Temporary Name. Temporary Gallery here. It was a fun and exciting experience to shoot my first wedding with of course, the team. I was in a team of 5 photographers. It was a very laid back task. Cool couple and what is nice is, some of my shots were included in the gallery. Our lead, Rodel Diaz is a friend of my best friend and I find it nice to meet great new friends from this experience. Anyway, here are my photos that are in the gallery and please visit the Flickr site to see more beautiful photos.

Great post processing by our lead.

I got few nice photos this month. And I hope I can get hold of the camera more often next month, we’ll see about that. Anyway, let me share to you some of the photos I took, not too fancy but I am aiming to at least use the DSLR every month.

My son building blocks with his cousin.

A bouquet given to me by my husband for Valentine’s Day

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I’m also finishing a couple of albums, two actually. 1 | Is the almost done 12 Days of Christmas Album and I’ve decided to make the cover just like this. Almost because the 12th day has so many pictures, I don’t know how to arrange them into spreads.

Then there is 2 | Our Hong Kong 2010 Trip Album that is way long overdue. Here’s a preview.

Spread 1

Spread 2

I both a couple of kits for the album and had a glitch with one of the kits and so I’m still waiting for the owner of the shop to respond to my request. Anyhoo, the kits are for this album so I just can’t start making spreads and leaving them unfinished because I still don’t have the elements of this one particular kit. I’m OC like that. When I start a page, I want it flattened and uploaded to the album site when I’m done. So the HK album is hanging.

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With my friends starting Facebook pages for their sidelines, I’m starting to think of making my own with regards to album making. I just don’t know if I can handle the deadlines and pressure of making it if ever I get clients. But I’m definitely most interested to do so. 2 friends I have already asked me to photograph for them but in this aspect, I am just not ready, I’m not confident in that aspect, I feel that I still have so much to learn when it comes to Photography, I tend to go inside my shell when they asked me but in making albums, I’m kinda confident of the results I made and I think I can do services not just for friends but for trustful clients as well. Anyway, speaking of which, I got too bored the other day and tried editing a couple of night shots from our Hong Kong Trip and I love the results…

So there, thanks for reading! Happy Weekend with your family!

I don’t have too much tasks today so I thought of spending my morning scrapping, well that’s aside from the 7 soldiers I had to take for the Physical Examination. Anyway, I finished the 3rd Day of Christmas. I am so behind but since I have no more promo codes and paypal money to spend for the printing of the album, I am in no rush to finish this. Anyway, I will share the spread.

Thanks for looking!

The photos should be from January 1-2 but since our weekend was extended until Monday, I had to use photos from January 3. I also want my first page to be all about my boys so here you go…

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I joined the project because I want to have a reason to take photographs and use my DSLR every weekend and not just that, of course, but to make memories by using my skills in digital photography. I’m so grateful that I learned this skill that not so many can comprehend and have patience in learning it. I know I still have so much to learn and I know practice makes perfect which is why I am joining this project. I hope I can pull off the 52 pages for 2011. I wasn’t very successful with the 365, so I am hoping for this to be a success.

I’m joining Peppermints concept of Project 52. I still don’t have a clue what to do but I will definitely try to grab and hold on to my dslr during weekends. I don’t want it getting dusty without using it. If I’m really serious about this hobby then I might as well take pictures. Do you want to join the challenge? Click on the image.

It was easy to take pictures yesterday. I was eager to start. I got nice photos of our son which I am very proud, of course it will be included in the album. Here’s one of the photos…

and here is a peek of the spread I made today…

as for Day 2, I only have this pic for the whole day…

But the day is not over yet. We’ll see.

Note: “Obvious ba idol ko talaga si Ali?” LOL.

I hope I will make a nice album for my very first Christmas project. My inspirations? My friends Jacq and Aggie because they make wonderful albums plus of course Ali Edwards who I think is the guru when it comes to these kinds of albums. Anyway, I will be documenting through photographs and journaling, our 12 Days of Christmas from December 14-25, 2010. When this becomes successful, I might probably upgrade and have the December Daily next year which documents the whole month of December. We’ll see.

What are photos if you don’t get to see them and keep them to last a lifetime. I have an external hard drive that’s full of photographs that only I can see so I’ve decided to go back to scrapping and make projects so that I can put every photo in an album. But having each picture developed then buying albums can be very expensive so thanks to Artscow, we can actually have everything printed and then have it in an album for a cheaper price. Here are my recent projects:

8×8 Album Covers:

These two albums are just a compilation of all my digiscrap pages for my son.

Some of the sample pages of my digital layouts:

5×7 Album Covers:

Some of the Pages inside:

I am planning another project this Holiday Season, tentative title is Merry 2010 The 12 Days of Christmas. I plan to start taking photos on December 14. I plan to document every step here so it won’t be so hard for me to make the album but of course I will be writing stuff in my trusty notebook for journaling and other important details. I still don’t have any concept but I am looking at Ali Edwards’ Project for some inspirations.

(not so macro at all)

Aside from Portrait photography, I am into Macro photography as well. I don’t have the lenses to do macro. So you can say, I’m a trying hard macro photographer because what I’m using is our 28-200mm lens and though sometimes I’m not so happy with the outcome, I still try. Maybe someday I can have my own macro lens. Got a few tips online by the way.

• Check focus: When shooting at 1:1 or higher magnifications, depth of field is extremely narrow. Make sure your camera’s diopter is set properly for your shooting eye, and triple-check focus before shooting.
• Check focus again: After you shoot, if you’re using a digital camera, check the image in your LCD screen and zoom into it as far as your camera will let you to confirm that your subject is in focus.
• Eliminate subject motion: If you’re outside shooting a flower’s stamen or any other high-magnification foliage, the slightest wind will not only mess up your composition, it will blur it. If possible, plant a stake in the ground and tether the flower to it to add stability. Use the fastest shutter speed you can get away with. If you are shooting at a small aperture, a ring flash or a pair of lens-mounted flash units is necessary.
• Eliminate camera motion: You can control composition and eliminate the variable of a moving camera very simply: don’t move it. Put it on a tripod, a bean bag, or a mini-pod so it goes nowhere.
• Don’t curse the darkness, add a flash: In studios, you can control all of the above variables and use any light you desire (hot lights, strobes, HMI, etc). But in the field, you don’t have control of the light. One moment you may be shooting in bright sunlight, the next under the dark canopy of a forest. It could be sunny or cloudy. The solution is to bring your own light — either a ring flash or a two-flash, lens-mounted setup. This way you can also stop down for greater depth of field and sharper focus. Want backlight? Bring a pocket slave. Overhead sun causing harsh shadows? Diffuse it with a translucent white umbrella.
• Eliminate background clutter: Remember that the eye naturally goes to the brightest spot in a photo, so if you are shooting in mixed light, be aware of what’s in the background. You may need to change your point of view, get closer and fill the frame with your subject, or bring a sheet of plain paper or an 8×10-inch print of generic, highlight-free foliage to hold behind your subject. You can also control background clutter by shooting at wider apertures, which reduces background focus, or using a ring light, which throws most backgrounds into darkness.
• Eliminate foreground clutter: If you’re shooting through dense foliage to get to something of interest, make sure this doesn’t block your view. If permissible, trim away blocking branches or leaves. If not, try to find another angle. Still no good? Move on.
• Eliminate poor exposure: Be especially conscientious about metering and exposure when using a bellows or extension tubes and a handheld meter. The greater the distance between the rear element and the recording medium (film or sensor), the longer the exposure or wider the aperture. If your camera has TTL (through the lens) metering, you can relax — somewhat. Bright backgrounds can still mislead the meter, so bracket. Shooting digital? Check your histogram to confirm exposure’s right.
• Eliminate grain and digital artifacts: With so little light reaching your film or sensor, you may be tempted to use fast film or pump up your digital camera’s ISO setting. Don’t. This adds grain or digital artifacts (also called noise), which is an unwanted distraction. The grain makes the image appear less sharp, which defeats the purpose of using a super-sharp lens at a smaller aperture. Use your digital camera’s lowest ISO setting, or a fine-grained film like Kodachrome 64 or Fuji Velvia, and add a tripod or flash to make up for the loss of light.
• Eliminate bland subject matter: Be bold in your composition, look for stunning color, and don’t be afraid to experiment and create abstractions. The greatest benefit of Macro is how it transforms mundane subjects into worlds of wonder by enlarging them far beyond what the human eye is used to seeing. Pump up your digital camera’s color and contrast settings if that suits the subject. With a film cam, use super-saturated film.

I will get there. Just think positive.

Frankly, I was intimidated with Lightroom when my husband installed it and I ended up tweaking my photos in Adobe Photoshop instead but when I came back interested with photography again, I thought of trying Lightroom again and this time, I read tutorials and watched videos so I can learn more about it. The first attempt was using a Lightroom Preset that got this original photo tweaked from PS looking like this…

into this…

I think it is much better right?