a heritage site, vigan

at last, vigan
Originally uploaded by gezelle

at last... another visit to this beautiful old district, vigan.

Bantay Bell Tower in Vigan

Bantay Bell Tower in Vigan
Originally uploaded by gezelle

photo taken from the ilocos tour i joined last weekend. this was our first stop after almost 9 hours of travel from manila to vigan. ive waited for years to get there and take photos of this old bell tower.

yuka takes a bath

lets be korean
Originally uploaded by gezelle

my favorite little girl, doing my favorite korean pose during her favorite thing to do (second to eating) -- taking a bath in a large batsa!

photo taken at iso400, f3.5, 1/80 of a second. i was using my semi-telephoto for this. hues were modified using lightroom.

red sunset

red sunset
Originally uploaded by gezelle

a "lomofied" photo from my UP Campus set. i thought a red sunset is appropriate for what others call a black valentine.

at the harbor square

at the harbor square
Originally uploaded by gezelle

so i thought my photos look boring and flat compared to those ive seen from a lomo set in flickr. ugh. really envious of the color and the vibrance and the freedom in taking those photos! so i decided to pick one from the manila bay set and "lomify" it on my own way. this was over-exposed using lightroom and the tint for the highlights/shadows were also replaced. i was trying to mimic the "green" lomo cam effect. whether i had achieved that or not... im really not sure. but what im sure of is that i had fun doing this and i plan to do more "lomofication" in the coming weeks.

sepia sky

sepia sky
Originally uploaded by gezelle

here's another one that was from the manila bay at night set. but altered a little bit. antique grayscale preset in adobe lightroom was applied and the photo was exposed a little bit more. let me know what you think :)

manila bay at night

...deep blue manila sky...

...speedboats ng mga pulis...

...skyline in black and white...

...boats nearby...

photos taken from the manila bay harbor square. we were supposed to take sunset photos but it was a little too overcast and my friends were somewhat no longer excited with that idea. we instead opted to go to this side of the bay where dragon boats and yachts were docked and from where we could see the manila skyline.

the night photos were a little too dim and the exposure had to be adjusted in lightroom. i should have tried ISO 200. both the night photos above were taken at ISO 100 at 4 seconds. tripod was used of course.

camera: olympus evolt e-5oo, lens was 17.5 to 45mm (kit lens)

of turtles and tripods

here's a shot of my favorite keychain using my olympus evolt e-500 DSLR. first time i've used a tripod and a setting of 2 seconds. ISO was 100. at its original size, you will notice that the photo has hot pixels all over it. because of this, i realized that i had to do some maintenance with my almost two-year-old camera. at some point, i got frustrated and actually thought of giving my camera up and deciding to purchase a new one. good thing i found articles over the internet telling me that noise increases with slower shutter speeds. that same thread also advised me to perform pixel mapping and out-of-the-kit sensor cleaning which later on greatly reduced the hot pixels. dalawa na lang daw according to the olympus kit. i was so relieved and now excited more than ever to shoot with my cam and a tripod!

by the way, thank you Guids for teaching me and telling me how "talas" my lenses can be at f8 and also for introducing me to the wonderful world of tripods. thank you rin to my pastor Amel who will lend me his tripod for my ilocos tour next weekend. hooray!

photography is an art of observation

there are many quotes about photography, but here's one that i like best:

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” -Elliot Erwitt