where the moon shines

(Read the first part of this series on our Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife experience here)

Apart from being a park where families can go to relax, unwind, have a picnic and enjoy nature in the middle of a bustling city, the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife is also a Nature Center.  What this means is that rescued animals are nursed here until they can be set free again.  For those who can no longer be brought back to their natural habitat, they stay in the center and those are the animals that people like us can visit.

I have memories of entering an aviary as a young girl.  A big one where you can see the birds flying around you.  I still can’t be quite sure if this is a memory from a trip to the Wildlife or to Nayong Pilipino ( is there an aviary there?).  I don’t know how many species of birds can be found at the Wildlife, I can’t even name the birds that we were able to see.  The cages are not properly labeled you see.  

I was quite frustrated though that the cages completely ruin your chances of a good shot.  The animals are in cages, then there are railings that keep you more than an arm’s length away from the cage itself.  For a frustrated photographer like me, there’s just too many challenges to think of. Haha Nevertheless, blogging about our day at the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife will not be complete without showing photos of the animals we were there to see.

Sheesh please do not ask me what these birds are called. I’d just tell you that they look like African lovebirds to me. You don’t agree? Well here they are kissing!

There you go, kissing scandal at Cage 27.  See, no labels at all to tell you what you’re looking at!  So even if I wanted to educate Esban on what birds these are, I couldn’t!

According to the boyfriend (who wanted to become a veterinarian, if not for his fear of blood), the birds on this next set are sea hawks.  The last one I’m sure is a hornbill. Or something.

Now this majestic peacock was kind enough to hold his pose for me.  But what caught our attention more than his magnificent stance and the beauty of his feathers, was the fact that he shares his cage with turtles.  Ya don’t believe me? Well see for yourself! We even photographed one turtle struggling to get out of his water bath

Didja see it?

Stay tuned for Part 3

Mom decided to brave EDSA and drive herself to pick up Dad from the airport this morning.  I decided to go with her, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy drive. She only drives from home to work (and back), and that’s not even daily – only when Dad’s away and the car’s free.  

From the passenger seat and with the belt safely on, I could sense that Ma was somehow nervous and of course we were going at a very safe speed  

So with Dad back from his business trip from The Netherlands, there’s something for everyone in his bags.  He got me a violet Ruth-Robin bag with Amsterdam written all over it, and I picked out this cellphone charm from the handful that he brought back:

Of course I’d take a photo of it and display it on my blog – this is my blog after all and I can talk about the mundane if I want to  But as soon as I looked at the photo I took, I wasn’t happy.  And just as I’ve done so many times since January, I took shot after shot until I captured it the way I really liked to show it off. 

I tried it this way:

But that didn’t make me happy so I tried another angle:

I didn’t like the edge of the table there though. I did like how the charm itself looks so defined.  Still, I wasn’t satisfied so I tried another way:

Now that, in my eyes, was promising.  It was clear.  But the mini havs totally upstaged the Amsterdam building.  That cannot be. 

So try again I did:

That one’s close enough, me likey.  I am almost done then?

Even with the floor showing through, this is my favorite from the bunch.  I love h0w the colors came out. I used a trick that Walter (an OM from work) showed me last week, it was using the internal flash (is it called internal?).  The colors turned out softer and more natural than when you just use the flash like normal diba?

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.

My Facebook and Windows Live contacts would have seen these photos by now, but what the heck, what’s another announcement right? Haha!

The FB album info says this: 

I took these photos on Sunday evening. The boyfriend was in search for the perfect pair of pants, and I was already sleepy from having no sleep since setting off for work the night before. Since fitting rooms these days are roomier and equipped with chairs (and have excellent lighting), I figured I’d sneak in there with him and snap a few. Haha.

For someone who doesn’t like having her photo taken, I think I’m crazy for sharing these here now. Haha. But here, check out the slideshow.

I don’t think I’ve posted here yet about my pending plans to move to another company.  I’ve already given 30-days’ notice to my current employer, but in the past week I’ve been having second thoughts about moving. There are several factors to consider apart from the salary increase I’d be getting when I move.  I’d have to consider the additional medical and disability insurance that I used to get for my mom for free at my current workplace – I’d have to pay for that in the new one.   It’s not too costly though so I don’t mind that so much.  I’d have additional transpo and food expenses too. So when you think about it, the increase in salary isn’t going to be substantial. So for that, should I go jumping at the opportunity to start all over again?