gateway and fence lined with vendors selling snow-cones, tamarind syrup and green-mango 🙂

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm | 1/100s @ f/7.1, 10mm, ISO100

Click on the image to see it in the Black and White Gallery from the Collection, while there, take a look at the other images in the growing Black and White Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 19

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography4 Comments

Buildings with character always fascinate me, but often I will look at the scene as I am passing and think, “it doesn’t feel right”; that has worked against me a few times already when one day I pass by and the building has been demolished.  If it were just for a record of the building, then any photo would do, but I don’t just want a record, I want a photo that speaks to me.

There’s a mosque / masjid at La Bonne Intention (LBI) that I often pass, and consider that there’s a photo there somewhere, but I seldom see what it is that I should be photographing, I’ve stopped to photograph it twice, the first time I was trying to force the photo, but the second time, I was about three villages away and saw the skies to the south and thought that this was a good opportunity to try the photo(s) that I wanted.

Even before reaching the mosque I knew that I’d be using multiple exposures for some HDR processing after.

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 10-20mm  |  HDR from 3 Exposures.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2013 Deck – Week 18

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography4 Comments

One of the techniques I like to experiment with is HDR, or High Dynamic Range, especially on landscapes.  I don’t mean taking a single exposure and tweaking it or running it through HDR software for the effect, I mean actually taking multiple exposures for recombination in post-processing.

Since the Canon allows me three sequential shots automatically, that’s the amount of frames I usually use, although I would get a better handle on the dynamic range if I used seven or nine exposures.  But since most times I do these things without hunting for my tripod, Is tick to hand-holding 3 exposures in those circumstances.

I took the exposures for this photo one morning on the way to work (I think it was a Saturday… had to be), I was driving and noticed the Lotus Flower first, then noticed the sky, and quickly decided that I wanted a photo of the scene rather than the Lotus Flower alone 🙂

Each exposure was taken one stop apart and recombined using Nik HDR Efex Pro (as a plugin for Lightroom)…my hand may have been a touch heavy on the saturation 🙂

Dayclean  |  Canon EOS 60D  |  Sigma 10-20mm  |  10mm, max aperture f/4

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

Yellow

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography1 Comment

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

2012 Deck – Week 42

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2012 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Sometimes, in any art form, you have to break away from the norm, step away from the straight and narrow line that you’ve followed all along, and try something different.

I’ve broken the rule about shooting into the sun before, so this is not new…. but trying to get the palm tree and horse as the focus while doing so was different for me, and even then I was not ecstatic about it, when processing, I went for a duotone processing that I don’t do, and I though that the result was pleasing.

Although the original duotone processing had much more colour to it, I toned it down a bit to bring the focus back to the photo rather than the duotone, and the result; “sunset Liliendaal” 🙂

sunset Liliendaal

Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery!

Alma Mater

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Latin: translated literally as “nourishing mother”, a phrase used in ancient Rome to refer to various mother goddesses, in Christianity is has been used for the Virgin Mary, though not so much in modern times.  Its primary current usage is to refer any school, college or university that one has attended and/or graduated from.

For me, my Alma Mater is Saint Stanislaus’ College; I could say my Almae matres are Stella Marris, Saint Stanislaus’ College and the University of Guyana, having attended them as my primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions.

But for me, it will always be “Saints”, there I spent my formative years, my adolescent youth, where I formed life-long friendships, where I had teachers (and a lack of teachers) and memories (good and bad) that refuse to go away.

I had done a blog late last year, on some of the Latin phrases that have stuck with me to this day, if you haven’t read it, it’s not just about my Alma Mater, but about “Monuments”

Last year while looking for subjects to photograph for the Deck Project, I took a midday walk with Nikhil towards Brickdam with the very specific intention and aim of taking a few photographs of the building.  During and after photographing it, I was not satisfied, so we continued on down Brickdam to take a few other photographs, one of which I used for that week’s Deck Photo (2011 Deck – Week 13).

Every so often, I go through my older images, and on reaching the photos that I had taken of my Alma Mater, I was moved to view them differently,  One stood out from the rest, but I was still not happy with it as it was,  I decided to try a Psuedo-HDR out of it, I created two alternate exposures in Lightroom, one at -3ev (to retain some detail in the sky) and one at +3ev (although to be honest, I don’t think I really wanted more details in the shadows for this one).  I did the HDR combining and tone-mapping in Nik HDR Efex Pro.  I didn’t really want a coloured image as the final product, so in the HDR processing, I did a conversion to monochrome as well.

Please click on the image for a much better view in the Gallery, unlike most of my black and white images, I placed this one in the Georgetown Gallery.

2011 Deck – Week 34

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2011 Deck, Photography8 Comments

Although I had quite a variety of shots in this week, I couldn’t help but do a Sunset, a variant of one I had uploaded to the Guyana Photographers FB Group for a Photo Walk  🙂

This was an evening when I was heading into Good Hope on the East Coast of Demerara, as I crossed the bridge into “Good Hope South” I noticed the sunset down the canal, so I decided I’d stop and try a few photos.  I had often noticed sunsets or similar scenes in the evening, but because its one of the only ways into the village it is always busy and I never stopped.  This time, I determinedly stopped the car, grabbed the camera and walked to the bridge. The bridge is wide enough to hold a car and a pedestrian to either side 🙂  As I stood on the bridge, vehicles passed by and I was hand-holding a low-light shot, it took some patience, but I think I came away with one or two good shots  🙂