Watching the World Go By

Unburdened

Something Good Can Happen After 3 am

There is a short window of time, right after the moon sets and just before the preglow of sunrise begins to show over the horizon, when the sky reveals its more oft-missed wonders to me --- the stars.

Under the right conditions and with a lot of luck, I can usually make out a lot more of them than one usually sees in the city, given that I'm viewing them through a sickly mixture of halogen and fluorescent lights. Watching the sky in all its glittering glory takes me back to sleepless summer nights when I was a teenager, when my friends and I would go to the beach and wait for the sun to come up. We would sit on the sand, listen to the waves lap up the shore, and just talk for hours on end. Good times.

And although I am a fan of daybreak, there is just something about a starry sky that holds me in awe and makes me feel a little more hopeful that the coming day is just going to be all right. At an age where mornings are viewed with so much disdain and dread, I believe I may just have found my own slice of heaven.

1 out of 259

Poet Rita Dove once said, "Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful." I am fortunate to have a twofold insight into that wonderful passage --- First, as a chemist, I have experienced firsthand how a substance can be refined via the effervescent purification of the distillation process. Second, as the occasional 'poet', I can appreciate how choosing the right words for the right occasion can make one's message far greater than the sum of its parts.

These words resonate in photography as well. I believe now (and it took me a while to get to this point) that if you want to make a great picture, you just don't need to get the technical aspect right, but you have to consider the creative elements of the image (and more so). Your picture must tell a story. And very often this story is achieved by choosing what part of the image to show in the frame. And even when you feel that you have a lot of good pictures that meet the criteria, not all of them will be great. Trust me, they're not. (Quite often, you have to be your own worst critic.)

I read an article for photographers who want to improve their skill; the piece was written by a professional who said that if you get ten good pictures in a year, then you can consider that to be a good year. So, in as much as I would like to 'say more' by putting out more pictures, I chose the picture below out of 259 (culled from nearly 400 images) to tell my story of last Saturday's department party*.

Do you think I was able to tell my story of the events that transpired well enough?

Please feel free to throw in your two cents in the 'comment well' below. Thanks for reading.

*Other pictures from the event will still be posted for the purposes of documentation. :-)#

Watching the World Go By

Busy-ness

Before Sunrise

I have chased many a sunrise in the past (and I still do). One time, Carlo and I were literally driving like mad just to shoot one before harsh morning light reared its ugly head. Whether you are a photographer or not, witnessing the break of day is awe-inspiring. The only catch is you have to be there pretty early to capture it.

I have mistimed shooting a sunrise many times before. In the tropics, the whole event can be over in under a minute or two. Yeah, it's that quick. If you're just setting up your  tripod, then you'll miss it. If you're still fiddling with your camera settings, then you'll miss it. If you take the time to tell the photographer next to you how wonderful it is, then you'll miss it. With these lessons learned, I make it a point to be at my pre-scouted location (usually selected a day before or earlier even) at least 30 minutes before the sun is scheduled to bathe the world in golden light.

*Thanks to the lovely Susan Locaylocay for shooting this picture.

Okay, so now what do you do while you wait?

Shoot the scene before the sun comes up.

You'll often be surprised with what you get. As I have mentioned in previous posts, the camera and the human eye don't perceive the world the same way, so what may look muted and dark to you may look entirely different to the camera. Plus, you can always manipulate your shooting settings to render the scene in front of you in a different way.

  

 Yeah, it pays to show up early. :-)#

Finding a New Home

Painted Light by Joel Locaylocay

I have been looking for a home for my more recent work for a while now. Aside from being able to showcase my images, the service should also recognize the effort I've put into creating them and protect my intellectual property at the same time. It looks like my pictures may just have found a home in 500px. Please keep watching this space for my best work, and hopefully pretty soon, I'll be able to put up a current portfolio.

As always, thanks for the support.

In Profile: Carlo Soliven (Part 2)

Part 2 - Behind the lens

I had the privilege and pleasure of having fellow photographer, Carlo Soliven, sit for me in a turning-tables sort of portrait session while he was home a few months back. You can view my post and the pictures from that shoot here.

This post is a feature of the beautiful pictures that Kaloy, as I fondly call him, makes with his camera.

As he is currently working in Singapore, let's start off with his classic shot of the iconic Merlion.

Carlo is currently making his way into fashion photography. He also utilizes an off-camera flash or two when he shoots, but is equally comfortable in natural light. Here are some of my  favorites from his more current fashion-inspired shoots.

I love how he integrates strong elements of composition into his portraits, especially the lines in both images above.

Being a strobist disciple himself, I also admire his restraint when using light. We seem to agree that drama is best created when one doesn't light everything in the frame, which he does superbly in the image above.

However, at the end of the day, when Kaloy would like to take a more deliberate pace. He goes back to shooting landscapes, which I believe he is equally good at. A zen-like exercise that I can definitely relate to.

The above shot is an HDR image of a bridge at the Punggol Promenade. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of HDR, but I definitely like the way he processes this image, still showing restraint without going overboard on all that dynamic range goodness.

Whether shooting landscapes or models, Carlo seems to have both skills in the bag.

*All pictures in this post are copyrighted to Carlo Soliven and used with his expressed written permission.

Land(e)scapist

I would like to think that I know enough about photography to make a decent portrait of a person. Well at the very least, I know which end of the camera should point at my subject. The past few years of my pursuit of the secrets of this craft have been directed towards making memorable pictures of people. However, I often have the opportunity to travel, during which I am presented with someplace new to put in front of my lens.

I am not a landscape guy. But, I do appreciate the world-melting-away moment that one experiences while carefully framing and making the shot of a still scene. There is a sense of fulfillment to be had when I see the shot I visualized minutes before appear on the camera's LCD screen. I won't pretend to know half of what a landscape photographer worth his salt knows, but I find that this therapeutic exercise actively engages my composition skills and forces me to think.

I have also come to realize that in many ways shooting landscapes isn't that much different from shooting people. Allow me to elaborate on that with a few examples.

Example no. 1 - Identify your subject's strong features and highlight them.

There was nothing interesting happening in both the sky and the water. However, I had this concrete pier creating a strong line leading into the horizon, so I chose to use it as the focal point of the image above.

Example no. 2 - Use light to flatter your subject.

Used to working with off-camera flash, I would readily take one out of the bag if I were shooting under the lighting conditions of the scene above. Having not quite yet reached the point where I can 'paint' a landscape with flash successfully, I opted to use a tripod instead. A slower shutter speed allowed me to scrounge for available light and bring out the colors and features of the landscape. I would like to think that save for the inside of a whale at the bottom of the ocean on a moonless night that there is always light to be found — one just has to know how to look for it.

I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed shooting landscapes. It definitely helped that I rise early to catch daybreak and wait out sunsets until the sky turns black. However, I will always find my home in shooting pictures of people, but I don't see why I can't mix the two together and see what comes out.

In Profile: Carlo Soliven (Part 1)

Part 1 - In front of the lens

There is always a ton of some trepidation when one is asked to make a portrait of another photographer. It isn't just because one runs the risk of looking like a complete idiot in front of someone who could very well know what you're trying to achieve and realizes, before you do, that you're failing miserably. It's also because most photographers are a lot more comfortable behind the lens rather than in front of it. As such, there's a lot of fidgeting and wrangling before you finally get one to relax long enough just so you can shoot a picture of them blinking.

I had such a challenge an opportunity when I had my cousin, Carlo, sit for me. We started out with a standard head-shot-type image. Three lights in total --- one key, two rims --- with the subject on a black background.

You might think that Mr. Soliven doesn't smile all that much, but we actually went through a LOT of shots just to get to this one, since we were laughing most of the time. In fact, we were laughing so much that we actually had to shoot one in profile just so we wouldn't have to make eye contact, which always led to us chuckling in a second or two.

It was unexpectedly one of my favorites from the set. Plus, I actually managed to get a sharp enough picture as I actually stopped suppressing a laugh long enough to press the shutter.

I was pleased with the shots I got so far, but I also wanted to throw in a picture that told the viewer that he is looking at a photographer. I wanted to achieve this without bringing in the oft-used camera into the frame because that has been done by nearly every photographer who has ever shot a photographer. I decided to bring in a ring flash adapter into the picture to not just add an interesting element into the frame, but also to show that this is someone who shoots using off-camera flash.

Carlo actually bought and liked this idea and the resulting image. However, I thought that the ring flash adapter might compete for attention with the subject since it was the brightest element in the picture, so I decided to shoot one where I could exploit the aforementioned quality by using it as a framing device.

I rendered the resulting image in black and white, which in my opinion made it a lot more interesting. However, it doesn't really matter what I think looks interesting because at the end of the session it's all up to the subject to decide whether I made the whole awkward experience pay off.

I hope I did.

Note: 'Part 2 - Behind the lens' will feature Carlo's more recent work and will be posted soon.

Watching the World Go By

Adversity