Photography – Page 3 – The Skytreader

Lovely Lantern Lights

I expected rain to fall, maybe like last year, probably worse. The week was weird weather-wise after all. I made it a point to bring my umbrella, for Getsurikai’s sake. Thank heavens I had no need for it.

I arrived at UP late by my standards. For the past three years, I’d usually arrive before lunch then hang out for some hours, reading a book I brought, until my friends start texting me, asking where in UP am I. I’d do that to avoid being hassled by the traffic caused by the Parade. For some reason the traffic-hassle didn’t give me enough incentive to get-up early this year. I was late but it was a nice start to the adventure as I got an opportunity to get a before-the-show feel for the event.

This horse is too camera-shy. Everytime I’d point my lens at him he’d turn his head the other way. Maybe he’s proffering me his best angle? Maybe he thinks my lens is some kind of a laser cannon*? This is the best of him I got: snout complete with matching calesa.

I was happily shooting around Oblation Plaza when I saw our ROTC squad advancing towards Palma Hall. I remembered that they will be one of the first parties to parade. So I hurriedly ended my little photoshoot, reasoning with myself that I need to conserve batteries as I don’t have any spare.

But not long after, the beauty of the Carillion took me in…

We decided to station ourselves in front of Melchor Hall being that it is at the last leg of the Parade. Last leg == night time (eventually) == more awesome for the lovely lantern lights.

That said, with all my hurrying, we still had lots of idle time when our group was finally completed. Idle time + SLR/SLT camera =

…rotating camera men!

And the attention of cuteness!

The Parade started with UP Offices. I saw some personal acquaintances like…

UP President Alfredo Pascual

Okay. I kid. I saw some personal acquaintances like…

The CRS team, most of which are people from DCS.

Come to think of it, the deeper I got into the CS curriculum (and knew more teachers/people from the Department), the better my fate during batch runs became. Hmmmm….

And then came the UP ROTC in their distinct guardia civil outfit,

Inside their Ranks — I wonder, if a lightning storm ensues, will those hats act like lightning rods? Are the wearers safe from brain-frying and related phenomena?

Ironically followed by College of Arts and Letters float honoring Rizal and the Revolution,

Above pictured is Sir Wystan de la Peña, head of the Department of European Languages and my Professor in a GE coded European Languages 50 (EL 50). Take that course under him. I personally learned a lot from Señor de la Peña’s lectures. It is one of the most worthwhile courses I ever took.

The parade was scattered with awesomazing lanterns (duh!) and acquaintances that it is pointless to just blah on with words. Visual overload here we go!

Like last year, there were gaps in the Parade, most likely caused by people like yours truly who are so keen on taking pictures. And it was starting to get dark. Perfect for pictures like these…

At this point, I learned/realized a few things in photography.

You really can’t do much if a scene’s lighting is poor to begin with. Not unless you have your own lighting equipment. But (a) I don’t have that and (b) that looks too out-of-place, space-taking, and inconsiderate for an event like the Lantern Parade.
Unlike a point-and-shoot’s flash, which fires the lights straight at your subject, an SLR fires flash upwards, assuming there is a ceiling to bounce the light downwards, diffused. This results to a better effect/less glare. There obviously isn’t a ceiling equivalent in outdoors, Lanter Parade set-up. I had to use my hands to direct the flash to my subjects (hood it over the flash like a “ceiling” which will quickly catch the lights and bounce it towards your subject). Thank goodness I realized this quickly.

So, as it was getting dark at this point, it became harder to get decent shots. Lighting was no longer on my side as I was already relying on flash. Otherwise, it’d be too dark or too orange depending on where I decide to shoot.

Above pictured is Eng’g’s Wall-E, one of our lanterns, and the DCS/Cursor contingent of the Parade. Like last year, Eng’g scored with a particularly awesomazing lantern followed by a—wait for it—boring march of Eng’g orgs and banners. My sister, who majors in Broadcast Communication, likens it to dead air i.e., awkward and should-be-avoided pauses in radio productions. Unlike the last three years though, they, at least, weren’t wearing orange. Plus points for the fashion factor!

I took this shot from one of the torches of the Beta Sigma frat men. Their first number was the human chain/snake which I believe is part of their initiation rights. Even if it is my second time seeing this, it was still kind of chilling especially with their chant. I heard someone (was he from βσ?) call their second part kata which is the Karate equivalent of Taekwondo’s poomsae or forms. While their formation and synchronicity might look watch-worthy, it didn’t really catch my attention (maybe ’cause I’ve seen better during my TKD days). So, my eyes were wandering off to better photo-ops, their torch flames in particular. It, however, amuses me that Beta Sigma has their own blend of martial arts.

A few more lanterns and it was finally the turn of my most anticipated college ever. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the ever-fine stars of our lantern show, the College of Fine Arts.

Warning: Awesomeness follows.

And of course, the night wouldn’t be complete without fireworks. It is unfortunate that an untoward incident happened in this year’s fireworks. We were only a few meters away from the fireworks fence when it happened and we saw those wayward fireworks shoot. Here is the statement of UP Diliman’s Chancellor regarding the incident.

Judging by the number of pictures in this post, I’d say that I’ve really had a good time with my camera this Parade. I even exceeded my 300MB monthly upload limit at Flickr that I had to hijack on a new account to fit all these shots in!

That’s all for now. Hope you have a Merry Christmas! ~Chad

*This imagery was inspired by an episode of Pokemon, Bulbasaur-Charmander-Squirtle(-Pikachu!) era. Brock was making rice cakes when Ash noticed a camera lens (wanting to take a picture of Pikachu) appear from behind some bushes. He over-reacted, imagining it to fire a laser projectile of sorts, and ruined their little rice cake picnic. I’ve never been able to shake that episode from my mind since I watched it as a kid.

Hey Kids! New Gear!

(Note: This entry was supposed to go up at my DeviantArt account but then I found out that DeviantArt only allows images in the journal entries of Premium members. So I’m putting it up here.)

Meet my new gear/gun/wand/zanpakuto/(kindred/familiar) spirit/camera. A Sony SLT-A35 whom I have decided to christen “Getsurikai”. Bought with the advice of Joseph Cheng (from DeviantArt). Note that it is different from an SLR.

This is, incidentally (and probably), the last picture from my old Kodak C913 (whom I haven’t bothered to name) which I’ll post online. It is pictured below.

And this is the first picture Getsurikai ever took (so of course it isn’t really one for aesthetics), barring those which it took when I tested it upon delivery. But I didn’t insert the memory card then so they don’t count *wink*.So long buddy. I’ll miss your compact feel, how I can carry you everyday, except when my bag is too crowded already.

I’m not really a fan of anime but I’m quite a huge fan of BLEACH!. Those who know their BLEACH! will know from where did I pattern the name “Getsurikai”. It isn’t very clean Japanese from what I’ve been told but hey, I like the sound of it so I’m taking artistic license. And oh, it literally means “moon grasp” by the way.

These past few days, I’ve been busy trying to get the feel for it. So far, the biggest adjustment I had to make is the placement of controls. Whereas my old Kodak has all controls at the right-hand side, Getsurikai has it both in the left and right-hand side. Kodak has its shooting mode settings on a dial around the shutter button but that is where Getsurikai has its on/off switch, the shooting modes being in a dial at the left of the viewfinder. Imagine what happened the first time I (instinctively) tried to switch modes? Hooha.

But I quickly got over that problem and I’m pretty comfortable with where all the controls are located now. What I’m currently doing is trying to learn all its features before December’s Lantern Parade, which is, if you need to be made aware, a photographer’s idea of a shooting feast.

They’re not much yet but here are some of the results of my test drive.

Aperture Experiments — Just experimenting with aperture settings…

Art Found — Art found in the construction. We are having house renovations right now (with all this mess, I’m affectionately calling the affair “Voluntary House Demolition”). Interestingly, the carpenters used this amazing artwork to cover a hole they’re digging. I don’t know where did their boss, the Architect, got it though.

Thankfully, my room is not involved in the action. I can keep my stuff clean without much effort. Imagine all that dust in my laptop, my external hard drive, and my brand-new camera!.

My room got pretty crowded though, since my parents moved in some stuff (like the old desktop which no one uses now except for printing).

This is my bedside window. Though dark, you’ll still see my bedside lampshade, accomplice whenever I read a book just before going to slumberland. The orange glow comes from the street lamp just outside.

For so long, I’ve wanted to get that shot. I don’t know when I first wanted it though. I first moved in to my room when I was in Grade Five but I only started taking an interest in photography around Fourth Year high school (four years ago!).

Another shot which I’ve wanted to take for so long. Also in my room.

This is my ceiling, just after I hit the switches off at night. This is the sight which I sleep to every night. It doesn’t change depending on the time of the year, nor depending on anything else actually but it can be quite lovely, especially when the lights just turned off and those luminous trappings are fully-charged.It’s not much of a shot (just experimenting with ISO settings) but I’ll re-do this one once the Voluntary House Demolition finishes and I get more space.

My old Kodak actually has pretty good ISO settings; it can go up to 1000. But even with that, all you’ll see is a black screen when you try to take my room @ night pictures.

I remember, four years ago (!), back in Fourth Year Highschool, when I used to keep a dream journal in my (then-GeoCities) website. I had a particularly refreshing dream involving side walks. I’m pretty sure this one came from that dream.

That’s all for now. I hope I can get some more practice before the Lantern Parade. And with a schedule like this, I’m pretty optimistic. Click to enlarge:

Yep. Assuming I pass all my subjects this sem (oh pleaseeee!!!), that’s it. They’ll surely give me a CS199 and a CS196 (else, I will raise hell…hehe). Note that CS196 is a one-unit class—I either take it on a Wednesday or on a Friday—so I total 13u away from an undergrad diploma.

See you at the Lantern Parade.~Chad

Photograph of the Month: Reach Up to Paradise

Why am I a photoblog all of a sudden? Read about it here.

Ah Paradise…I shall be with you soon. Just give me time to kick the hell out of the coming hell weeks…

There is one productivity trick that I’ve learned from my internship which I’ve continued to apply even well after I’m out of it: plan ahead not what you want to do but what you want to achieve. This has been largely responsible why the past midterm season went by me without much hassle on my part. Ever since my internship, I’ve started my weeks planning ahead what I want to achieve and then tallying myself. I try to achieve at least 70% of the goals I set weekly and I’m pretty good at it; I usually get my 70% done, until recently, that is.

But before I proceed telling you about what’s been keeping me busy this past few weeks, allow me to backtrack a little and relate an interesting event I forgot to relate and that happened all because of my birthday last month. In an age where Facebook has kindly been reminding everyone of everyone else’s birthday, I pusposedly set my account to tell no one when my birthday is. As I expected, I didn’t get much greetings on my birthday. I had maybe around 3, all coming in at the last minute of August 8, two through Facebook and one via text message. And then the next few days became quite amusing, as people learned that I celebrated my birthday on the 8th. People wrote me uber-interesting greetings, starkly personal, if I may say, even if not by Facebook standards, going well up to a week after my actual birthday. True enough, I didn’t get as much greetings than if I allowed my birthday alarm to ring but I’m pretty sure that I got the better deal by receiving messages that is not the generic “Happy Birthday Chad! <maybe insert smiley here>”.

Anyway…so, what I’ve been up to. These past few weeks, my 70%-goal-achievement productivity saw a sharp drop as I found myself alternating only between two interesting projects: my thesis and my EEE8 project. This is my second take on EEE8; I don’t think I was able to tell the blog that I failed it last year largely because it was eclipsed by more personal failures, which took center stage in my posts. Back then, I never thought I’d ever even be remotely interested in breadboards, integrated circuits, and wires. But well, here I am, thinking of how can I build a robot to automate the cleaning process of my room.

As for my thesis, I must admit that one of the many reasons I wanted to join UPD’s Computer Vision and Machine Intelligence Group (CVMIG) was because I knew that I’d probably be working on image processing, which was, back in high school my idea of the pinnacle of programming. Well I got my wish, but that is not to say that I am not having a hard time in the task set to us. For some weeks now, I’ve been contemplating over the Gabor filter and I must say that I’m still pretty far from what I hope I’ve achieved with it already.

Well, that’s all for now. Wish me luck and see you soon in Paradise, wherever or whatever that is…~Your Skymeister.

Photograph of the Month: Futsal

Why am I a photoblog all of a sudden? Read about it here.

And for my last PE class I took up Futsal, a.k.a, futbol de salon (not futbol sa loob), or, in plain English, indoor footbal. Incidentally, this is also my only PE which is a team sport or a ball game, my other three being Archery, Fencing, and Taekwondo, taken in that order.

Some trivia: When some people hear the word Football what comes to mind are players like this,

football_zombie — From http://images.wikia.com/plantsvszombies/images/1/1a/FOOTBALL.jpg

save that they are most likely college-age, with a muscular build, and hungers for burgers and not brains. Well people, that is American Football. America, to avoid confusion, calls that sport in which Spain prevailed in last year’s World Cup Soccer. Elsewhere it is Football and…uh…Handegg?

Because I really can’t make a ball out of that egg-shaped pork-skin, I’ll be with the rest of the world in this matter and say Spain won in the Football World Cup.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to play Football. I remember kicking softdrink tin cans with friends way back in elementary, being that we had no Football equipment and that softdrink tin cans were just perfect in weight if not in shape. Even as relatives and teachers thought I’d be playing Basketball due to my growth spurt when I was young, I kept dreaming of green fields and goals.

My elementary school had no varsity teams. So, when I moved to a new school for high school, I really looked forward to playing a sport. But alas, the high school I moved to had varsity teams, alright, but not Football. Our space was pretty cramped, you see, that sometimes even the Basketball team had to practice half-court since the other half was being shared between two other sports (giving them a quarter-court’s share each).

And I thought I’d end up in Basketball finally, and make my teachers and relatives happy for a prediction-turned-right. But then, my high school had Taekwondo. I trained for the whole four years of my high school.

Those four years weren’t exactly the most injury-free but they were definitely character-forming. It’s thanks to Taekwondo that I developed a habit for sports and working out. It also taught me how to push-through with what I want to achieve and to give my 110% in the things I do.

Come college, I knew that I wouldn’t have enough time to practice a sport regularly. I had to stop at 2nd grade brown belt. My need for some physical action was filled in by trying out various sports (as outlined by the PEs I took) and other activities (remember rappel?).

And now, Futsal. It isn’t exactly played on green fields but hey it’s got goals and play is football-like enough.

What about you, played any sport recently? *wink*

Photograph(s) of the Month: Roses

Why am I a photoblog all of a sudden? Read about it here.

And for my first “Photograph of the Month” blog I give you roses.

They’re my mom’s. I think she acquired them around mid-month. Of course, my first instinct was to jump in and take pictures. Yay.

I know that roses—like books, butterflies, and hearts—are fragile things but I never knew that they are that delicate that it is quite a task keeping them alive. I don’t know much about gardening but my mom said something along the lines of, “I hope I can make them last”. That just gave me an idea on how fragile they can be.

Why are fragile things often beautiful? Or is it the other way around, that those which are beautiful are fragile? Roses, books, butterflies, hearts—or why I’m so sure the world is beautiful.

For next month, I guess I’ll find something moving, throw in a person or two in the frame maybe. If you head over to my DeviantArt you’ll see lot’s of flower pics in there. I find flowers that beautiful that I can’t stop myself from taking pictures when I see some interesting ones—which scares me a bit. I guess it’s every artist’s fear that he has ran out of new ideas to try, that his recurring themes are no more than reused cliche. Where do you draw the line between recurring themes and loss of fresh ideas?

But hey this post is supposed to be happy. In other news, I’m no longer doing my thesis/special problem alone. I’m with two ladies and we’re working on Porites a genus of corals. More about the problem as we progress. Yee-ha.

(According to Sir Pros, our adviser, thesis is, by definition, something you do alone. But for all intents and purposes, our special problem, usually done in pairs or in threes even in other labs, can be considered a thesis.)

‘Till next month! ~The Chad Estioco