where the moon shines

A friend is getting married on Thursday, I haven’t even thought about what I’ll be wearing to the event. Hmm…

This afternoon, our small group of friends will meet up, reminisce about the good old times, then look forward to her wedding and the rest of her married life.  The get-together was supposed to be last night, good thing it was moved because there was no way I could have been there.

Yesterday at work I started feeling woozy. My head was spinning while I was trying hard to coach one of my agents.  I normally stay at work way beyond my shift on Fridays so I can complete all my deliverables before my rest day. But yesterday? I tried to stay but was not very productive. I just decided to go home, rest and try to go back on Friday night. Besides, I owed some people their orders of truffles anyway.  Guess what happened when I got home? I went to sleep. I woke up several times just to complain of the wooziness and the headache and the back ache. I skipped lunch, the whole afternoon, and then dinner. No truffles, no Harry Potter, no going back to work.

That’s okay though.

Back to what’s happening this afternoon…

Arianne organized the event, I don’t know if I should call it a bridal shower but that’s what it probably is going to be. I’m also not sure who else is coming, but I know it’s going to be a fun time. I haven’t seen the girls since August last year – almost a year since! Grabe.

Y’s wedding is the second that I’ll be attending just this month. In August, I’m seeing an old highschool friend tie the knot as well – she invited me just now via chat at Facebook.  Then next year it will be Jo’s wedding. Everyone else is asking when mine’s going to be. That is the million dollar question indeed.

It will yet be unanswered

I was hoping to help out with Jo as she prepares for her wedding. It’s more than six months away but she’s got reservations going already and I, on the other hand, have done nothing so far. Haha.

Speaking of weddings, I came across this website offering wedding invitation stamps.  They’re not just toy stamps mind you, these ones actually look like you could use them for postage of your wedding invitations.  It is US postage though. I guess here in the Philippines, wedding invitations are normally personally delivered to those invited so maybe this won’t be such a hit. But still, it’s tiny detail that would really add to personalizing a couple’s wedding invites. Check out this video I picked up from that site:

A couple could use any one of their beautiful pre-nup shots , diba? I wonder if business like this would fly in the Philippines, specially when snail mail traffic has declined with the advent of more affordable (and efficient) courier services, and email.  But since it’s a specialty stamp maybe Pinoys would go for it.  I wonder how this gets approved by PhilPost? Hmm…

Friday night at work: I was having a very productive evening, and I felt light and positive all day.  I realized it was two things that had me at such high spirits: my agents were not around, and I was looking forward to my basic digital photography class the next afternoon.

By morning though, things took a turn for the worse.  From very productive, I plunged to zero productivity.  I had only three agents around but all of a sudden I had to attend to them.  So though my shift was really just supposed to be until 8am, but I gave myself until 1pm to finish everything and that was the time I was supposed to leave for my class – I ended up finishing what needed to be done at 2pm.  To make matters worse – it was raining. Really hard.

Raining on Saturday afternoon meant that we probably won’t be able to shoot photos.  Still, the idea that I’d be learning about my camera excited me.  Sir Nicolay moved our start time from 2 to 230 because of the rain. That worked for me so I wasn’t late! Yay! Plus, I hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous evening, so waiting for the instructor gave me time to grab a bite (the baked potato was delish!).

Oh, and you know what else made this class exciting? My best friend was in it too:

my pretty bff

My photography doesn’t do justice to her beauty, hehe. Wait till I hone my skills even more

The first part of the class was the lecture part on what makes a beautiful photo, and how to take them. I love Sir Nicolay’s presentation.  It really looked as if he invested time and a lot of effort in preparing the course.   It’s really a beginner’s class – if you don’t know shit about photography, you’ll leave the class with a wealth of information.

At the beginning of the lecture though, there was one thought running through my mind – why define beauty?  I realized in the end that it is important to talk about universal concepts of beautiful photography because it has mass appeal.  When you follow those concepts – many will come to like your work.  Then you can break all the rules, break them all you want and find your own beauty. Haha.

The trickiest part about photography, to me, is finding that perfect mix of ISO, aperture and shutter speed.  It’s just so easy to use Auto, but if I always use auto mode then I probably should have just stuck it out with my Kodak point and shoot.  After the discussion, and before we actually went out to shoot (the rain stopped the sun came out while we were discussing!), Sir Nicolay gave us a subject and we were supposed to think of the right settings to capture it without looking through the cameras yet.  My answer ended up to be underexposed – but that’s how I actually like it because here’s the result:

I love it because the imperfections are hidden. Compare it with this one, which was taken with just the right settings:

Aside from Jo and myself, there was one other girl with us, Mitch who works at ABS-CBN (where my office is located!); there was Carlo too, and uhm, sorry but I forgot where he’s from. We were a fun bunch, or maybe I was just immediately comfortable because I knew someone in the group already?  Three of us had D60s (Jo bought hers the week after I got Maxine), while Mitch was the odd one out with her Canon 450d and all of its 9 AF points.  For the photoshoot part, we were joined by another girl who was at that morning’s session.

So the sun decided to come out and let us have our fun.  It’s not easy to take beautiful photos after all, though I think it was the pressure of knowing that the instructor and everyone else would critique my shots by the end of the day.  I ended up deleting a third (or more) of the shots I took.

This was one of the first shots I took, I didn’t have to think about it so much and I liked the turnout.  This is the wall of the shed (was it a generator shed?) at the back of the UP Theater:

For this next one, I just know I could have done better, but I can’t pinpoint in what manner. Do you have any suggestions on how this could have been captured even more  beautifully? Perhaps if I didn’t have two bags on my shoulder and I wasn’t sleepy already, I’d have kneeled lower and taken this from a better angle…

I cropped this image already, because the original had too much of the road itself, I should have waited until the jeepney was near enough.  

I took two shots of the same thing, the second one was brighter, but this was the one I liked better:

I like shooting at angles like this one. I love green!

These next ones were taken with different settings. I wanted it to be bright, but I loved the ones where the clouds’ natural colors could be seen:

This last one, is my favorite photo for the day.  I’ll probably use it as my wallpaper:

I am so excited to get into photography even more! I will scrimp for awhile though, even as I already feel the need for another lens, I’ll wait.  Maybe I’d go for an extra battery first (versus a battery grip), or an additional compact flash memory or SD card. We’ll see. I kind of promised I’d work on my skills first before I buy accessories.

Last week, I had a discussion with photographer friend Edsel about getting a developing kit so I could process films at home.  He was so animated about it that I was almost convinced. We also got to talking about enrolling in photography classes.  I’d probably go for the most basic ones available while as for him, he’d probably just need a venue to rehash his knowledge.  Then the day after, I was speaking to film photography hobbyist Archie who was also considering buying a DSLR.  Learning more about the art of photography, and getting more intimate with the tools of the trade (aka learning about camera functions and settings) seem to be the most attainable of all the things I want to do at this point. 

Gosh, Archie and I even discussed how easy it is to take out a loan from SSS and that would be perfect seed money for a DSLR.  Since payment for the salary loan is for 2 years, you’d hardly feel the deduction every month.  Ahh tempting.

I spent hours yesterday searching for information on photography workshops and with each page I visit, I become more convinced that this is something I can do.  I was even more inspired when I landed on SirNicolay’s blog.  Checkout his teaser:

I am going to pickout a schedule soon, and I hope I can convince the boyfriend to sign up with me too.  Too bad SirNicolay does not teach film photography, so I’m trying to decide if I’ll use my point and shoot for the class, or finally get a DSLR or borrow a similar built/model as the one I’m buying someday.  Haha. There are other workshops that cater to both film and digital, but it’s much expensive.  Besides I love the small groups that SirNicolay’s classes seem to turn out to be – there’s more of a one-on-one feel.

My interest in photography as a hobby is also something that Jo and I talked about last Sunday.  By the time her wedding rolls over, I should have a DSLR already!  Oh and speaking of her wedding, she has a garden venue in mind already but she’s not quite fully convinced yet (as of last time we spoke).  I was trying to be a good friend and help her find other possibilities but couldn’t find much.  How I wish there was a listing for wedding venues in one place with lots of photos to help you consider which ones to actually visit.  You know, much like the page that could be used to find your ideal Pigeon Forge Tennessee hotel.  Okay, maybe there is such a page for Pinays preparing for their weddings, I just haven’t found it, haahaha.

After weeks of cancelling and rescheduling, I finally got to meet up with my bestfriend on Sunday.  We met up, sat down for a snack, and then we stayed there for the next 4 hours.  It was nice catching up, and even more exciting to hear the good news.  She’s getting married next year!

Preparations are already full swing and I’ll try to help her as much as I could though, for the life of me, I have no idea about these things!

Anyway, we talked about things we’re up to and things we look forward to. It was so nice to feel grounded again; that’s what seeing her does to me.  She’s always a breath of sunshine, you know?  I guess because we’ve known each other so long, and were inseparable when our lives were so much simpler. 

We had spent the afternoon at this place called Secret Recipe at the Atrium in Megamall.  We had no idea what they served, but the cakes on the display just convinced me to step in.  Here’s the cake we shared (to be honest though, I ate most of it!):

See all those alternating layers of chocolate cake and mousse filling? Yummy, I tell you!  And we were so fascinated about the smooth thin layer of chocolate that coats the cake.  Ahhh this cake sparked a conversation on baking too.  We also talked about my new interest in photography, and my blogs!

But the most important news of the day?  Of course, it’s about her wedding in a little less than a year’s time.  Her fiance is currently working abroad (in Dubai, where her mom also works) and he hasn’t sent over the ring because he wants to give it to her personally (makes sense).  So she’s preparing for the wedding all by herself! Good thing she has a wedding coordinator friend who’s helping her.  And myself? Well, I’ll help in any way I can. Like I said, I have no idea about these things!

Oh well, I just hope we don’t wait another six months before we get together like this.  I’ve missed having girlfriends around all the time. I miss being a friend to a friend, you know what I mean? 

It’s been awhile but I scrapped a page yesterday! You’ve seen the photos, I know, but I still wanted to post the layout. Hehe.

In a way, what helped bring this on was a post on The Daily Digi here. But even before I read the article and some of the links attached I had already cleared up my work desk so I wouldn’t feel so cluttered. Having cleaned up here as well really makes a big difference. At least even when my mind is still a bit cluttered, my surroundings have improved. know what I mean?

I have come to enjoy visiting The Daily Digi, thanks to Tracy who told me all about it. I can’t put a finger on why I like going there, but I just do. And though I’ve kind of promised myself I wouldn’t buy digiscrap stuff anymore, I find it hard to resist the Digi Files. It’s such a steal, in my opinion. I will wait until the last minute to decide whether to get the bag or not, I have about ten days left…

I think I will tackle my truffles bag next. It’s a huge back that contains all the stuff I used to make and sell oreo truffles. It’s been months since I touched it and my mom has stowed it away in a big old cabinet. I’ve got to either take it out to rescue them, or throw most of them out. I’ve mentioned before that baking, and in this case, making oreo truffles de-stresses me. Maybe I should do it again if only to help unhinge me. Ah whatever…

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Iskra’s mom is back in town. But another friend is leaving for Abu Dhabi and will be staying there for probably the next two years and start a life with her husband. Though I don’t see her a lot when she was living here, it’s still going to be sad to think that it would now be even more difficult to just schedule get-togethers with her. But I do feel excited at the new she’s starting. And excited to see the girls again, now that my sister’s back!