Photography

Treats

A gentle pat on the back, a simple kudos email, small treats like these chocolate polvoron; sometimes that’s all it takes to show your people that you recognize their achievements and appreciate all their hard work.

When I first became a TM, I’d buy gummy bears for the team, and all sorts of candy treats that would keep them awake during their shift. When I moved on to other LOBs, I still took the habit with me. Sometimes we’d have donuts, or I’ll even bake them cupcakes. When I don’t have much extra money, Flat Tops or Cloud 9 would do. Since we have a payday bazaar, I’d share my finds with them, like those super yummy Choco cupcakes with fudge icing. Recently, it’s been these chocvorons that I hand out to the agents. (I don’t think I’d be doing that much anymore, to discourage them from eating right on their stations, haha.)

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Yesterday I found out from my friend’s post that she’s pregnant, possibly with twins! No wonder the boyfriend says she looks bigger than normal (they work in the same building in Makati and he’s seen her recently, when I haven’t seen her in maybe six months or so). Well, she hasn’t actually confirmed details yet, but that’s amazing news. Her eldest is about 3 or 4 years old already and will probably make an awesome big sister 🙂 She should definitely start looking for prenatal vitamins; I know that when it comes to pregnancy and caring for your baby it’s not one size fits all, there’s so much to consider. If I remember correctly she had to stop working during her first pregnancy on her doctors’ advise, I hope that doesn’t have to happen this time around.

Flickr

For Project 365, I started actually using my Flickr account. I also joined up with the Shutter Sisters 365 pool.

Sadly, apart from uploading my own photos, I haven’t actually gone around to check out the other photos added to the pool. Not much anyway.

Here’s a snip (cut using Win7’s Snipping Tool) of how my Project 365 2010 photo set looks like. Don’t they just look cute ordered that way?

Click on the photo to view the set on Flickr.

The last one I’ve uploaded is a photo from the 29th of January (yes, I’m a few days behind):

The SMEs, again

I finally got PaintShopPro installed (just a few minutes ago) so I resized the photo I tweaked in Picasa yesterday. Here it is:

the photo from yesterday's post, edited in Picasa

 Notice any difference? It does look well. And editing was quite simple too. I didn’t get to play around with the program more today though so still no review from me 🙁

I now have three softwares pertaining to photos on my PC. PSP for editing (and also for digiscrapping), and Windows Live Photo Gallery and Picasa for photo management. Maybe I should write up a review for each? There are very good reviews out there already though, all you have to do is search.

Trying Picasa 3

This isn’t a review. I don’t have time to make one just yet.

But a colleague at work who is also into photography shared his experience with Picasa as a photo editor and I decided to give it a spin. I can’t find my Adobe CS3 installer and I haven’t reinstalled PaintShopPro, so this was the perfect opportunity.

Here’s the original photo:

Now, just based on five minutes of playing around with Picasa, what I do see is that it does some awesome job for basic editing. It doesn’t have as much options as Photoshop though, but that doesn’t really mean negative points does it? After all, simpler is better when it comes to some things.

Here’s what Picasa helped me come up with…

Okay. No picture. I can’t figure out how to resize a photo with the tools I currentl have and the edited photo is 7.5MB big. The WP uploader is only allowing upto 7. Grrr. I can figure this out, but I have no time just now. Sorry.

I will continue with a proper Picasa review though. Someday. 🙂

In the meantime, let me just introduce you to my SMEs – Subject Matter Experts. They are the go-to personnel for technical concerns, highly proficient on all the products we support. They were hanging about, just in time for the weekly call we have with the clients, just like what we had this morning.

Anyhoo. I gotta run.

Have you tried Picasa? What do you think of it?

Guess the picture

Can you guess what’s in this picture?

This was captured last weekend, January 16 as the kiddie party we were at was winding down.

Post your guesses, I’m just curious if anyone will be able to identify this 🙂

Now while you ponder on that, I will ponder on something that Alfred raised over lunch this afternoon. He said that he read in one of his magazines that it isn’t wise to put your money on expensive facial wash. The reason behind the pronouncement, according to the magazine, is that facial wash doesn’t stay on your skin for long so it doesn’t really do you much good. Clean water should be enough. I beg to disagree. Water isn’t enough for me because I don’t use any other cleanser or astringent after I wash my face. Water alone won’t remove the dirt that you naturally get from the polluted air around you.

The article further points out that one should invest instead on quality day and/or night creams. Now that I can believe. Still, before you apply cream, you must thoroughly cleanse your face. If you don’t you risk clogging your pores until you end up needing a proactiv solution to a possible acne breakout. I guess the middle ground would be to find an affordable facial wash that does the job for you. There are plenty out there. Right now I am using Neutrogena.

Sorry, I just really need a facial…

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