some photoholic thoughts

i thought i'd write down a few important things i've recently learned from our photography club's kapihan night and from our recent photoshoots. just so i would not forget:

• camera sensor cleaning -- there's such a thing. you need to know how it's done. or find someone who can do it for you. marunong daw si marty sabi ni skip :)
• fungus can develop on the lenses. i already know this, but nearly not doing anything to prevent it. tsk tsk. i did more research and here's what i found:

Keep your lenses in a dry, cool place. If you use your equipment in damp environments, let it dry as soon as you return into a drier room. Never leave your equipment in a closed (splashproof) camera bag when it need not be there. Leather lens cases are known to be especially bad, because leather is a natural product where fungi can grow before they proceed on to the lens. Synthetic materials are better, but there is no guarantee there either.

If you store the equipment in a sealed (air-tight) case, adding a small bag of silica gel or other absorbent may help. You will need to monitor the status (usually a change in color of an additive) regularly. As soon as the gel shows signs of saturation with water, it should be replaced or dried. Otherwise the process will reverse, and instead of drying the case, it will add moisture to the air and make things worse.

Source: http://www.chem.helsinki.fi/~toomas/photo/fungus/

• i really need to buy those silica gels now because my bag of gel (which i know to be expired by now) could already be reversing the process. yikes. time to visit the handyman.
• how to tell if the "dirt" is on the sensor or on the lens itself. you use a different lens or change focal length then shoot several photos. observe. if the position of the "dirt" does not change with differing focal length, "dirt" is sitting on the sensor. if position changes with differing focal length, then "dirt" is on the lens.
• if there is dirt on the lens, have the lens cleaned by the service center. cost could be around P500 per lens.
• we need to keep humidity from 40 to 60 within our storage boxes to prevent fungi from infecting the lenses. for this i need a hygrometer. cost of a digital hygrometer is P800. Analog is P400. The box can be an air-tight Lock & Lock container. You can buy all these at SM. Digital is better.
• the new canon 450D is out. it has live view (yehey!) and costs $900. i think i will also save up for this.
• how to setup lights using the following: light stand (around P700), umbrella holder (around P800), umbrella (P700), and external flash. very easy. point the flash towards the umbrella and let the light bounce. the umbrella is lined with a silver material which reflects light better than white surfaces do. need to save money for these equipment.
• shooting portraiture with external flash is better than built-in flash. definitely already know this from the time i bought my vivitar flash, but i didn't know how hard having an external flash would be compared to placing that flash in a light-stand and a reflector-umbrella! life is just so much easier when the flash is on the stand and light is being reflected by the umbrella as opposed to having the flash attached to the camera and bouncing light off the walls or the ceiling. with flash attached to the camera, you start having problems the moment you switch from landscape to portrait or vice versa! you will have to re-adjust the flash each time... and the camera gets heavy and blur may most likely occur! im sure it takes getting used to, but at the start, its so cumbersome. moving forward, use light-stands for portraitures.
• do not trust your eyes and the LCD in gauging whether exposure is good. LCDs can be deceiving. inspect histogram and/or buy light meter. or assume that you need to "over-expose" a little if you know that your LCD tends to brighten things up for you. experiment.

that's it for now... i feel that there's a few more.... when i remember them, ill definitely share them. in the mean time, happy weekend and happy shooting!

please visit my photoblog at http://pinayphotoholic.blogspot.com

sa hardin ni sonya

ever been to sonya's garden in tagaytay? if ever you're thinking of going away from all the chaos and pollution of the city, consider a 2-hour drive to tagaytay and spend an unforgettable lunch over at sonya's garden. i was fortunate enough to try their menu last weekend consisting of fresh salad, pasta (w/ several kinds of sauce, salmon belly, and ratatouille), dalandan juice, taragon tea and chocolate cake. price is a little bit steep but at least what you're getting is all fresh, good and healthy. they even served freshly baked bread which i enjoyed truly with all their delicious dips. favorite ko syempre yung pesto :) i have more photos from my multiply site. to visit that, you may click here. enjoy the photos!

....gulong ng silya sa may hardin...

...eto naman ang panghimagas...

...kuha ng tinidor at plato bago ang paghain ng pagkain...

me and my photoholic self

trying to be a model for sherwin, also from our photography club

trying to take pictures during the wedding --

it turned out to be very challenging given the dress and shoes i was wearing!

the one from the pink bathroom at home

these photos have been taken from the pink bathroom at my parents' home. there's a large pail of water in the bathroom and water from the faucet has been dripping slowly but constantly. i was taking photos of the tiles and things you can find inside the medicine cabinet then thought of taking a picture of the "tabo" inside this large pail when i saw that it had bubbles in it. i was interested in the bubbles at first but soon enough i realized i could take a picture of the ripples and the water drops as well. they turned out to be the more interesting subject eventually.

photos have been taken with 1/64th flash and then edited with adobe lightroom to change their tint, because pink didn't seem quite dramatic to me. sizes are large enough for you to set these as desktop wallpaper. just right-click on the photos and select "set as desktop background". for more "splash" photos, please visit this multiply album.

i learned so much from tonight. glad i took my camera out before going to bed at 1am in the morning :)

the one where i got sort of published

sometime august last year, one of my chicago photos made it to the cover of an e-zine. the editor of the online magazine found this photo from my flickr account and sent me an e-mail asking for permission if they can publish it in a feature entitled, "great american beaches".

without even knowing which photo was being requested to be published, all i could answer was "yes!", obviously very excited with the idea. in my mind, i tried to recall which photo could possibly make it to an e-zine and that picture definitely did not cross my mind. i took several photos of the beach, but i have forgetten about this one. however, when the editor replied back and singled this photo out, i smiled and as if it were yesterday, suddenly remembered taking this photo.

it was a sunny summer chicago afternoon. the kind you wouldn't want to spend inside malls or the apartment. so, eventhough i was alone, i took the bus and headed north towards the beach. there's also an interesting story about riding the chicago bus that day, hehe, but i will skip that one for now and move along. so on the beach, i was mostly taking photos of kids playing by the shore or watch grown people play volleyball and almost got into a fight over it. they were already drunk and the sun hasn't even set.

when i would take pictures of people, i would whisper "litrato, por favor", give them a friendly im-not-a-psycho smile and lift my camera a little bit with my right hand. of course nobody hears me speaking, but the people knew what i meant. these phrases were what i used to say to people when i went traveling to colombia last 2005. i thought it's okay to use because no one would hear anyway and really, the equivalent in english doesn't sound quite the same.


at some point, i decided to walk over the breakwater. from where i was standing, i could see the the tall buildings in chicago (one of which is the famous and very memorable John Hancock building) with the beach and the people on the shore as the foreground. there were strong waves that day and that meant strong winds which made me very uncomfortable. i took one shot, and fearing that i might slip or be thrown over the water, headed quickly back to the shore.


that's it. one shot, and that shot made it to the e-zine. there were 30 photos that made it and mine was the first that would show. i would like to think that in this e-zine, mine made to the cover :)

it was truly a lovely day. glad i went out to take pictures.

undecided

really can't decide yet on what title to give this new blog. my friend suggested the following and i actually think they're all cute, haha!

• photoccucinta (from "puto kutsinta" -- a pinoy rice delicacy)
• photoprincessa
• turtlesnapper

in any case, hope you enjoy viewing my photos and those of my brother's na rin! thanks for dropping by!