Also Ran

On September 7, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography10 Comments

So, I’m figuring that if it’s not a photograph for The Deck, or something thematic like Monochromes, what do I do with the photographs? Nikhil came up with a brilliant idea for his blog, he started a weekly review of his photos for his 365 Project. That gave me an idea for these photographs that don’t fit into my regular type of blog post, here’s the ones that did not make it onto The Deck 🙂

First up is this image taken in the Gardens, I was off to get the photograph of the Kissing Bridge when I found this corner of the bridge interesting, so I shot it, I still can’t quite put my finger on the reason it interests me, it just does, so I tried my best to frame it right and get a decent photograph of it.

Corner column, Kissing Bridge, Botanical Gardens

Then, of course, there is the bridge itself! Although I preferred the one I used that week for the deck which was in Black and White, I did take one in portrait orientation that I quite liked as well, so I dropped that one into my “Georgetown,Guyana” album, and here it is 🙂

I used to take a lot of photographs of flowers, that was when I shot with a Canon PowerShot S3 and S5, it seems that since I moved onto an SLR my focus has changed (excuse the pun), but every once in a while I still catch one in my viewfinder and get a fairly decent shot of it, like this one I saw on Brickdam.

And then, of course, there’s one of my favourite areas to photograph things, the Seawall. I often just thought of the seawall as just the Georgetown Seawall, but it extends along most of our coastline, these two were taken up near the village of Montrose, which is known most for the Starlite Drive-in, although I am not certain when it was exactly the they last showed a movie there.

Well, now that I have gotten that off my chest, I can rest knowing that these have not been ignored 🙂 I hope you enjoy one or more.

Three for the weekend

On September 4, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography9 Comments

I really really thought long and hard for a title for this post, and couldn’t come up with a single thing worth using, so here’s three for the weekend…. Three photos, that is; this is a blog about my photographs after all.

The first is a building that I have had my eye on for some time, I seldom ever see it without a few to several vehicles in front of it, and I didn’t want the vehicles in the photograph, at least not this photograph, I wanted the building. Of course getting a nice composition is challenging, especially with the many wires crisscrossing the street in front of the building. Whenever I saw it nice and clear, the lighting would not be optimal, and whenever the lighting was right, the place was very very busy, well I finally saw it clear and with a nice morning light.

It only takes a small rain shower to ensure that pedestrians walk on the roads instead of the pavement, especially on Avenue of the Republic, it probably only rained for about ten minutes the morning I took this, normally I wouldn’t be tempted to take a photograph, but the sun had come out and the colours were popping and it was even evident in the reflections in the water 🙂

Two days ago, Nikhil did a very nice close up shot for his 365 Project, and while I was also captured by the colours of the structures, I decided to wait and see what else about the scene would capture my attention, as it turns out I liked the house and tree more than the structures 🙂 This is also a move away from the norm for me, I usually do proportionate cropping if I crop the image, but in this case I found a square crop to be optimal for the image (that and I really needed to crop out the other buildings on the left without losing some of the elements in the shot)

Hadfield Street and Brumell Place (taken while standing in Louisa Row)

It seems I forgot to mention that all three are in Georgetown, Guyana. Three different days and three very different images of Georgetown 🙂

August Monochromes

On August 30, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography12 Comments

I had a few images that I rendered in monochrome this month, these were the results of three walks I did with Nikhil, I got a few nice coloured images, but more that I processed in monochrome, which is unusual for me. I have a few friends who always love my monochromatic work, so I think that they will like these images 🙂

I know that the title “monochromes” cover more than just black & white and sepia images, but I have not quite gotten around to expressing myself in the other formats as yet, although some of my black & white images are actually more of a selenium tone rather than pure black & white. I tend to lean towards the idea that if it is close to black & white, then that’s where I will categorize it, even if it does have a slight tinge of another colour. If the effect is more obvious, then I will rethink its category.

To start it off I have two Sepia images, one from the shore at the Kingston Promenade seawall and the second from the Manatee Pond at the Botanical Gardens, Georgetown.

And now for the Black and Whites, I have four new added to the album; and they go like this:

I have found a fondness for monochromatic images, now all I have to do is learn how to represent them better and better, each time I try one I find something new, sometimes I want lots of detail and other times I want high contrast with starkness, sometime I want a bit of both. Hopefully I am learning all the time 🙂

Panoramas from Sint Maarten and Saint Martin

On August 19, 2010August 19, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography5 Comments

As I mentioned in previous posts, the island is divided into two portions, I would love to say halves, but I am not one hundred percent sure that the square mileage would be equal. Anyway, as I was saying, it is divided into two portions, one under Dutch rule and the other under French rule, and in my photo jaunts across the island I actually managed to take photographs for two Panoramas, one in Sint Maarten and one in Saint Martin, so neither side can claim I didn’t do one, right? Right.

That being said, I am no expert on photography, much less Panoramas, but I liked both that I took, they have their appeal and, of course, their faults, but I give them both over for your viewing pleasure (or disgust, whichever label suits you).

In Sint Maarten, the Great Bay is where the Cruise ships filled to overflowing with tourist anchor and dock, there is a roadway that winds its way up the hillside on the opposite side to the area where the ships moor, and there is even a lookout point on that road set aside for viewing the scene. Because of its vantage point high up in the hills, I needed only take three overlapping photographs to produce a simple panorama of this scene. Fortunately, there were two cruise ships in the bay that day, so the image has that little extra caveat.

Great Bay, Sint Maarten, Netherland Antilles

I was taken to a spot on the French side that is not frequented by people, my memory fails me a bit here, I think it is somewhere near Baie Rouge (I welcome any clarification). It was a little late in the afternoon and the sun was setting to my left, so I got a little colour change in the sky, I find that my best Panoramas (that include skies) usually are done nearer to the midday hour. For this Panorama I wanted to include the shallow waters near the shore as well as the skies, so I took the photographs in portrait orientation mode, this meant more photographs to encompass the view than if I had used a landscape orientation for the camera. In total I used thirteen (13) photographs for the panorama, and only cropped out a portion to the left that was too much into the afternoon sun.

Near Baie Rouge, Saint Martin, French Antilles

Sometimes one photograph of a scene is not enough to express the feeling that envelopes a person, that’s when you either take a veritable cornucopia of photographs of the large and small items of interest in the scene or you do a Panorama 🙂

I hope you enjoy the images I have shared, please click on them to see them larger (hopefully) at my site.

Casualty of a Hurricane

On August 16, 2010August 16, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography, Poetry9 Comments

From the first time I steeped out and saw Simpson Bay from the house, I was fascinated by this wrecked boat that was in the water a bit east of the house. I took many photographs of it, from different angles, I used different apertures, tried out a polarizer filter on it, I shot it from the house and from along the shore, it seemed I just couldn’t get enough of it. Like most of the large “debris” found along the coastlines of St Maarten, it was a casualty of a hurricane, one of the many that sweep down Hurricane Alley every year, or given its current state, maybe more than one hurricane.

Even though I posted a photograph of it already during my Sint Maarten visit, there was one I had reserved to do some more processing to at a later date, and I would like to share that one with you.

Anchored in the bay,

locked up for the night,

All prepared for the worst

Of the Hurricane’s awesome might

All is peaceful,

Nothing out of the norm

Suddenly seagulls cry out

Wails of the oncoming storm

Winds howl and push

from the bow to the stern

Waves rise and crash

Of the shoreline, nothing to discern

Minutes and Hours

Battling in the fray

unable to tell

the difference ‘tween night and day

The anchors slip

waters filling the hold

is this the fates’ decree

to perish, the tale left untold?

The winds ease,

and the rains abate

Starboard lies the shore

but below lies its fate

Battered and bruised,

seaworthy no more

Never to set sail again

now nothing, but an eyesore.

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.

Sint Maarten Day 7, and Fort St. Louis

On August 2, 2010August 2, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

The first shot of the day was what might have been called the “Catch of the Day”, Justin (the son of the people at whom we are staying here) and some of his friends had done some spear fishing the previous day and was about to prepare the catch for a Soup.

During the morning, we took a walk down Simpson Bay Road, there were a few older buildings along the road that I had wanted to photograph, although I took a few,there are still a few more that I want a snap at 🙂

The real object of our walk was to get a closer look at the Simpson Bay Market, a nice structure on the Simpson Bay Lagoon across from the Police Station and next to the Coast Guard. I wanted to see what was there to photograph, and my wife wanted to see if any stalls were open, there was only one stall open at that time 🙂 (of course I am not counting the bar or food shop)

And a short walk to the Shipwrecked Pirate, a nice little shop, good footwear, and some unique gift ideas I think, but then I’m a man, what do I know, except that the barrel outside looked nice 🙂 If only it had rum in it, and a tap 🙂

Afterwards, we were taken to do a little climbing, I can’t remember exactly where, I think it was near Baie Rouge, but it had a beautiful view as we climbed and the destination was also a spectacular view at two “seaside”caves that let water into a nestled area, but I wasn’t climbing down there!

For the two caves I tried an HDR image, I didn’t get it perfect, the image has some rotational misalignment, but I liked the scene so much, I decided to keep the resulting image anyway.

We then went on into Marigot (the capital of St Martin, French West Indies) for a short walk around before heading up to the fort, which was the next attraction for us. Marigot also has more that I’d like to photograph, time permitting.

Bandstand / Gazebo, The Marketplace, Marigot, St Martin

Then we left Marigot (not really left it, since it’s a short drive up the hill to the entrance) to see the Fort Saint Louis, or rather the ruins of the fort, I can only imagine what it would look like on a stormy day (not that I really want to be there when a storm hits).

Of course, there are a lot more photos than these added to the Sint Maarten album on my site. Be sure to check them out. The parting shot is one taken as we were exiting the Fort proper.

The Deck – Week 28

On July 16, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography3 Comments

On one of those midday walks with Nikhil, while he was experimenting with his IR filter and generally trying to get his photo for the 365 Project that he is undertaking, I spent some time trying to get this photograph…

The problem? That darn bee 🙂 although I took lots more photographs of houses or parts of houses this last week, I liked this shot for the Deck, maybe because I spent so much time trying to get it, maybe because I already have too many photos of buildings, maybe because, of the candidates for this week’s choice of photograph, this was one of the few that were still processed as colour and not monochrome 🙂

This was taken at The Seven Ponds, a monument in the Botanical Gardens, so many things around to photograph and I spent loads of minutes on this 🙂

As a small photograph and, worst yet, as a thumbnail, it’s a photograph of a flower, water-lily, some large leaves… my particular interest in the photograph was the insect, the busy bee… so just to show you what it was that REALLY interested me… I’ve included the following enlargement 🙂

If only I had a longer lens, or that flower was closer to the edge of the pond 🙂

The Deck – Week 25

On June 25, 2010August 28, 2010 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2010 Deck, Photography1 Comment

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.