I really love it when babies have food all over their faces. It’s the only age where it’s still cute!

He kept putting a specific chair into a specific area in the area. It’s so funny how toddlers do things like these and it seems to make so much sense to them.

Look at that smile!

Momma and his baby boy doing his “pacute” pose. Haha!

It’s amazing. I can’t believe just a short year ago, this boy was just a little lump that would quietly sit on my lap. Now he’s this little person who has a personality! Children are fascinating and exhausting, and my respect for good parents rises exponentially each and every day.

P.s.

I have a new favorite dish from Cafe Med. It’s called Tapenade and it’s ridiculous easy to make and I can’t believe I’d never tried this before!

Now if only I can get a model with eyes as captivating as hers and I’m all set.

Well, what I thought was a “simpler set-up” turned out to require no more less than seven lights. The entire time Daemon Becker was setting up the lights, and it took a while, I felt like shrinking into myself with shame. (Ah, whatever. It’s not every day I get to try out lighting like this!)

Here’s the final product with the two models that my classmates brought along, and Daemon himself (he was the test subject while we were setting up the lights)

We weren’t able to fully  capture it because a) we didn’t have the exact lights that we needed (kino flo) and b) Martin Schoeller shot his photos with a medium format camera. But I think we still did a good job. :)

Check out the rest of the photos shot on the lighting style pegs preferred by my classmates!

I’ve been looking at the stuff that I’ve shot in the past two years. The thing is, the only formal training I’ve had, save for the workshop that I just finished, was a very basic class that I took in 2007. Taking that into consideration, I’m actually quite proud of how much, albeit slow-moving, progress I’ve made in the past two years.

I remember that class so clearly, though. It was Basic Photography with Pancho Escaler. The thing with sir Escaler was he wanted to instill in us, early on, the philosophies of photography. I remember our first class, he spent the entire three hours grilling each and every one of us: Who are you? Why are you here? It drove us all crazy, but it lay down the foundation for the class’ tone for the entire semester: we weren’t there to just learn how to become photographers, but also why we wanted to be so. It’s a question I lose track of every now and then, but one I try to answer with everything I shoot nonetheless. A question that, I think, a lot of budding photographers today would do good in answering.

A few photos from Frankie’s first few months

The thing is, when I go back to asking myself that question, I still go back to the same old answers. I have three: to capture beauty, to make that which is not always considered beautiful into something else, and as a means of opening up the world people. Anyone who has cracked open a National Geographic magazine can tell you just how much a single stunning photograph can speak to you. Anyone who has seen and learned about this photo or this photo or this photo can tell you that a single snap of the camera can not only get people talking, but can affect lives in a very real way. Now I’m not saying that the only way for a photographer’s work to matter is for them to  go and cover starving African children, no. I’m not removing the value of other kinds of photography aside from photojournalism, hell, I spent the first three years of my “career” as a gig photographer. But it does make you think about the substance of your work and why you’re doing what it is you’re doing.

I don’t remember who, but a friend once posted this question, and it really stuck to me: now that everyone can do what you do, how you do rise above the clutter?

A couple of days ago, I had the last session of the aforementioned workshop with Daemon Becker. One of the things that really stuck with me from his last few words to the class was something I had written down not that long ago in my grad school letter of intent: photography is a learned craft. We spend time, money, and effort to be able to build up experience and talent. But you see, that’s one of the things that I hate about how the industry is turning out. Being learned doesn’t really take that much of a priority anymore. Admit it, this sounds all too familiar.

See, that’s how I want to rise above the clutter. In a world where owning a DLSR makes you a photographer, I want to be different because I’ve made it a point to be a learned photographer. Maybe it’s not going to be a fancy grad school in New York, maybe it’s going to be as slow as my progress for the past two years. But you know what? As long as I make it a point to always ask myself why I’m taking the photographs that I’m taking, and I pour every inch of myself in everything that I shoot, then I think I’m going to be just fine.

It’s fascinating! I can’t wait to learn more and shoot some more in the months and years to come.

Many thanks to Abi Portillo for being awesome and for lending her make up skills, and to Ysab for saying yes to being my model on such a short notice.

Lighting set-up: portrait, low-key, light with snoot

There’s something about low-key lighting that really appeals to my artistic sensibilities. The ability to make something beautiful while having such little light is one that I would love to master, as well as manipulating the little light that is there to create something. This photo was achieved by using specular light via snoot.

On a side note, I don’t usually shoot in RAW just because I don’t really need to. However, I use it whenever  I shoot in the studio. I just love how the color is so easily manipulated.

L-R emulating daylight, tungsten lighting

I wanted to do another kind of lighting, but we didn’t have enough time. Instead, I shot along with the rest of the class with other peoples’ lighting style. It meant that I shot without the flash, but it still yielded interesting results.

I loved everything that this girl was wearing.

After the last person was able to shoot their own preferred lighting style,  we just kind of put in our models again and took a few more shots just to try it out.

I love the color on this, but I don’t know what to do about the footprints. I think it’s because we didn’t really have any time to fix it, so the light on the floor wasn’t enough to drown it out.

I’m really excited for this Saturday. Day 2 is when we take in a specific lighting style that we want to copy, and I’m thinking I want to try out if I can do portraits ala Martin Schoeller. :)

There were a couple important birthdays, like my sister and my good friend Ow, and I met some wonderful people from Australia that actually became friends after one night.

February was a quiet month, which I think is apt for my life’s situation right now. It was the calm before the storm. With March comes big news, and whichever way this news takes me, all I know is my quietness and rest is leaving with February as well.

Then, there comes the putting together of the portfolio. The very thought of 20 photos representing the most recent two years of your career is mind numbing and, quite frankly, tortuous. In gigs alone, I result with albums containing at least a hundred photos. When I get on a plane for four hours, I step on the tarmac with at least 30 photos of clouds, more if I saw the sunrise or the sunset. I take so many damn photos of the sky that it helped me build and entire persona for my body of work. So when it came time to choose my 20 big ones, my emotional breakdowns took form in two variations: the oh-my-God-I-suck-at-this-why-am-i-even-applying-to-grad-school and the “hey! this is actually nice! maybe I’ll put it in my portf– OH GOD NO IT SUCKS WHY AM I EVEN APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOL?”

It got so bad that even the TOEFL test, a test built for 5th graders who had never seen an American TV show in their lives, was able to psyche me out so much so that I had to call a friend at 8 in the morning on a Sunday, half-quivering and half drowning in self-loathing.

But eventually, you get through it. You collect your letters, you remind yourself that that class you failed was totally the jerk teacher’s fault, and you realize that if you fill your portfolio with work that you love with all your heart, it will come across to the people that will be viewing it. You send your applications, and then you begin the long, excruciating wait between December 10, 2011 to the vague date of “early to mid March 2012,” while trying not to slowly lose your mind. You will probably ping pong between incredibly high hopes to self-deprecating internal rants at least twice a day. And, you will probably start to bore yourself and everyone around you because it will be all you will think about, all you will talk about, and all you will research about on the Internet for the next three months.

Well, in about 48 hours, it will be officially “early March.” I’ve just spent three hours on Google maps checking out all the building addresses on the websites of the schools I applied to, and trying not to freak out that 64 credits spread over two years is going to cost me more money than I’ve ever seen in my life. All my energy will go into not completely losing it in the next two to three weeks. And if all else fails, there’s always the bourbon.

P.s.

The pictures don’t really have anything to do with anything. I just needed them there to calm me down.

I was also fortunate enough to catch the Dreams & Reality exhibit in the Singapore National Museum. It featured many paintings by Monet, Degas, Renoir, and many others. However, the highlight of the exhibit for me was seeing Vincent Van Gogh‘s “Starry Night Over The Rhone,” which crosses out “see my first Van Gogh painting” from my list of 30 Things To Do Before I Turn 30.

For those of you who don’t know, Rock The Riles is an annual even that is put together by Rock Ed Philippines and various music production houses to raise awareness about various human rights issues. This year, Mary Moon’s station (North Edsa) was all about Maternal and Child Health. It is held every year to the saturday that is closest to Human Rights Day.