Captured

I was assigned by BMI to take photos of the Continental singers‘ performance held in CCF Ortigas on March 29, 2008. A couple of days before their performance, however, I tagged along to photograph them performing at the Quezon City circle to entertain the crowd before members of Harvest Christian Fellowship (the church I attend) evangelized.

The Continental Singers are known for the award winning musical, “Dreamer”, which tells about the famous story of Joseph from the Bible.

On August 15, 2008, Digital Photographer (Philippines) Magazine brought Clay Blackmore and Parish Kohanim to Manila to speak about the technical, marketing, and creative aspects of photography.

Parish is now one of my all-time favorite photographers whom I look up to - his photos are timeless works of art! It was such a pleasure to meet him and watch how he works.

Other than being a skilled photographer, Clay Blackmore is an amazing salesman who so generously shared some of his sales and marketing secrets

So, here are some of the photos I took during the hands-on portion of the 3-day workshop, set at Fernbrook Garden in Alabang:

Parish just loves to put his models on trees, it seems It was really wonderful, though, how it gave an unusual and unexpected effect:

Yes, we had young ballerinas model for us, too! So fun. Here are more captures of them:

And, finally, my favorite photo from the shoot - a candid that I took while the young ladies were getting ready to be photographed:

Parachute Band is a Christian group from New Zealand, consisting of five young musicians who replaced the original Parachute band in 2006. They came to Manila on November 23, 2007 to perform and I was fortunate enough to be one of the photographers covering the event.

It was a memorable night of worship and praise! And it was a blessing to hear Omega’s testimony - such an inspiring story of faith.

Rafa (short for “Rafael”) is such a sweet, mild-mannered baby boy! He hardly ever complains, except when he’s hungry or sleepy. Lucky parents! I always tell Jackie that whenever I see her My own little one has always loved to complain from the time that he was born. Raffa had just turned 4 months old when I took these at their home. He has the most gorgeous big, brown eyes, expressive features and was such a joy to photograph.

This photoshoot was really fun and quite an experience for me! Chris, an IT consultant,  has known my husband since grade school. He has been acquainted with his fiancee, Jamie - a psychiatrist - since they were in college. We were supposed to shoot at Chris’ garden at his residence at a very distant part of Quezon City that day, but the menacing clouds in the sky made us decide to relocate and shoot much closer to where we met up. Our first stop was at a park in one of the Greenhills subdivisions - not the prettiest looking place in the world, but it had to do, considering we were trying to make sure we could get some shots done before it started to rain.

By the time we ran out of places to shoot in the park, it hadn’t rained yet! So we decided to try and shoot at a small outdoor area that I knew of that was really close to where I live,  Liberty Park on Shaw Blvd. By the time we got there, the sun was shining like crazy!

And, hey - it didn’t rain a single drop that afternoon!

I can’t wait until the wedding! French Kiss (the bakeshop I am part-owner of) is making the cake, of course I hope to be able to steal some shots during the wedding!

I’ve always been interested in photography ever since I was a child. My grandparents (dad’s side) and my dad loved photography, and my grandma even had her own darkroom equipment. They lived in Guam for several years, and my grandpa, being an archeologist who was working there, would often take photos of the natives who lived there as well as the landscapes around them. I just love browsing through the old photographs that they once took during their adventures and I truly appreciate being able to see what they saw through these now fading sepia images.

When I was a child, our first family SLR (a canon!) was unfortunately…well - hogged by my brother (LOL! Love you, E) and I was rarely ever able to use it. I officially owned my very own SLR (also a Canon EOS) around 2002, given to me by my then-boyfriend (now  hubby), who knew about my love for photography. Unfortunately, back in 2003, while on a trip to the US, I accidentally left the camera bag (with the camera in it, of course) in the plane, under my seat! I was never able to retrieve it. Needles to say, I was so devastated. While on the trip, though, we purchased a Canon digital P&S. We used it to take all my son’s photos from the time he was born in 2005 up to the time I finally purchased my very first digital SLR in 2007 - a Canon Rebel xt (can you tell how much we love Canon?). I just had to -it was getting very frustrating trying to get creative with all the limitations of the P&S.

I wanted to familiarize myself better with my camera, get to know Photoshop more and hone my creativity, so I decided to psych myself up and join the 365 Days group at Flickr, wherein you take one self portrait everyday for a whole year. Phew - what a challenge! It’s not easy trying to come up with something creative everyday! One can’t help but take a few quick snapshots here and there.

Pretty soon, though, I was getting extremely bored with selfies and so tired of seeing myself all over my photostream, so I decided to join another group, Project 365. It’s similar to the 365 Days group, but over there you can take photos of any subject. Since portraits are what I love to do the most, I decided to use my son as my subject every single day. And to this day, I’m proud to say that I haven’t missed a single day of either project - hooray!

I have learned so much from joining these groups. I’ve become so much more familiar with my camera and taking photos of my son everyday has taught me so much about shooting uncooperative toddlers - LOL! So even when there are those days when I wish I didn’t have to deal with either of the 365’s, I can still say that I don’t regret making the choice of joining these groups at all.

I’ve been able to practice taking portraits of my friend’s and family’s kids, as well as a few couple shots, and some concerts and I am pretty confident to say that I’m ready to take my hobby one step further and start doing this professionally. I just love the reactions I get from the people I shoot when they’re happy with the results. It’s just incredible being able to capture those fleeting moments for people to treasure in the years to come.