Day 15 - Colors

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 15 - Colors
Apple iPod Touch

Vehicular bridge over the NLEX spur.
Tabang, Guiguinto, Bulacan

I don't think that there's any occasion but there are a lot of flags such as these in our area.

Day 14 - Pusakal

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 14 - Pusakal
1/50 sec. exposure, f/11 aperture
ISO 200, 135mm focal length

This cat is just one of a lot of other stray cats in our neighborhood. I caught this one sleeping on a bench. He didn’t show any reaction at being obviously woken up from a nice nap.

Day 13 - Cayenne

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 13 - Cayenne
1/100 sec. exposure, f/8 aperture
ISO 200, 57mm focal length

Caught a Porsche Cayenne in traffic along Aurora Ave. in San Juan. Brand-spanking-new! That was fun.

And, no, even in traffic our vehicle was not able to keep up with this Porsche.

Day 12 - Tarps and Trapos

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 12 - Tarps and Trapos
Apple iPod Touch

This has always been the case, that the local politician has to advertise what he has done for his constituency. Was the advertising necessary? Not for the people. It’s the people’s money, and they should expect it to be put to good use, and not to buy tarp advertising.

Day 11 - Trinoma

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 11 - Trinoma
Canon EOS 550D
1/40 sec. exposure, f/8 aperture
ISO 1600
24mm focal length
11 photos stitched with Hugins Panorama Creator

It is never a good idea to shoot panoramic pictures of a mall or any high volume traffic area. You’d end up with repeating people or, worse, headless people.

Day 10: Village Rotunda

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 10: Village Rotunda
Canon EOS 550D
1/60 sec., f/7
ISO 200
18mm focal length

It was almost sundown when I took this picture. It was too cloudy in the east, and the sunset was not very visible.

Day 9 (Additional) Night Photography

It rained the night before, just when the moon was full. But last night the skies were clear and my son and I took the opportunity to take some night shots.

Moon Shot
Canon EOS 550D
1/500 sec., f/14
ISO 400
135mm focal length

Top:  The moon was so bright. Cropped from 18mp to 1200x800.

Taking a Shot at the Moon
Canon EOS 550D
1/40 sec., f/5.7
ISO 400
64mm focal length

Second: My son, Kenneth taking a shot of the moon. He uses a Nikon D80, with a 70mm-300mm lens. Yup, he uses a Nikon and I use a Canon. He also has more lenses, courtesy of my brothers who use Nikon D90s.

Night Clouds
10 sec, f/3.5
ISO 400
19mm focal length

Third: Night clouds. This was tricky and I don't think it worked out well enough.

Day 9: Itlog na Pula

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 9: Itlog na Pula
Canon EOS 550D
1/200 sec., f/5
ISO 100
47mm focal length
No flash

It’s an inside joke. I’m sorry, I just had to post this.

Day 8: Light Rain

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 8: Light Rain
Canon EOS 550D
1/40 sec., f/5.7
ISO 800
135mm focal length

It rained for practically the whole day. I waited for it to stop, but unfortunately, it was already evening and it was still drizzling.

This was shot in the early evening. No flash, just a flashlight. Seriously, I use flashlights most days. This time, I only had one assist, Darwi, and I was able to use only one flashlight.

Again, because the picture was dark, there’s not much for processing. I cropped it a bit, making the water drop a bit off center.

There are days, that all I want is a prime lens, 50mm, f/1.8 or better.

Day 7 - Ready for Occupancy

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 7: Ready for Occupancy
Canon EOS 550D
10 seconds exposure, f/10
ISO 400 
18mm focal length

I had some problems on the post-processing on this one. The light was from a strong amber streetlight, on a yellow ochre painted house. The sky was a bit cloudy, with a waxing moon (about three-quarters). 


[Tech talk follows. You can skip this part.] I do my post-processing on GIMP, and usually limit it to adjusting the levels. I'm not sure if I could have gotten better results with the Canon RAW file editor. The MacBook needs to visit the shop. I think it's a hard disk problem. But I digress.  


This time, I had to adjust using the curves as well. If you're familiar with the tools and the pictures, you can imagine that the histogram would be high on the dark end, with the red spread thin from up to the highlights. The green and blue would be spikes on the shadows and that's it. You need to adjust the curves on the greens and blues to get the dark blue sky. Otherwise, the black sky would blend with the top of the house, resulting in an invisible roof. [End tech talk.]


I am learning a lot about my camera and what it can do. In an ideal world, I would have used a wider lens. The 18mm on a Canon EOS 550D is roughly equivalent to a 2mm on a full-frame DSLR or a 35mm film SLR. For this kind of a shot, I would have wanted a wider lens, bordering on a fish-eye. Like any photographer, the wish list is very long and keeps getting longer. [End of more tech talk.]

I don't blame the equipment, in fact, I am pushing my camera to see both my limits and the camera's as well. This is the edge of the envelope as far as this goes.


This house was finished before Christmas, but the owners have not yet moved. This is the same site as the bulldozer pic I posted a while back.

Day 6: Boxing Christmas

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 6: Boxing Christmas
Apple iPod Touch

Christmas Season 2011 is officially over.

The Christmas decorations were down, stowed and boxed this morning. By the time I got up there was nothing left but a neat box of decorations, except for the Christmas lights. I'm not sure if the Christmas lights would be taken down anytime soon.

I haven't tried instagram yet as I haven't downloaded the app. I find the tilt-shift feature as pretty compelling.

This may sound weird but although I'm more comfortable with my Canon EOS 550D, I can and do use any camera available. My phone camera is a little dinky relatively low-res device and when there's something I find amusing, I take the phone out and take the picture.

I have a wish list of camera related devices and accessories. Sadly, I'm not sure I can fulfill the list any time soon.

Day 5: Venus

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 5: Venus
Canon EOS 550D
10 sec. f/5.7
ISO 800 18mm focal length

I was trying to frame the star (I think that's Venus) between the branches, and the electric post.

Day 4: Half Moon

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 4: Half Moon
Canon EOS 550D
1/80 sec. f/5.7
ISO 200 126mm focal length

I wasn’t able to take a picture of the half-moon while it was rising, and serving as background to some structures or trees. This picture was taken around 6:00pm and already getting dark.

[Note to self: either take a shot of the moon rise or moon set, or borrow a camera with a longer lens in order to see the details of the moon.]

Day 3: Shelfware

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project

Day 3: Shelfware
Canon EOS 550D
1 sec. f/5
ISO 200
18mm focal length

My work shelf with some shelfware.

Day 2: Mt. Arayat

2012 366 Days 366+ Pics Project
Day 2: Mt. Arayat

Canon EOS 550D
1/125 sec. f/7
ISO 200
126mm focal length

Cloudy, muggy afternoon shot of Mt. Arayat, sunset of January 2, 2012. Taken from the subdivision where I live.

366 Days, 366+ Pics, Day 1: Aftermath

Canon EOS550D
1/60sec.,  f/5.6
ISO 200 18mm-135mm lens at 18mm.
Fill flash used. Manually focused.

 Around 12:40am of January 1, the firecrackers have died out, and almost nobody else was out on the streets in our subdivision.

Since we don’t live in the metro, the smoke was a lot less than what we were used to. Supposedly, there was also less fireworks this year. Considering that we live very near the firecracker capital of the Philippines, that’s a big improvement.

With my son, Kenneth, we went out to take shots of fireworks. I forgot to bring my tripod and had lousy shots of fireworks. Kenneth had several good ones. He’s had some practice these past few weeks.

At the street corner, the trash we found was mainly from a judas belt and several flares and fountains. Looking at this pic, I definitely see that I have a lot of work to do before I can be satisfied with my shots. Oh well.

2012 366 Days and 366+ Pictures Project

It’s a leap year this year, and I was thinking of doing a 366 pictures project. There are several things this would help me accomplish. If I keep at it, I can be sure of getting a daily practice with my camera. Not shooting on a regular basis makes me rusty and easily forget the simple things. I need this more to practice my skills, and develop them, than for anything else. I just hope I can be persistent in this. I already have several dates on my calendar for night photography. And several dates for early morning, dawn, or dusk photo shoots. I don’t think I’ll do people that much, specially portraiture. Most of the pics would be of random objects. At some point, I would be doing panoramic shoots as well as HDR attempts. I will definitely be posting some action shots, as well as light paintings and long exposures. I would also be posting multiple pics for some days. I just hope that I don’t go zero for a lot of days. I definitely see some lag time between shooting the pics and posting them. The posts will also be on my other blogs, as well as Twitter (maybe), Facebook (some), Google+ (definitely). I’ll try to add the camera settings for most of the pictures. I would also be posting some guest shots every so often. Most of these would be by Kenneth. So here goes nothing.

Tractor, Street Lamp, Full Moon and a Cat

The tractor shots are not HDR samples. The faux HDR effect was the result of light painting with a yellow street light (50 meters in that direction), and a full moon.
Canon EOS 550D camera with 18-135mm lens
10 second and 15 second exposure time
f/3.5
19mm focal length
ISO 800

I also used an LED flashlight to light up portions of the tractor tracks.

The cat was sleeping inside the tractor engine cowling. I guess I woke it up.

Moon Rise and Lightning: Studies in Night Photography

I was trying to catch a glimpse of the moon Tuesday night, but for some reason, I always fail to get a picture of the moonrise. It's always cloudy when the moon rises, and I have to wait a while till the moon gets to clear the clouds. Around 9:30pm when the moon was about to clear some clouds, there was some lightning on the western sky and this was quite a show. I felt the moist air from the potential rain clouds getting nearer, and I thought that the thunder was getting louder, but it didn't rain that night.

Here's a time lapse view of the western sky. There was some lightning while the shot was being taken, but, sadly, I am not yet that good a photographer to take a picture of the lightning.

I will continue my studies on night photography, to perfect my technique. I'm taking the time to learn individual techniques, from shooting subjects to lighting concepts, and up to post processing on the computer. I am taking it slow, as there's no need for me to hurry.

For now, I just wish I had a polarizer, and a remote control.

Back to Basics: Starting Photography All Over Again

It's been a while since the last time I wanted to study photography. When I had my first SLR camera, an entry-level Canon T60 with an f/1.8 50mm prime lens, it took me a while to learn the ins and outs of the camera as well as photography in general. (I guess being a techie, I have to look at the objective with the tool in mind.)

There was a point in time that I was pretty much into the technical details of it, that I always had a ready roll of film somewhere. The subjects were whatever was available. Good thing that the subjects were fun to be with, the kids were growing, and there were a lot of activities at the time.

My son is now into photography (he has his own SLR, a Nikon D80 and lenses, which was given to him by my brothers). But my daughter, Darwi was the one who was my proxy when I was still using the Canon T60. She was not yet 10 years old at the time. Don't let the glasses fool you, she has sharp eyes. Though nowadays, Kenneth is producing better pictures, regardless of the camera used.

Even when the flash unit gave in and died on me, I was still using the camera, mainly for available light photography. Mind you, I had a very good grasp of flash photography. With a manual control, you only need to set the f-stop and shutter speed, get the focusing distance, and shoot like mad with no other adjustment, with the limiting factor being the flash unit. But when that flash finally died, I had no other choice but to be good at making do with available light. (Money was tight and I was not too keen on buying a new flash unit.)

Since I stopped using the SLR, I tried to keep up with the technology. I even had the chance to work for a technical support account which had a lot of cameras to play with. We were supporting the software, but we had the cameras which bundled the software. That was fun, specially when the accounts supporting the camera brands had to ask our help with their tech support calls. I had a chance to handle Sony CD and DVD cameras, along with an early model Cybershot, Fuji and Kyocera cameras, and a Pentax point-and-shoot.

Compared to today's cameras, these had a smaller size pixel count, and relatively rudimentary features. But the great part about these cameras was that the team was on the ground floor of digital still photography (and video) technology.

Along with the software and cameras, the account also had two Macs (an iMac running OS 9, and a laptop running OS X). Now that was the real wow factor back then.

Even after leaving that account, I have had the opportunity to play around with some cameras, and learning their idiosyncracies. Yes, these individual camera models have personalities, quirks, and eccentricities which makes each camera model unique. The key to understanding digital cameras is to stay within the common denominators.

I'm trying to study photography again, from scratch, and I'm starting with RAW files. One thing I've learned through the past few years is that my kids, Kenneth and Darwi, have a better eye for photography than I do. I have no plans of being better than they are, when it comes to taking pictures. I just know that every so often, I can still surprise them with a trick I know. Besides, when it comes to technical, and post, I have more patience than they do. RAW files need a certain amount of patience.

I choose RAW files because of several factors. RAW files (files not picture files) contain all available data, whereas JPEG is a compressed picture file. When editing a file, subsequent edits will degrade the JPEG. Consider RAW files as digital negatives, and JPEGs as prints. Editing the prints (JPEG), you have to blow it up, shoot it again, and then develop. Something like that.

RAW files, however are large. Supposedly, your shots will slow down because of the large file size being saved. But if the camera has a slow burst speed, this is irrelevant. And if you're using flash, the flash cycle time is the limiting factor. In terms of storage, I'd rather have multiple small capacity SD cards, rather than a really large card. And besides, with a 4GB card, that's good for almost 200 RAW files. (Thinking in terms of old school film SLR, that's almost 6 rolls of film.)

Maybe I'll get there, but I'm giving myself six months working at this, to get to a level where I'm comfortable with my technical skill and knowledge. Hopefully, by then I can get better with an eye on the subject.

Unfortunately, for now, the above is an unedited JPEG.

Update: Below the JPEG from the converted and edited (fine-tuned?) RAW file.