PHOTOGRAPHY: #VantagePoint My Favorite Spot

EXIF: 18mm | f/16 | 1/100 sec | ISO 100
Shot February 3, 2017  - 07:38AM | Canon 500d/t1i

I have lived in Antipolo since December 1987 and steadily grew to love it.  The municipality is part of a province called Rizal, which is also part of a bigger region CALABARZON.  My parents bought a lot in a humble subdivision in Antipolo and near our place is hill; infamously, called "2nd floor".

2nd floor has a peak, surrounded by weeds, some patches of trees, and 2 houses. Surrounding the peak is a view of the mountains of Antipolo to the east and on the opposite side is the cityscape of Quezon City, Pasig City, Mandaluyong, Makati City, and Laguna Lake.

This has been a place for me to practice taking photos, gather my thoughts, and search myself. In short my-sanctuary. I've been here numerous times, bringing with me, different camera equipment.

Most of the time, I would bring my Canon 500D(my first DSLR), sometimes I would bring my Canon 6D and on some rare instances with a Nikon D7000, which is my brother-in-law's camera.

My Photographic Journey

There was a point in my life when I had a lot of free time in my hands. When I wasn't working I was hanging out with friends, playing video games or I was in front of the TV. I didn't know it back then but I was unhappy and I was going no where.

Where it all started Voltaire and me. June 27, 2010. Mediahub©

One weekend came, my good friend tagged me along for an event shoot, at first I was hesitant but what else would I be doing, right?  So I came along and was assigned to work on capturing the event via video, but I was told that they had to scrap some parts of the video because I chattered to much.

The following gig, I was assigned to shoot photos.  In my head I thought that it would be easy, but like John Snow, I was still green with Summer and I knew nothing, even if I had 'some experience as a college photojournalist.  It didn't prepare me for the reality of an event photographer's duty.  Long story short, that's when it all started.  I was bit by "the bug", I started asking questions, I started to read more about photography, I shot with the camera, whenever I could and itched for more chances to click on the camera.

Marcos Highway in the evening. December 2010

I learned at first with my friends' help.  Take note, that this was before I had my own camera.  I borrowed his camera whenever I can.  I started to familiarize myself with the Canon EOS system, it was the first camera system that I worked with.  I realized that some of the controls were intuitive and familiar with my dad's Canon Powershot A510, it was a digital point and shoot camera that had generic shooting modes, and creative shooting modes like P, Av, Tv, and M.  The downside of the A510 was it didn't have a manual focus mode on the lens barrel, typical for a point and shoot.  Take note, that there was an option to over-ride the focus of the camera by pressing the down button 2 times to go and manual focus, but it took a long time to get to the desired focusing distance when using the MF override on the said PNS (point and shoot) camera.  It was the camera that I used often when I was shooting for the college school publication back then.

Working with my friend's Canon 40d, it was a beast during its time.  A mid-sized DSLR,  10 megapixels, crop sensor, it can shoot continuously around 5-6 shots per second.   It was an overwhelming creature to control when I started out.  There were a lot of things I didn't know or understand about it, when I shoot with it.  Even If I was overwhelmed by the 40d, I somehow figured things out, eventually.

Shot by: Reyson Angeles. 2010

When I couldn't get enough of shooting, and I had to have my own DSLR, I finally convinced my father to help me on the purchase.  Convincing him wasn't easy, and he gave in.  Another tough task was done, but another awaits-which make and brand of DSLR I'd buy?  I had to do my research ask my friends' advice.  I was caught in the midst of Canon vs Nikon bout.  My office mates that were into photography back then, were Nikon shooters, on the while my high school friends, shoot with Canon.  It was the point of no return, this'll make or break my future.  I had to decide which brand, and then choose a suitable camera.  It took a long time to get to a decision but the Canon 500d was just too irresistible for me.

 July 10, 2010, I bought my camera in Jeptall, Robinsons Pioneer.  I had to hunt around with my dad since I couldn't complete the purchase without him. Take note that this model was elusive back then, but was able to get one.

Japanese Math Rock Band Tricot during the Manila leg of their March 2014 Asian Tour. 

Believe it or not, when the purchase was complete, I caught up with my friends that were going to another event shoot in SM Fairview. So I traveled from Pioneer to Fairview which was a tricky feat, cause it was the first time I did it. Bottom line was that I was happy with my purchase since then.

4 years and 3 months later, I still have my camera, still working, despite of cracks, dents and error 01 with the 50mm. I have it with me wherever I go.  I'm not the one to stick with a single brand, but with what my camera and I have been through, I'm satisfied. My only wish that it'll last me forever.

Project 365: Week 12

As the year continues, the days goes by faster than we realize it.  I'm now on my 12th week of Project 365.  I'm very surprised that I can still keep shooting every single day.  I often find myself without my prefered camera(Canon 500d) but as the weeks go by, I've gotten used to shooting with my iPhone 4S.  It may not have the 15 megapixel image quality of full control as my other camera, but its the camera that I always have in my pocket.

Most of the images that you'll see on this post(probably in future posts as well) will be coming from my mobile device.  So hope you guys bear with it, as you'll see more noise, and more blur.

The photo below was taken in Republiq in Resorts World Manila.  Voltz, had a friend from Cebu that came to visit and I was available.  And I became the designated driver for our guest, Pogs, Ariel and Voltz.

Aprill 12, 2013 - Seeing is believing

We went around the metro and found ourselves in Republiq.  Here we saw Barney(yes the purple dinosaur), clubbing.  That's why I called this shot 'Seeing is believing' because I couldn't believe what I saw that night.

The following day, still shaken from partying with my friend the previous night.  Me and my wife went to the album launch of her favorite band.  If you've been following the blog, you know who her favorite band is(for the people who don't know, its' Paramore).  

One of the local music stores in the Philippines, Odyssey released Paramore's 4th album and had a few local bands play a few cover songs from Paramore. We had fun as we're familiar with some of the people(fellow Paramore fans-Paramore Philippines) who came along to buy the album.  In case you want to check out the previous blog post for the Album buy out, click here.

April 13, 2013 - Paramore fans on the album launch.

I was really lucky this time since I was able to borrow Milo's fish eye lens. Here's a shot that I did of the said lens in Week 3 of project 365.  I think it's one of the clearest wide angle lens that I've tried out so far.  On the technical aspect of this shot, I believe that I had the 500d and a 430 EXII Speedlight for this image.  

 

April 14, 2013 - From the outside

When you see photos of Ortigas Center, you'd know that I went to work that day.  For example the image on the left, this was shot during one of my breaks.  If you have been reading the past #projec365 blog posts, I often go out of the building and take some time out to hunt some shots for the said project.

I often find it mundane since I've been repeating the same shots over and over again and I feel like I'm not veering out of my way, to photograph or shoot to improve.  

Here I used an iPhone 4S, and it seems that the shot seemed rushed.  If you look closely, you'll see camera shake.  For post-processing this was done in Snapseed. I haven't encountered another app to match Snapseed's versatility and ease.

April 15, 2013 - Rumors...

April 15, 2013, we caught word of a rumor going around that the account that I've been working with will be pulled out by our clients from off shore. These were just rumors, but the thought of losing our jobs was something that made us rethink and ask ourselves what we want to do with ourselves now? 

Although it doesn't show how it affects us in the photo above, to me this image is the moment where Jay-ar told(guy on the foreground) us about the rumor.  Shot with an iPhone 4S, and processed with Snapseed.

April 16, 2013 - Troubled mind

Weekend Photographer: Alay lakad 2013, Antipolo City

Weekend Photographer is my blog post for my instant projects during my rest days.  My rest days varies sometimes in the weekend, other times in the middle of the week.  My wife doesn't tag along in these solo-projects, so I'll try my very best to write down what I've experienced during these weekend projects.  Just another addition to the many blog posts here, hope you guys like and enjoy.  Comments would be appreciated as always!

Lightroom 4 Geotag of the photos taken during my solo photo walk.

Right in the middle of summer, Antipolo my home town hosts an annual pilgrimage from Quiapo Church to Antipolo Cathedral held during the evening of Maundy Thursday (Roman Catholic Calendar). Church goers start to walk from Quiapo then straight to Antipolo (according to Google Maps the route covers an approximated distance of 27.3 km). 

I on the other hand was free and was on my rest day so I opted to walk along with the crowd and snap some photos, to practice photography in general.  

During this project, I honestly hesitated to pull out my camera in public since there might be  some thieves lingering about and with this in mind I still went on ahead and pulled out my camera but with my senses up a notch(if that makes any sense).

A puto vendor waiting for the people. 

So I brought along my camera(Canon 500d), camera bag which has 3 lenses( 50mm f/1.8, Canon 18-55mm(kit lens), Sigma70-300mm macro, flash, back up SD cards), a tripod, and a bottle of water.  You can say that I may be  dragging along a lot of stuff, and well see how this goes later.  

To me once you see this view, when travelling along Ortigas Extension Ave., you are in Antipolo.  A few meters later, you'll see the Capitol of Rizal(the dome structure behind the the trees) and Ynares Center.

Familiar sight, the Capitol of Rizal beyond the horizon.

When I travel to the main proper of Antipolo, I always thought of capturing this.  I'm not completely pleased with what I have right now but I may have to revisit this shot and do it all over again and recompose.

I didn't catch anything interesting on the way to the cathedral.  When I got to the church, this is where I used the tripod, since I planned to shoot panoramic and HDR images. Below is the result of what I did.

The photo below, is a merge of 3 or 5 images on different exposures, and merged them all together in Photoshop CS4.  I like the way it shows the people in motion, it gives more character to the image.

Antipolo Cathedral - HDR

A hint of rainbow

In the photo above, I set the camera low to make the church look bigger.  It's just unfortunate that I'm standing near a shade of a building or tree(not sure), and it is pretty obvious since the people on the foreground are all silhouette.  Although this gave my image a more interesting look as it leads the viewer back to the church as it is the main subject here. 

I went on to hang to hunt for some shots, I equipped the 50mm for low lit situations such as the image below.  It seems tight but I got the effect that I wanted.  Using candles as the main light source to get some people exposed in the least to show expression and a little detail.  

Project 365: Week 11

As the year went on, the shoots just kept coming but the words and writing the blog post, still took along while.  I usually write when I'm not doing anything, whether it is photo projects, post processing photos, and or shooting events.

April 5, 2013 - Playing with smoke 

This day, I was able to hang out in Mediahub, and the team.  This is my friends' office.  I tend to goof off with my friends, and their employees.  Right around this time, my wife bought me e-cigarette to help me stop smoking.  The people in Mediahub had a blast with my solution to stopping cigarette smoking.  We had so much fun that we shot a smoke photo portrait.  Using a Canon 500d, with a wireless trigger mounted, and the receiver connected to a Canon 580 EXII as primary flash, and wirelessly triggering a Canon 430 EXII.  the one behind the smoke is the master flash and the fill flash is coming from the left side.  This was my favorite shot during that night since most of the photos were weirdly lighted.

We went to cover Paramore Night 4 last April 6, 2013. FYI, my wife is a big fan of Paramore.  I was taken a back because the crowd were so lively.  Here's a link to more photos and blog post about that fated night just click here. 

April 6, 2013 - Hands in the air

Its pretty obvious that I favor the crowd when it comes to gigs like these, and hopefully we'll be there to cover more.  The photo below is also shot during the same event but shot past midnight so that makes it to my shot for April 7, 2013.

April 7, 2013 - for the crowd

Project 365: Week 8

March 14, 2013 - Tribute to childhood

Week 8 of Project 365 has been a challenge for me, since I couldn't keep on bringing my camera with me, and I think that I'm pretty predictable and repetitive of the shots that I've been doing.  So, as the project's objective is to improve and learn more about photography,  I plan to change it up.  And I thought how I'd make this 'change'?  

So I stared blank into the oblivion in thought and got to the conclusion to shoot with my iPhone.  I have already done it a few times so what the heck!

Here on the photo on the left is LEGO brick from one of my surviving toys from my bachelor days.  Like I said, I was repeating what I already done, which is shooting macro, with a reverse ringed kit lens on a Canon 500d, remotely triggered a flash positioned at around 11 o clock.



Again I'm still not taking down notes on strobe settings and not laying out the EXIF data since I'm writing from the office again.  Sorry.

March 15, 2013 - Old reliable

On the photo above, it's a pair of Nike Dunk that I have-for years now.  I'm happy to say that this pair has never seen any shoe repair man-yet, but it's still alive and pretty much kicking.  As you can see, flash is setup for this shot to highlight the shoe's right side edge to get that texture off of the rubber.  Shot with my ever so reliable 500d, with a kit lens.  Post processed in Lightroom 4 to get red tint into the mix.

March 16, 2013 - RDOT organizers

Ica was invited to attend Rest Day OT Jam Sessions 2.  It's a musical gig where in people who work in Business Processing Outsource do their thing.  Ica had a friend who performed on the said event but unfortunately we missed her band play, because I had to report to work.

Shot with the Canon 500d, with a 50mm f/1.8.  Nothing fancy pretty straight forward.  In post processing I bumped up the contrast and saturated the image a little bit.  I kind of liked B-Side bar in Makati, it has a nice vibe to it and it had lots of graffiti.  To bad I didn't shoot a panoramic photo of the place. All in all I had a blast shooting the gig.

Project 365 - Week 6

As I hit day 30, I was taken aback.  Wow... I've been shooting constantly everyday(more like every night).  The same worry that clouded my head from the day I started this project is that I would run out of ideas.  So days kept coming and so I kept shooting.  I'm still surprised that I'm still undertaking this despite of the pitiful work schedule that I have and still having a few things up my sleeves.

February 28, 2013 - Japanese Doll revisited

Sometime ago probably a year or two, I shot this Japanese doll from my wife's godmother.  It's one of our props for our wedding reception I believe.  I'm more impressed on how I did this shot here since I got more light compared to back then.

Forgot to mention that I borrowed a light box from my sister.  It's used to diffuse light coming from outside the box, which gives it a more like an even controlled lighting look used for product photographs.

Equipped with the 500d, flash trigger mounted to remotely fire off the flash coming from the upper left hand side of the doll.  I'm not sure if I'm using the Sigma 70-300mm or the Canon 50mm.  The doll was placed in the lightbox with black background.  I tried using the white background but I don't think that the color suits the subject.

Our Adventures: Hot Air Balloon Festival 2013

Overcast. Dark skies did not dampen the eager crowd. 

If you were able to see my tweets you could tell that we were pretty excited to get to go the Hot Air Balloon Festival this year. Actually Paul's siblings have been planning to go last year especially since Paul's brother-in-law hails from Pampanga. 

Surprisingly it was still a last minute preparation and we made plans to go on the last day of the 4-day festival, which was on Sunday. The 18th Hot Air Balloon festival was held from February 21-24, 2013. 

We left at 4:00 AM in Antipolo and made our way to Pampanga only experiencing traffic when we got to the festival itself which was held in Clark Freeport Zone. 

There were so many people that we had to park our cars very, very far from the site of the event. We walked a long, long way, trudging along grass and gravel, while dust seemed to come from everywhere, we even went through a tunnel just to get to the festival. 

We were walking with so many people and some of them were joking that the long walk was already similar to a 'panata' or a promise/pilgrimage.  

Colorful balloons making their way up to the sky. 

Although the hot air balloons could already be seen from afar, they were not as many as I had hoped to see- (We were not able to see the Darth Vader balloon T.T )  maybe because it was too cloudy and the sun wasn't out yet or maybe we should have arrived earlier. But like as always we just made the most of what was in front of us. 

Spectators by the fence await for the amazing sights. 

Project 365: Week 2

As posted earlier this year(around last week of January), I started with Project 365.  This post contains photos that were taken from January 31,2013 - February 6, 2013.  As the little project went on, I start to think what shot should I take, what should I do?  So My mental state was thinking of doing things differently.  So without much further ado here are photos 8-14.

January 31, 2013 - #8 Ridges

As of this day, I was puzzled why shooting macro in with a reversed kit lens, doesn't give me proper exposure. In my week one blogpost, on day 5; I was perplexed as I had to bump up the ISO way up to 6400(so that's the reason why its all grainy).  I read somewhere that shooting with a reverse ring you'll have to manually adjust the aperture of the lens(which can be done with an older lens), and of course contact points from the lens to the camera body isn't communicating which results to setting the ISO really high. 

I worked my way around it by trial and error.  I used, a wireless trigger(not sure of the brand) and a Canon 430 EXII.  Placing the flash near the subject, and setting it in M(manual) to set the power output manually.  I had to shoot a few test shots, for framing, and light positioning since macro and using strobes are not my strength(do I have any?). It's tough tiring and tedious, but once you got the desired shot, you'll be happy.

Project 365: Week 1

One night, while I was in the office, I was looking for a camera app for my phone and I encountered Project365.  Then my head started asking questions, Can I really shoot 1 photo a day? Can I really take on this daily without forgetting?  Can I have add this to my daily routine?

During the start of the year, I had free time since I didn't have any scheduled shoots.  I felt that my photographic skills are deteriorating and I needed to keep on shooting no matter what the circumstances are.  

So I went ahead and downloaded the app 'Project 365', which forces me to shoot a photo a day for the whole year.  This app is tied to my mobile device(iPhone 4S) but I think it would be best to shoot with my camera(Canon 500d) in case I have it with me.  So my primary would be my DSLR, and secondary as my mobile device. 

January 24, 2013 #1 And It Begins

I started late for this side project (January 24, 2013).

#1 was shot with my iPhone.  The image on the right was shot on the night of 1/24/2013, same as the screenshot of the Project 365 app, bottom right is a self portrait shot 1/15/2013.  I put all of them together using Picsart app.  Images on the right were edited with Snapseed.

I like starting of with a collage as it puts together multiple shots. 

January 25, 2013 - #2 Safety and Security

At work, there are lockers that always mocked me to shoot them.  I finally had the chance to shoot it, since no one was around, and the security guard wasn't looking(oh yes, mobile phones and cameras are not allowed in the office). Shot with iPhone edited with Snapseed.

Our Adventures: Coron Day 5

Day 5 of our Coron Adventure was actually our last day :( Bohooo hoo! :(

But we still wanted to make the most of our trip so while our flight was in the afternoon we walked around the town (plus we had to get souvenirs) so we set out to this stall in the market that makes keychains and can even personalize them.  

Friendly neighborhood lizard. 

This lizard was actually lounging about in our hotel. Paul was just happy as he followed the lizard around clicking away.