Tag: wooden

Charlestown

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography5 Comments

I lived in Charlestown (Georgetown, Guyana) for a short while after we got married, if I crossed the street, I’d then be in Albouystown.  Back then I had my first access to a digital camera, an Agfa ePhoto 1280 (Megapixel? what’s that?).  It was mainly for work purposes, but through it I learnt a few things about digital photography, and it probably rekindled my interest in photography at the time.

I had read somewhere that Charlestown (and Charles Street) was named after the Duke of Brunswick, Charles William Ferdinand (or Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, his original German name), but why a Ward of Georgetown, Guyana is named after a German Duke is a question I can’t answer.

Charlestown, at the time I lived there, was still quite “quaint”, in respect to the type of buildings, but even then things had begun to change, with one or two square concrete building being erected where once stood more aesthetic wooden structures, but times change, and change is inevitable.  Fortunately, change is also slow, comparatively, and some of the older buildings are still standing.  I walked, rode or drove past an old wooden building on the corner of Broad Street and Charles Street for many years, when I took up photography a bit more seriously, I kept an eye on it and kept putting off taking a photo, one day I decided that the “For Sale” sign meant that it may be bought and torn down, so I made the extra effort to stop and spend a few minutes grokking the scene seeking out a nice photo, waiting for the “perfect” photo was out of the question, so I just wanted a “nice” one.

Canon EOS 60D, Sigma 17-500  |  1/400s, f/10, ISO 400

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images in the “Georgetown, Guyana” album.

Welcome

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The driveway to the Cara Lodge hotel definitely says “welcome” to me.

I find this place to be warm and welcoming, and while many visitors to Guyana always mention the warmth of the people, I’ve found that the staff I’ve encountered here is that way with everyone, locals and visitors, and that’s refreshing.

2013  |  Cara Lodge Hotel, Quamina Street, Georgetown, Guyana

Cara Lodge

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

An outside view of the Hotel,

I had dropped by hoping for a nice “blue hour”, and took some exterior photos of the hotel.  Tripod in hand, bag on my back, I kept moving from position to position for more than an hour… I think the guard was getting suspicious even though he was aware of what I was doing 🙂

Got there maybe 5:30pm, took my first shot by 5:45pm… this one was just about 6:30pm

2013  |  Cara Lodge, Quamina Street, Georgetown, Guyana

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… 🙂

Pear on the Pavement

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Last year, I walked a short distance from my office to see what I could snap for International Street Photography Day, I had used one of those images and posted it on my site.  Yesterday, Fidal was asking if I had ever used the Canon 40mm pancake lens on the Canon EOS 6D, I knew I had, but couldn’t remember the circumstances… and it turned out that on that short walk I did use that combination, as I was checking the images, I decided to process and share a second one of those… same scene different take on it (much much closer to the subjects)

Canon EOS 6D, Canon 40mm

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

Fishermen

On By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography2 Comments

Third time.

I have no idea why I keep going back to this particular set of images, I’d shot a few frames of these fishermen on a photowalk in 2013, and I realized yesterday I’d now processed three of them…

one was a cover image for my Facebook page, a second one I had processed as a vignetted sepia image (two years ago):

And yesterday, I clicked on one and felt the need to process it in black and white…

Different but similar images, treated differently, tell different stories.

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

2015 Deck – Week 01

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2015 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Every year I have a photography project that I call The Deck, it’s basically what other photogs refer to as a Project 52, one photo for every week of the year.  The main reason I do it is to keep me shooting, with work and family life it is easy to sometimes put the camera down and not shoot anything, and I prefer not to have that happen, some weeks I get good stuff, other weeks I get a load of crap, even in those weeks the “crap” has to have something salvageable, and I find that in those instances I find myself seeking out the basics of the composition and putting the little artistic portion of my mind to work for the best processing possible to make it worthy of the project, failing which that would be the end of the Project, and I don’t really want that.

In shooting images all year round, I get more than I need for The Deck, and out of these I’ve been able to narrow down some to my Oniabo collection, I intend to keep the Deck Project going, and hopefully get more smaller collections developing.

I decided that for January 2015 I want to also try and photograph (not exclusively) around a sub-theme: Square.  I started using Instagram (see my last post) and the square composition, while at first very ill-fitting for me, has become a bit more appealing, so my first week’s image will be an Instagram photo, and I hope to include “square” into other images for the month, not necessarily as the crop ratio, but maybe as elements in the composition.

Since you’ve probably already seen the last post I did, and in there is the image I chose for this week’s Deck photo.

Respect – Samsung S5 Mini Duos  | Instagram

In Guyana, we have many cultures that have merged into this cook-up that we call our “One People”, and many are from the east, as in Asia, most eastern culture have in their traditions or as part of their religious beliefs the habit of removing one’s footwear when entering a home.

I’ve always seen this as a sign of respect, but I also know that in some religions it is mandatory, and in some cultures such as in Japan it was originally a hygiene/health habit (not tracking dirt and germs into the space that you eat and sleep).

In many parts of Guyana, this is how we’ve been taught, but the western culture has slowly crept in over the years and the respect we the dwellers show the visitors to our homes is one of acceptance, in that we may ask them to take off their shoes, and they may refuse, often we let our own judgement dictate who to ask and who not to.

In this photo, I also show respect for the change in photography as it widens its doors to an acceptance of non-traditional devices, processing and distribution methods, my older phones would produce some real crap, but with my current phone, I think I can produce acceptable images.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 50

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

In week 50 of 2014 I took a lot of photos, however most of them were on a photo shoot for a family, who specifically asked that we (Fidal and I) don’t share publicly, I don’t do those types of shoots normally so I was looking forward to it, and I think I got a few nice ones 🙂

So since practically all my photos for that week were scratched I fell back on one I took that was during the shoot but not of the family 🙂

If it messes with your eyes, it’s doing the same thing to mine… cool!!

47mm, f/4.0, ISO 800

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 42

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

Winslow Craig is one of my favourite local sculptors, his work appeals to me more than most, probably because I know so little about the art-form that I cannot appreciate the intricacies of others (particularly those that bested him in the 2012 GVACE; he placed third)

I was at Moray House for his recent retrospective presentation, and took a photo that I quickly grew fond of, and so did someone at Moray House; although I originally processed it in monochrome, they requested a coloured version for their inaugural magazine “Ku’wai”, as a non-profit organisation and one that supports the Arts in Guyana I really couldn’t say no, and I was honoured that they wanted it for the cover of the magazine.

Since I had only uploaded the monochrome processed version to Facebook, I decided that the coloured one worked nicely and I would also use that for the Deck Project.

Moray House, 21st October 2014  |  Sculptures on display by Winslow Craig

The piece on the table was loaned to the presentation by the current owner,  the one in the background is called “Saving Seeds”, it was the piece that placed third in the 2012 Guyana Visual Arts Competition and Exhibition; to my understanding, it is a wire-framed structure covered with a material that Winslow made called Sawdue (sawdust and glue).

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery, and to see Winslow’s current entries in the 2014 GVACE, visit the GVACE 2014 Exhibition which opens on Thursday 18th December 2014, exhibition of pieces are likely to be at Castellani House and the National Museum.

2014 Deck – Week 33

On By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography1 Comment

Christ Church was doing some fund-raising, a friend of mine asked me to take a few photos of the church to use in the press release.  The only time I had to make a pass by the church was an early morning on the way to work.

I was thinking that it’s only for a press release, so it doesn’t have to be that good, right?

I was in a bit of a hurry, but I snapped a few, then jumped back in the car and headed to work.  There was some nice clouds behind the church from one angle, and kept remembering this as I downloaded the images to process, I knew that my attitude toward the shot was less than optimal and I had deliberately exposed for the building and not the skies (since it was just for the press), as the sun was rising behind the church, all that detail would be blown out.

I thought that this would be a good time to experiment with what I had read about prior to acquiring a full-frame camera, that it can capture a very wide dynamic range in one exposure.

True enough, the entire sky was blown out in the exposure when I downloaded it.

IMG_2724

But remembering what I had just seen in the sky, I worked the sliders to see what sky detail I could retrieve from the RAW file:

IMG_2724-2

And I was amazed, so I decided to process it better than I had originally intended.  I made slight adjustments in Lightroom to bring some detail back in the sky while retaining the detail and brightness of the building.  Then I took the image into Nik HDR Efex with the express intent to use a single exposure black-and-white tone mapping technique on it, and the results were great.  After a few minor adjustments once I took it back to Lightroom, this was the result:

Christ Church, Waterloo St., Georgetown, Guyana

Someone asked me it I “photoshopped” it, well, I didn’t use photoshop, I used no masks, no layers, nothing like that, just what I described above.  Everything I needed was in the RAW file, if I weren’t in such a hurry and treating the action of taking the photo so lacklustrely, then I may have actually taken multiple exposures for a proper HDR  🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.