Ninoy

This picture was taken at the Aquino Museum in Tarlac City: a portrait of Benigno Aquino. He was the first youngest senator of the Philippines. The outspoken opposition of Pres. Ferdinand Marcos.

After some years of exile in America, he returned to the Philippines only to be assassinated, even before he could step on Philippine soil. He was shot at the back while climbing down the stairs of the plane. The obvious mastermind for the assassination was Pres. Ferdinand Marcos. Though others tell it was the cronies of Marcos afraid to lose their political and commercial positions. But there are some that say that the real mastermind was Imelda Marcos. Any which way, history has recorded that the lone assassin, Rolando Galman was also the mastermind. No one proved any conspiracy any higher than Galman, who was also shot dead at the tarmac.

The shot required long exposure. I don't have a tripod, so the image stabilization (IS) feature of the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS helped a lot. Exposure seems to be just fine; both indoor and outdoor lighting are clear.

Smoke Alien

Another video tutorial I found in Youtube was photographing smoke. The tutorial seems easy but actually doing it takes a lot of patience. Smoke doesn't pose for a picture, it moves quite chaotically depending on the wind draft; thus, focusing was difficult.

First I used incense to produce the smoke but I wasn't getting enough body of smoke. I switched to mosquito coil which produced adequate smoke.

The photo above was edited in Adobe Photoshop. The original cropped image is the after-left quadrant of the photo, which looked like a beast or alien; and the glow around the envisage mouth area is a bonus with the lighting, which is only a single Philips fluorescent bulb.

Floating Heart

I'm a member of www.symbianize.com and read there about a way to download Youtube videos using my Nokia 6120c mobile phone for free. Some of the videos I downloaded was about photography. There was one tutorial by a kid about "light painting", which I thought was easy enough to try.

The floating heart was my very first light painting photo.

I waited for the sun to hide then locked myself in my room, used an old Samsonite suitcase as backdropped, set my camera (Canon PowerShot SX110 IS) on a mini-tripod and set it to 15 sec. shutter speed (the lowest setting for the camera), turned off the light, released the shutter, and began painting a heart shape with a small flashlight. Though amateurish, I did not expect it would turn out to be alright.

We had the suitcase for years. It was a given to my father for his trip to America by Mr. Flossman. And the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS was a recent gift from my sister. It is my third digital camera. My second digital camer was a Kodak CX7430, which I sold for P1000. It has a broken LCD display; hence the new camera and selling it cheap.

I Did Not Know

I did not know I had this photo. I was looking at my old photographs, lo and behold, I've taken a good silhouette photo. I just pressed the shutter button and forgot about it. The photo was taken with my first digital camera, a Fuji Finepix 1400z.

The shot was taken in one of the ports in Puerto Gallera, Mindoro; in one of our faculty summer trips.

I did not know then about the "rule of thirds" but when I look at the photo it seems to be following the rule.

Movement is captured by the man walking. His bended knees to take the step depicts action in a still photograph. The sun was hiding in the morning clouds but there was just enough light to show the quiet scene. And the leaves above and mossed stone below created a frame for the photo.