2015 Deck – Week 12

On July 4, 2015July 4, 2015 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2015 Deck, Photography, Poetry2 Comments

Sometimes we become entangled in the minutiae of our daily lives and forget or overlook the things that are truly important, I’m no philosopher but sometimes introspection leads to thoughts about things that I often figure are best left to wiser men to figure out – like, why does the toilet paper always seem to run out when you really need it and can’t reach a new one easily? 😀

I saw this cloth tied to a bamboo pole on the seawall, not sure if it was part of a Hindu ritual, a flayed and battered Jhanda (Jhandi flag) or just a piece of cloth tied to a pole… It intrigued me enough that I took quite a few photos of it, trying to catch it and freeze it’s motion with a fast shutter speed… and when I was processing the photo, only then noticed the bit of seaweed tangled in some of the threads… this might have been a bit of that Sargasso Seaweed that recently washed up on our shores.

Canon EOS 6D, Canon EF24-105mm | 105mm, 1/500s, f/8, ISO 200

A cruel world, tears and flays
The skin and nerves apart
Love and life, soothes and calms
This tender fragile heart

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

2014 Deck – Week 24

On November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

What can I say…?

It’s a photo… of some items left after a Hindu religious ritual on the seawall…

The colours caught my eye, the dropped and discarded incense sticks caught my eye… and I thought it would make a good photo.

It’s a photo. 🙂

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2014 Deck – Week 16

On October 14, 2014October 14, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography2 Comments

The evolution of each photographer never really stops, and by this I mean their knowledge of the craft, their view on what makes a good composition, their approach to colour, their use of tools… it is a process that each of us goes through, and it really doesn’t stop.

We may settle into a favoured style, and we may be known for things such as capturing facial expressions, or the use of colour in portraits, or known as a black and white street photographer, but often these are not things a photographer does to the exclusion of all else, but merely a focal point (pardon the pun) at a given period in his/her evolution as a photographer.

While I have read about this before, the realization was brought home to me when I was preparing images for my recent presentation at Moray House, and I went in a somewhat unexpected direction (for myself, anyway), I presented all black and white images of areas along Guyana’s coast, and I liked what I chose… I really did (although the worry was still there that no one else would like it).

So, after all that rambling, today I veer in the opposite direction, to an image that I think helps define how I think colour should be used in a photograph, not just to be there as part of the whole, but to make a point.

Canon EOS 60D | Canon EF40mm | 1/100s, f/3.5, ISO100

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery along with other images from this year’s Deck Project.

2014 Deck – Week 01

On January 9, 2014January 9, 2014 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2014 Deck, Photography4 Comments

Welcome back to my Deck Project, a photography project of one photo for every week of the year, giving me 52 photos for the year. (and there are 52 cards in a Deck of normal standard cards, not counting Jokers, hence the name Deck Project)

I start the year at a very familiar place, the seawalls, living on the coastland of Guyana gives us easy access to the sea and the extensive shoreline.

Recently there was a discussion about how Guyanese (among many others) prefer to use pirated software instead of paying. This has primarily to do with a difference in income levels and the cost of many software can easily exceed the salaries of the average or even above-average Guyanese. The cost of such popular photo-processing software as Adobe Lightroom and Corel AfterShot Pro has declined in recent years making it more affordable, but the habit of acquiring pirated copies persists. After this discussion I remembered Nikhil posting about an Open Source photo-processing software called LightZone, and I decided to give it a good try (even though I do own and use Adobe Lightroom)

This photo for the first week of the 2014 Deck Project was processed primarily in LightZone (but since I use Lightroom to interface with my website, I used Lightroom to tag/keyword and upload the image) LightZone is surprisingly versatile and powerful, I think I’ll be using it a bit more to experiment with some features as well as to encourage those who can’t afford Lightroom or AfterShot to try something that’s Free but also pretty powerful.

Canon 60D, Sigma 10-20mm | 1/125s, f/8, ISO100, 10mm

Seawalls near Thomaslands, Georgetown

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

2013 Deck – Week 46

On December 14, 2013December 14, 2013 By themichaellamcollectionIn 2013 Deck, Photography2 Comments

On a midday walk with Nikhil, We had to pass a Hindu family on the Seawall who were conducting a ritual, supposedly to Mother Durga (Goddess Durga), because of the yellow Jhandi flag.

I didn’t want to intrude, so I took a photo from a distance (and subsequently cropped it for composition), I thought it was a scene that should be recorded (even if just for myself)

I’ve always seen the various Jhandi flags along the coast, but only recently decided to ask about the colour, specifically in this instance. There is so much of the Hindu culture that is unknown to most of us, and the significance of various rituals and items are lost on us. I even tried searching the internet for Yellow Jhandi Flag, and got a Trinidadian website telling me that the yellow is for Lord Krishna, while a local hindu woman told me it was for Mother Durga and that it was customary to have it alongside a Red flag.

It’s not a great photo, but it is representative of part of our culture here in Guyana, and it is a period piece, with a modern mode of transportation in evidence 🙂 It is also a scene that I don’t see often enough.

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery.

Insects

On March 24, 2011March 24, 2011 By themichaellamcollectionIn Photography16 Comments

Interestingly enough I had loads and loads of photographs of insects when I shot with the Canon S5IS bridge camera, but since I have been shooting with the T1i SLR, I have very few, very very few, as a matter of fact this is the first that I’ve uploaded to my site and I had to create a gallery just for it 🙂

I think that because the S5 had a very good Macro mode and an even better Super Macro mode, I experimented more with them and with the usual victims of those modes, insects. Also, I had bought “add-on” macro lenses from Raynox that really had me doing some nice experimenting 🙂 Now that I use the SLR, I am longing for a good Macro lens, and I dream about the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS macro regularly 🙂 (anyone feeling generous, I won’t refuse a gift)

Anyway, enough of the dreaming, here’s the insect I mentioned…

: Hang on!

Click on the image for a better view in the Gallery, he’s there all by himself.

I took this the same day last week when I took the one I posted for the Deck, so some might say this is more appealing, but the Lotus Flower fit my mood at the time 🙂

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.