Attempt on Interiors

My attempt on shooting interiors using a 50mm prime lens. It was very challenging because the space was limited and I had to shift and adjust my position most of the time to frame the shot properly. I really gave it a warm look to give a summer feel to it.
Location: Tanjong Puteri Golf Resort, Johore Bahru, Malaysia.

Cityside Skyline

Shot on the 6th level of Avon Park Condominiums, Potong Pasir, Singapore, while having our dinner before making our Christmas lantern (parol).

Esplanade Drive

Esplanade Drive, Raffles Place, Singapore. Taken about a week before the F1 season in Singapore. Anyway, I may have to change my format of posting. There will be times that I will just post a photo and not include any lengthy descriptions due to time constraints since I'm pretty busy nowadays. I hope you continue to enjoy my photos and I will try my best to post as often as possible.

Kalesa

This is a horse-drawn carriage or kalesa I shot from my trip to Vigan a few months back (edited with photoshop). This is a common sight in the streets of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Philippines and a common sight as well in the streets of Chinatown in Manila. This post should've been posted a long time ago, but since I'm quite busy nowadays I haven't got the time to shoot some new photos, so I decided to sift through my old ones, which also explains my absence for two weeks. Also, this photo is exactly how I shot it, minus the radial blur. Enjoy!

My East Coast Sunrise

Shot just before sunrise at East Coast Park, Bedok. We had our VEC2 Caregroup getaway event. Lots of food, drinks, fun and fellowship in the Lord. Lots of fun but little sleep (for me at least). I just to wait for dawn and see the sunrise in this part of the world and it was good. (Below - photo of sunrise by the beach). Both shot with 50mm. The 50mm is a great walk around lens for me, so far, may it be night or day. Just have to adapt to the very shallow depth of field at large apertures.

Marina Bay Skyline

Marina Bay Skyline. Shot both photos at the same day. Basically waited until around 8PM before it got dark enough to shoot a night photo. Anyhow, I was blessed with a beautiful day when I went out for a stroll and a photo-op down at Marina Bay. The sun is up and shining. The clouds and the blue sky makes it one fine, perfect day. Actually I decided to shoot to see my circular polarizing filter (CPL) in action. The photo above was captured with a CPL. What I noticed was the beautiful color contrast that it gives compared to a photo shot without CPL (sorry, wasn't able to provide comparison, my observations are based on previous landscape photos shot without CPL). Reflections were also reduced giving the water a clear, mirror-like texture. The night shot of the skyline (below) was taken with the CPL on. I've read from other websites that it is not advisable to shoot at night with CPL on, but I guess I was too lazy to take it off so I just left it on. This night shot was tricky. I had no tripod so I had to find a stable surface to put my camera. Shot this at ISO-400, 24mm, f/8 and a 4-sec. exposure.

Haw Par Villa - Tiger Balm Gardens

Haw Par Villa. The Tiger Balm Gardens, located along Pasir Panjang Road, is one the "free" sightseeing spots in Singapore. So, if you are on a tight budget and would love shooting in Singapore for SGD 5 (for your bus fare, max.), this is the place to be. It was fun coming here since somehow I got reconnected to my chinese heritage by viewing the different tableau exhibits scattered all over the garden. There was also a special exhibit, the Ten Courts of Hell, which costs SGD 1.00. The exhibit depicts the ten courts of hell that you would need to pass through for the punishment of different sins committed before being reincarnated into another being, but this is for another post, I think. I personally do not believe in that but still it was worthwhile to view it and learn more about the culture. The photo above is the pagoda view near the main entrance of the garden.

50mm Edition - Daylight Series

What a great way to start my September series. Pictures shot purely at 50mm focal length. Well what's so special about it? I have never been forced to shoot at a fixed focal length before, because I got so much comfort in using the zoom lens that instead of moving forward or backward, I just let my lens do the work. By the way, this is entitled daylight series since all my photos (more photos here) were shot before 5pm. This picture is one of my favorites. I shot this flower while strolling down the Heliconia Walk of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. You may notice that I always post pictures taken from this place. It just so happens that I have visited this for several times already since this is one of the few places in Singapore that has free admission. But not to worry I will post pictures from other places in upcoming posts. It is a very tiring but rewarding experience. It trains you to think about your composition really well before shooting. It was tiring because instead of the zoom function, you are doing the zoom manually. Good thing there were not much people around, otherwise they might think I'm weird. More photos to come. Side note, I really love the 50mm f/1.8. The money you pay for it is justified.

My New Toy

My newest toy - the Nikkor AF 50mm 1.8D armed with a Tokina 52mm UV Filter. I'm very happy with this new acquisition. It is the cheapest fast lens in the Nikkor line-up I think and so far it's serving me well. I actually thought of buying the f1.4 model, but figured it was too expensive, so I settled for this one. I'll just save money for later purchases. Anyway, I can now capture night portrait shots hand-held with more ease and magical night general shots and landscapes as well - although this is not really for landscapes, but I can't afford to buy the 35mm/f2 right now. It is very compact, very lightweight and focuses fast. I also love how soft the images come out. This is going to be great especially for portrait shots. I also get the difference in depth of field which is important in portraits. I feel that I would learn how to be more disciplined when it comes to composing my shots using this lens, since I got so much used to using the zoom lens, I prefer staying in one position and just zoom-in to get closer. I shot a night scene while waiting for a bus to go home (below, shot at ISO-800, 1/25s). Can't wait for future shoots using my new baby. Enjoi.

Orchard @ Night

Orchard @ Night. This shot was taken during one of our early evening strolls down Orchard Road. Orchard is like the Makati City of the Philippines, minus the congestion. I mean there is still traffic but not like what you see at Epifanio delos Santos Ave. (EDSA) during rush hour. We first went to Tang Plaza first, famous Filipino community hangout at Orchard. During weekends, especially Sundays, the place is really packed. I had my picture taken at Lucky Plaza, adjacent to Tangs, and ate dinner at a small cafeteria-like diner serving 2 Filipino viands + 1 cup of rice + 1 can of drinks for SGD 5.00. After dinner my friend and I decided to take a stroll all the way to Plaza Singapura (below), near Dhoby Ghaut MRT. That is about two MRT stations away from Orchard MRT (yeah, Singapore is that small). But it ain't true that you can see all of Singapore in one day (20 years ago, maybe). There are lots of nice places to see and visit. I'll post more in the days to come. By the way, I wished that the sign on the picture above was Canon Nikon (Thank you Lala for the correction), oh well.

Both shots were taken at ISO 1600, thus, they're a bit grainy, but sometimes grain is good.

Paoay Church

St. Augustine Church, more commonly known as Paoay Church, was built in 1964 by Augustinian friars led by Fr. Antonio Estavillo. Completed in 1710, the church was built of baked bricks, coral rocks, tree sap and lumber. Local materials used inlcuded mixing sand, lime sugarcane juice. These were boiled with mangeao leaves, leather and rice straw for two nights. Considered as the most outstanding variant of the Earthquake Baroque, this site is now included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The belltower of the Paoay Church was once used by Katipuneros in 1896 as an outpost and was used again by Filipino soldiers during the World War II. This was one of the first churches that I have visited in Ilocos. The massive structure of the church was just breath-taking. We only spent a couple of minutes here and took some pictures. It just great that we were able to preserve such structures which is just awesome. Below is a shot of the interior of the church.

Paoay Lake

Paoay Lake (panoramic view). Well, sort of. I've been bitten by the blogging bug. After a month of only a couple of posts, here I am with my third post for July. I've been bonding with my CS3 lately and I compiled three shots of Paoay Lake to form this one single panoramic shot, which shows a portion of the lake. Malacanang of the North overlooks Paoay Lake, which is said to be shaped like a horse, although, you can't see it from this angle. As I've read, in 1969, Pres. Marcos declared it a national park. Anyway, there has been a lot of fuss about an emerging photoshop artform, which is an HDR (high dynamic range) image, which is a blending of photos shot at different, bracketed exposure values. I have not yet produced a genuine HDR photo, however, I've tried experiementing to create an HDR-like photo by follwing the procedure I've read on Adobe Photoshop User and tweaked it to my own liking. Here is the HDR-like version of the panorama above. Feel free to C&C.

Malacanang of the North

Malacanang of the North. Last May, I went to Laoag City, Ilocos Norte and stayed there for several days. It was my first time going there and I was extremely excited. We stayed at a budget hotel just a 5- to 10-minute tricycle ride outside Laoag City proper and took a budget Cebu Pacific flight. Though it is cheap, we waited for more than 3 hours just to pay, book, get confirmation and print the ticket for the flight. I would've tried driving from Manila to Laoag if only the gasoline prices weren't soooo high --- now, that would've been a great road adventure. Anyway, this was one of the first famous tourist spots we went to, the White House of the North. Overlooking Paoay Lake, Malacanang of the North is one of the 29 summer residences that former President Marcos built during his term. It's a great feeling visiting such places where once famous and important people have been to. Anyway, I'd be posting more photos of the other places I've visited. 'Til next entry.

Cloud 9

Cloud 9. It's been a while since my last post. I have been quite busy with stuff lately. I got back from a trip barely 2 weeks ago and I haven't finished arranging my pictures yet. Anyway, I also can't remember the last time I posted nature pictures so here's one. I went through my Batangas photos and I found this shot focusing mostly on clouds. I remember playing with the aperture on this one to get the desired effect on the clouds. I used 18mm, ISO-400, f/22, 1/320s. I used a smaller aperture to be able to get detail from the clouds. I've been trying to shoot with a wider aperture but sometimes all I get is plain white background. This has been my problem especially when shooting during cloudy days. When it's cloudy, my shots tend to have clear white background (bald sky) even if there are distinct clouds in the sky. Still working on it though. Tips and comments are very much appreciated.

Silhouette

What's life without a li'l drama? Sorry I haven't been posting lately, but rest assured I haven't gone cold on my photography. Took this picture last weekend on our little trip to Lian, Batangas. I asked my best friend to pose for me, facing the sun, so that I could make her a great silhouette and, thus the result. As I have said before, I love shooting sunrises and sunsets. Some people even call it the magic hours of the day. The color and mood is really great. This was taken a few minutes after sunrise. I woke up pretty early waiting for the sunrise. I had several shot, but alas, my friends are all still asleep, so I had no subject whom I can ask to pose. I had to improvise, nonetheless I got the shot I wanted. I'll be blog hoppin' and posting more of my shots during the trip in the following days. Thanks to all who dropped by and left their comments. :D

Flips

Flips. Last Monday, we went to 9 Waves at Rizal, a cheaper counterpart of the 8 Waves resort in Bulacan, I think. It was my friend's company outing and I decided to tag along. I didn't swim. I went there to actually shoot some photos, beautiful scenes probably. But it turned out that the place was inside a subdivision, so there were no beautiful landscapes and such, so I decided to take portraits of people instead and luckily also because I needed them for my photo assignment. I got a couple of good ones including this. I found some teenagers doing somersaults and flips. It was kind of difficult to shoot them using telephoto lens. I had to stay very still to avoid motion blur and I had to capture my subjects at the right time. Since most of them didn't really know that I was taking their picture, so I had to time it perfectly otherwise I would've missed the action. Also, I shot this using aperture priority(A) mode. I set it to f/5.6 and let the light meter decide the proper shutter speed. That way, I could shoot faster without having to adjust the shutter all the time.

Contrast

Contrast. This is a photo I took at Fort Santiago, Intramuros. Our photo assignment was to for our photos to manifest the proper way of arranging the composition in our photo, such as following the rule of thirds, etc. I don't know if this photo will pass for a good composition, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow when we show our photos to our teachers. Anyway, what caught my eye actually is the contrast that the plant makes with the red door and red bricks.

Frozen in Time

Frozen in Time. Ahh! I'm back at last. I get to post again, after a week. Turns out the battery for my laptop is not available, thus, I decided not to buy first. So, I'm using another computer. I won't be able to post daily, but at least maybe I'll try every other day. Anyway, this is a fountain in Fort Santiago. One of the photo assignments given to us was to shoot a picture with a very fast shutter speed. This fountain, of course, was one of the more famous objects photographed by people which represents a fast shutter. This is my version. Took this by: 50mm, f/5.6, 1/200s. This was quite challenging actually. It was almost 5:30pm and it was cloudy, hence there wasn't enough light. I wanted to shoot it at 1/800s to put emphasis on the droplets but it was too underexposed. I didn't want to use flash, so I had to settle with 1/200s. By the way, I entitled this "frozen in time" since the droplets of water were like "frozen" in the air. Our lecturers said that when you talk about shutter speed, you always talk about two words, freeze (fast) or blur (slow).

Leaf

Leaf. Last Saturday, I went to my first day of Basic Photography Seminar-Workshop conducted by the Federation of Philippine Photographers' Foundation held at Fort Santiago at Intramuros, Manila. The introduction was held by Mr. Lito Beltran and the lectures were facilitated by a reknowned photographer Mr. Ador Pamintuan. This is one of my shots when they asked as for a field work. They asked as to shoot photos showing the use of shutter and aperture. Instead of shooting the usual scenes in Fort Santiago, I tried shooting at the less noticeable objects there. I had a lot of fun, especially for the field part. Wow, my first actual seminar. Shot this by: 50mm, f/5.6, 1/125s, ISO-500. I feel its a little bit underexposed though, I could've slowed the shutter more. Anyway, although, it's a holiday, I'm looking forward to this Saturday's class. Can't wait what else they're gonna teach me.

Pinay In Action

Pinay In Action. I haven't posted in a while. My computer's having some trouble. I just took this picture a while ago at the start of the 5 km. "fun run" in an event entitled "Pinay in Action". This event was headed by Sen. Pia Cayetano in celebration of the Women's Month at NBC Tent, Bonifacio Global City. My very good friend Faye and her mom joined the event. They didn't win first place but hey, it's running for a cause. So, it's all good. For more pictures, check this out! Anyway, some of my pictures are not that good, since it's my first time shooting an outdoor sporting event. I also went to try my telephoto lens. I'd say it worked well for me, but I need to have more practice. Enjoy!

P.S. Added one more pic. I edited this one. But I used the continuous shooting mode, thus I was able to capture this sequence of shots.