where the moon shines

I signed up for Paper Coterie and Tracey Clark’s Picture the Holidays.

It’s 31 days of prompts to take photos daily this month of thanksgiving and holidays.

The class creed:

My Newbie Photographer blog is broken, but I’d really like to post my photos for this ‘class’ there.  I had another malicious attack and my host disabled it. I have yet to restore the blog, but may have to start from scratch. So. Serves me right for not backing up my post while I had the time.

I choose not to dwell on what losing the blog means. There is truly so much to be grateful for and time is wasted on ranting. 

Today’s prompt is Holding Onto Gratitude. Now what to photograph…

Last year, we said hello to Alfred’s first DSLR, ViKtor – the Nikon D5000. This year (barely six months later), we bade goodbye to him too.  It was not an easy decision to make but Alfred decided to sell him in order to build a fund for a better camera. He uses my Deena in his photo shoots anyway, and I don’t really like using ViK so there was no sense keeping them both. He did buy Tixie V from the money he got from selling ViK. So now our second camera is a point and shoot:

But Tixie’s not just any point and shoot. We’ve been eyeing the Sony Cybershot TX5 as a second camera for awhile but almost didn’t get one anymore. Once Alfred entertained the idea of selling ViK he first thought of getting a Sony NEX-5 but that proved to be too expensive and would have cost as much (or more) as a brand new D5000. So we thought about the TX5 again and checked out the prices. We were glad to have found an online store that carried the TX5 at ten thousand pesos less than the mall rates! The decision to buy, and the transaction was very fast: ViK was sold on a Sunday night, we contacted the TX5 seller on Monday night, and got TiXie on Tuesday afternoon. Sweet!

TiXie’s around to help me accomplish one of my 2011 goals – get better at documenting everyday happenings, and significant events too. It isn’t practical to tote Deena around everyday because she tends to get heavy. TiXie packs a punch with cool features in a slim and small body

So with this purchase, the boyfriend is still able to keep some money from ViK’s sale. I know he would have wanted the new 32gb ipod touch for himself, but he chose  to get the camera for me. We’ll surely be using her a lot in our Cebu trip in a few weeks.

So I finally have two consecutive days off this week. Yay! They are weeknights though, and some people may have a problem with that. I don’t. First, it coincides with the boyfriend’s off. And second, it’s still two days straight.

Tonight I go back to work, hopefully better rested than I’ve been in the past two weeks.

I still haven’t done all the shopping I need to do. Looks like my parents are resigned to taking care of all the Christmas shopping required for our annual gift giving on both sides of the family. I feel sorry not being able to help out in the shopping part, but perhaps I’ll just volunteer to wrap them up. What I don’t feel sorry for is having to decide what gifts to get each person on the list, that’s proven to become harder and harder every year.

But let me digress from talk of Christmas, gifts and shopping, and instead talk about a wedding we witnessed last week.

I will forever think of the bride as my Auntie Leesah’s friend, which is why during the wedding I kept thinking that if there were angels in heaven happy that she found love and happiness again, it would be her departed parents, plus my auntie.

Auntie Jenny was married before, but her husband passed away at a young age. She has two grown up sons now. The groom is an Episcopalian priest who, I think, is Irish. He came here to live and teach at the Seminary a few years ago, and who would’ve thought he would find love too? Their union is a true inspiration that we can’t (and shouldn’t) really give up on love.

Now. Weddings in our small community are mostly simple and traditional. The ceremony is pretty much the same, even the hymns sung. People don’t always wait for a formal invitation, and we certainly don’t look at how many seats are reserved for the guests. Which makes it difficult to plan a budget wedding – because it’s difficult to say exactly how much people will be coming.

But such weddings are fun, because people you really know and who really celebrate your happiness are in attendance. And they don’t care much about how you look, or how they look. Dress code is also something people pretty much ignore. Haha. A lot come in their Sunday best, but for most this also just means jeans and a clean shirt. I know that doesn’t look pretty in pictures, but that gives the occasion a happy, relaxed vibe. Really.

Here’s some of my favorite photos from the Church ceremony:

The happy couple

Lovely bridesmaids

It was really just a fun wedding. I have more photos to post-process, mostly from the reception but I’ve yet to find time for those. Let’s just hope I don’t forget them, haha

(more…)

The Broadband Internet service from Sky Cable is having some technical issues in our area. Thus, we have very slow connectivity. We noticed it a few nights ago but I dismissed it to just your regular loss due to high network traffic. But the next day when it was still pretty much the same, and none of us could load our Cafes in Cafe World, I figured we needed to do something about it. So I asked the boyfriend to give Sky a call.

That’s when we learned of the problem somewhere that’s been interrupting the service since last week, and is scheduled for resolution next week.  Being in customer service ourselves we knew what kind of concessions we can demand for and the boyfriend tried to go for credit for time lost, and he got confirmation for it! So I’m looking forward to next month’s bill, and I sure hope it will reflect the promised adjustment. If not, then they better be ready for this irate customer.

So anyway, with my connection being as bad as it is, I spent time in front of the PC, offline. I used Writer to work on posts for Between the Covers (notice how there’s so much activity there lately? I also spent some time doing post processing on our photos.

I started with pictures from the campaign for the 2010 Barangay Elections.  Both the boyfriend and I joined my cousins and other friends in a motorcade/walk to campaign for my Uncle Walter. I didn’t know about the motorcade until half an hour before it started, but off we went. I remember campaigning for my grandfather when we were kids, those were fun times, and there was no vote buying.

Anyhoo, here are the photos. All courtesy of the boyfriend, the photographer.

Alrighty, I gotta go do the dishes before the Kohler kitchen sinks get too laden with so much stuff. Oh wait, I don’t have dishwasher duties tonight do I? Alfred???

She’s my Pink Dress, a Superheadz Super Fat Lens; reincarnation of the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim. She is in fact, manufactured in the very same factory that the Vivs were made back in the day. She needs film to produce photos, no other attachments not even a battery needed. It’s just me and my Pinky, pointing and shooting from the hip.

She’s going to help me live my Lomo dreams. I won’t talk about lomo today, and I won’t be posting sample photos from the first roll of film we used up together. I’ll save that for my newbie photographer blog.

We picked up Pinky from the very homey shop of Oh! Shoot along Boni Serrano in Cubao. It wasn’t what I expected. I like the store, really. It was very artsy, accommodating, welcoming. None of those elements that sometimes made camera shops too mechanical. No intimidating gadgets, no SALE signs or prizes displayed all over. They didn’t even tag their items for a barcode scanner or what not. Instead, lomo prints were plastered on their walls. A comfy couch was at the center of the space, inviting one to sit back and checkout the books they had on the table. Too bad none of the elves in charge of the store were there to give us lomo tips or take our photo for their show-off. But the dude from downstairs was more than willing to take us up to the shop, and just hang out while we looked around and finally zoomed in on what we were there for. I went there with one purpose: to get the Pink Dress. I would have settled for the Black Devil or the blue one, but then I saw her and I knew she was mine. Sure there were other cameras calling my name, including the Blackbird Fly and the Digital Harinezumi, but I blocked them all out. I had to.

So now you’ve all met Pinky.