Watching the World Go By

For the Morning Grind by Joel Locaylocay

It's going to be a long week. I am girding myself for what is going to be a hectic next couple of days. It looks like I'm going to need more than my usual dose of caffeine to make it through each one. And as busy as I am going to get, I definitely need to pick my camera up a lot more often to make pictures like the one above to literally and figuratively blow off some steam.

Leap of Faith

Due to my decision to not finish my master's degree, I will most likely be teaching part-time (if at all) this coming second semester. I was in no way blindsided about this soon-to-be-fact; I was made perfectly aware that this would be the consequence of my inaction and I am gladly accepting it. Truth be told, if I was given another 'reprieve', I would adamantly refuse such an offer.

I will take my knocks and move on.

But the Finish Line Is in Sight

A lot of people have already lectured me on how little I have left to do before I get my degree, and the most common analogy used in these talks is that of a race. I'm nearly at the finish, so why not call on one last second wind to get myself to cross the line?

I am not arguing the validity of the comparison, but I must question their perspective. Whatever people tell me about how they can relate to this specific part of my life, I must remind them that no one ever can. The same way that I can't claim to know what other people are going through based on their career decisions or the kind of shoes they wear. If I were to offer my own analogy it would be that of a person drowning his sorrows in alcohol (which I have quite some personal experience with as well) looking at the last remnants of liquor in the bottle, and then asking himself whether he should just go ahead and gulp it down.

Would the same people espousing the race analogy still call it a waste if the bottle was left unfinished?

Mr. End meet Mrs. End

I realize that this will pose a number of problems for me and my wife financially, but I don't plan on taking any days off come October. I will be using the time to launch a photography business that has been in development for the past few months. I will be actively engaged in portfolio-building personal projects over the next few months and will be promoting my best work to potential clients wherever and whenever. I also realize that I will not earn anything from this venture right away, but my Susan has firmly assured me that we can do this and that she is with me every step of the way. I count myself blessed to have such a lovely and strong woman in my life.

I am also very fortunate to have the support of a select number of family and friends who have been rooting for me from the beginning. And of course, I always appreciate you, my loyal readers, for embarking on this journey with me.

That Sinking Feeling

I once heard one of my college classmates bemoan the fact that he felt his whole life was on the brink of falling off a cliff over water. I always thought that cliffs are just geological formations that signal where the land ends and the sea begins. Why should I continuously shuffle my feet near the precipice when I can cannonball into the cool water that awaits below and rewrite life from hereon in.

There is definitely more to come...

Stone Soup Light

*This is a repost from my Google+ stream.

This picture finally finds its way out of the freezer today (after four long years). It's my second book cover (first was surprisingly a vector illustration of molecules involved in chemical equilibrium), however it was my first paying job. But this picture is memorable for me beyond that fact because it's the first time I had to really think hard about how to make the shot with limited resources (one flash optically triggered by the popup flash on my Canon 350D) and a very small crew (just me).

I hope this isn't the last picture I get to shoot for books (about chemistry or otherwise).

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**Today was actually last Wednesday (August 22, 2012).

***And I would prefer doing an otherwise-related book rather than a chemistry one next. :-)#

Torta for Dinner

Susan has been on a baking binge lately. She is slowly notching recipe after recipe under her belt. She's starting with the standards and a number of local delicacies, nothing too hoity-toity or exotic. A few weeks back my Ma gave her a recipe for torta (mamon), which she then eagerly tried out. The recipe was actually shared with my Auntie Mye by someone from Madridejos who used to bake the treat. My Ma and Pa's hometown isn't particularly known for its baked goods, so we were a bit skeptical.

However, all that apprehension melted away after the first bite.

And since this blog isn't intentionally about food, then I'm guessing that you're here for a different kind of recipe. A list of the light ingredients can be found after the jump.

Changing Places

Some people are just irreplaceable. Their very absence leaves a void that most often can never be filled. I witnessed such a vacuum firsthand when I came to the university to teach. Our department was nearing the end of its golden age and the Atlases who once held it up were gone. The load that they carried for decades was passed on to the shoulders of those who were left. A colossal task that could have been made bearable if everyone only took on a part of the yoke.

I realized late that the 'love' people unabashedly declared for their profession was not absolute. There was no clear-cut standard for the many shades of this so-called love. Well, self-aggrandizement and self-preservation, maybe. There was now a gaping maw from where the department was and where it ought to be. In a nutshell, the bridge was out, and people weren't exactly as eager to fill this gap than to cross it at all costs. It became clear at that stage that it was time to rebuild, but it became apparent as the re-edification process wore on that some parts were missing and that some were unfortunately 'decorative'. I (as have others, albeit behind my back) have found myself to be lacking, yet I could not completely comprehend for the life of me why I threw my body to the span.

As of today, the bridge stands unfinished. It is held together by a few determined parts that have now been stretched too thin from wear and tear, holding on due to some misplaced sense of duty and familiarity. But for as long as these parts hold, the span that will once again carry the department to its renaissance will never get built. Not until people stop waiting for the next Atlas to come along, not until they search their souls for the meaning of the word love, and not until it is allowed to fall.

It has been over ten years since I first nervously stepped into a classroom full of students. Each semester since has passed by in a dreamy blur. Each new year brought its share of new faces, new stories, and old endings --- my life as a teacher became episodic. And it seems that even though nothing seemed to stay the same, everything that mattered was at a standstill.

For what has seemed like an eternity, I can again finally smell change in the air. And before the year ends, I am writing a new ending to one last episode.

Perseverance Pays (in Kind)

A few days back as I was waiting in vain (like the song) for some Perseids love, I had to contend with a zealous moon. I couldn't keep the shutter open for too long because Luna would wash the sky out.

I planned on an elaborate method of using moon-shaped ND gels held by a black piece of wire to selectively underexpose the moon. It's easier to do a composite in Photoshop, I know, but I can't afford a license for that yet. (Lightroom more than suffices for my current processing needs anyway.) But since it was around 4 AM and my brain did not have its daily dose of caffeine yet, I decided to use my finger... to surprisingly good (for me, at least) and funny results.

This is probably as close to 'compositing' as I will get.

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This post was originally shared on my Google+ stream. If you have a G+ account, please feel free to add me to your circles (here's a link to my profile - gplus.to/jrlocaylocay). If you're not on G+ yet and you're experiencing Facebook fatigue, then you can sign up for one here - https://plus.google.com/

Watching the World Go By

Sanctuary (?)

The Lit Landscape (Part 2)

I'm a fan of the hidden nook. While at Cebu Marine Resort at Cordova, where I made this picture of Mangrove saplings, with the family, I found a patch of more mature trees that enclosed a strip of sand at the end of the concrete pier. I peered in and  saw an opportunity to squeeze in an off-camera flash into the scene below.

I changed my camera settings to underexpose the scene by about two stops. I lowered myself a bit more to get a better angle.  I planned to light the tree trunk on camera left, so I changed my position to juxtapose the yellow leaves on upper camera left with the trunk. It was a matter of asking my assistant, the lovely Susan, to move into position with the flash, which had a 1/4 CTO gel on and a grid to warm up and restrict the light coming off it respectively. I shot a couple of frames and varied the shutter speed to control ambient contribution until I got a mix that I was happy with.

I could have shot the manicured lawns and the ornamented interiors of the resort, but I'm sure that most of their camera-carrying clientele have already snapped a picture or twenty of these sights. I am a fan of the concealed cranny because I believe there is beauty to be found and revealed where it is not immediately apparent.

The Lit Landscape (Part 1)

For a portrait guy, I sure have been shooting a lot of landscapes lately. Truth be told, I am working on a number of personal projects that involve portraiture, but these are just in the planning stages for now. I have resigned myself to doing more deliberate and thought-out shoots to generate pictures to add to my portfolio, since I don't have as much time and energy as I would like. As a consequence, I also get to do fewer sittings, so I grab any opportunity to use my camera in between.

On the same day that I shot the picture I talked about in a previous post, I found a patch of Mangroves by the concrete pier that I was standing on. I stared at them for quite some time, watching them sway about in the wind. A light must have gone on in my head because the next thing I know I was grabbing a hot shoe flash from my bag. After which the following thought process ensued ---

Shoot it in under ambient (midday) light.
Blah.

Okay, let's switch WB to tungsten.
Much better. I like how it makes the water a surreal sort of blue.

Let's light this sucker!
At ISO 200 and f/11 your flash contribution isn't registering in the image.

Power on full! We can live with the seconds-long recycle.
Okay, the flash contribution is showing, but it's lighting the stalks and it's a bit distracting.

Let's get the wife Susan to dangle the flash over the water. Maybe ask her to hold it close to parallel to the ground so it just skims off the leaves.
Nice. Great idea on skimming it off the leaves.
Hey, thanks. You helped too.

And if you're wondering why I talk to myself, those who know me well will assure you that as long as I keep the internal conversations with myself to myself, I'll be fine.

Oh yeah, the picture.

Watching the World Go By

Fortress of Solitude

Saving Stories

Great pictures tell great stories. The picture above is unremarkable at best, but I believe that the story behind it deserves telling. Some moments do not simply lend themselves to repetition and they become lost in memory after they pass.

This was shot on a gusty, blustery Sunday afternoon that would see typhoon Gener ravage the northern part of the archipelago while still making its presence felt everywhere else in the country. The people in the image are harvesting shells, the kind that's usually boiled (often with vegetables) to make soup. They scoured the entire length of the beachfront for hours, wading in thigh-deep waters in that inclement weather. However, it wasn't until I passed some of them on my way home that I noticed that the plastic gallons that they used as containers were barely a third of the way full.

And it was at this moment that I decided to give this image its best chance to recount the story of these shell harvesters because I truly believe that awareness can be a powerful thing. I don't normally ask as much of an image in post as I have this particular picture, but my original capture was rather flat and undramatic. By post-processing purposefully, I pushed it to its limits to extract every detail in the tale that I begged it to narrate.

This is not a great picture, not by any stretch, and I would not normally share it, but it is an image that gave me both pause and perspective. And sometimes you have to save the picture, so it can tell its story.

Using Custom WB as a Creative Tool

Red to Blue

In as much as it is a necessary task when shooting in RAW, I have no stamina for prolonged post-processing (PP) work. I would rather be out there making pictures rather than sitting in front of a computer monitor. I do most (lately, it seems to be all) of my PP work in Lightroom, which works for me since I mainly just make adjustments to the sliders under the 'Basic' and 'Detail' panels for the pictures that I shoot. And for this very reason, I always strive to get the shot right, as I have previsualized it, before I even press the shutter. If I can't make it in camera, then I won't fake it in post.

This brings me to an article I read on setting and using a custom white balance (WB) to create an interesting scene from an otherwise ordinary location. I didn't really fiddle with the WB setting on my camera until about two years ago when I wanted to get more consistent color temperatures when working with flash, and even then I mainly just used the preset modes. If you need a primer on WB, I recommend you read this simple and easy-to-understand article on the subject.

I wanted to test the principle of the technique, so I opted to do the reverse of what's shown in the article that I linked to above. I also wanted to find out if it would work on non-human subjects, so I choose to shoot my wife's potted plants.

Okay, on with the experiment! It starts with setting the camera's WB to 'Daylight', and then shooting the scene with a red gel in front of the lens.

I wonder if I can pass this off as an abstract art piece. I mean this guy certainly pulled it off. But I digress. I shot the concrete wall above the plants since it was as close to a neutral gray as I could get. I then used the file to set my WB to a custom value, after which I set my WB setting to 'Custom'.

So, did it work?