Pictures from Nagsasa Cove, Zambales

Photos have been taken during a recent (April 2010) trip to Nagsasa Cove in San Antonio, Zambales -- a place reachable by a one-hour boat ride from Barangay Pundaquit. Compared to Anawangin, which you will pass by on your way to Nagsasa, the place is just more beautiful, more relaxing, more serene, less crowded and has a lot more to offer in terms of swimming, snorkelling and exploration. You will also get a chance to interact with the natives should you decide to visit the other side where a small Aeta community lives. The restroom facilities are also much better in Nagsasa, thanks to the very accomodating and friendly Mang Ador who is the keeper and architect of the place. The place is truly breath-taking and worth adding to your list of places to go to before you're too old to go anywhere else.

I have nothing bad to say about my visit there. I even got to experience the following during my two-day stay at Nagsasa:

• Sit by a bonfire (c/o Mang Ador)
• Witness a fire dance (thanks to a fellow camper who was practicing his fire dancing skills)
• Enjoy halo-halo and pinipig crunch by the beach (thanks to manong vendor for his unbelievable tenacity in selling ice creams!)

Because I am a learning (more of struggling) landscape photograher, I took panoramic shots of the place using my old and worn out Olympus E-500, my also worn out kit lens and my NEW Benro ball head tripod (which the master landscape photographer Mr. Edwin Martinez himself use and recommended). First time to take panoramic shots and had immense fun doing it. One photo composition would take around 14 to 24 shots and would have a width of at most 32 inches in Photoshop CS3 (via the Automate > Photomerge tool) but disappointingly, a height of less than 5 inches only! Now I understand why they say panoramic shots have to be taken in portrait orientation instead of landscape. Must abide by this rule next time.

Anyway, bigger versions of these panoramas can be found in my Flickr account. Comments are most welcome. Hope you would visit. Thanks and God bless!

colors of summer

colors of summer
Originally uploaded by gezelle

the man was selling this huge umbrella by the seashore of the san juan surf resort. i thought id take shade from the sun's scorching rays for a while and figured i might take a photo or two as well. manong was very much willing and did not hesitate a bit to show his awesome smile for me!

photo was taken at aperture priority mode -- iso100, f4, 1/2500. some areas were totally washed out and could no longer be recovered because aperture was too wide open. i should have adjusted that to at least f11 and took some more care metering the scene. oh well... when i see another manong selling colorful summer umbrellas on the beach once again, id know better what to do :)

enjoy your summer everyone!

chicago theater photo at travelmuse

chicago theater
Originally uploaded by gezelle

this photo was chosen to be the header for a feature on Chicago within travelmuse, a travel website offering potential travelers fun facts about the destination, historical background, ways to explore the featured destination, how to get there and around, where to dine and drink and where to stay.

i have always liked this photo and made it my cover for my chicago set in flickr. although it was taken using just my point and shoot, a kodak, i thought that the colors and exposure was rendered beautifully and dramatically.

the travelmuse site cropped the photo however to turn this into a banner so that the portions that were rendered out of focus in the photo was dominant and enlarged in the banner. not a good way to use this photo but i cant complain. im still very glad my travel photo chosen!

to visit travelmuse's feature on chicago, you may click here.

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.