Before we started our first class for our photography course, the course coordinator had us fill out a survey which included questions about the main reason we decided to attend the course. Last week, the coordinator told us that a big portion of the class chose the usual answer of wanting to find out how to work a new camera and improve personal snapshots but a huge majority said they wanted to learn more about the art of photography. So with that introduction, the coordinator eased us on to the topic for that night, composition.

I have to admit I didn’t think the class would last the full one and half hours just talking about how to compose a photo but the time just flew by. The lecturer talked about elements in composition like lines, shapes, colour, size and perspective and how they could be used to improve a photo. He also mentioned how to be aware of how warm colours advance and catch a viewer’s attention first and contrasted it with how cool colours recede.

However, the best part of this lecture was when the instructor showed us examples of famous photos and asked us to think about why the composition works. The examples included David Moore’s Migrants arriving in Sydney and Sisters of Charity, Max Dupain’s The Sunbather, a work by Elliot Erwitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Behind the Gare St. Lazare and Hyeres, Arnold Newman’s portrait of Igor Stravinsky and finally Dorothy Lange’s Migrant Mother. The instructor drew our attention to the use of triangles in Migrants arriving in Sydney, The Sunbather and Igor Stravinsky’s portrait, the implied diagonal line in Sisters of Charity, spirals in Hyeres and the rule of thirds in Migrant Mother. As well, the instructor stressed how we should make use of the rules of good composition and then break them. To support the breaking the rules bit, he also showed us a couple of photos which broke the rules but still worked.

Before ending the class, the instructor explained that because most people read from left to right, we also have the tendency to look at a photo from left to right. With this in mind, he showed us how horizontally flipping the picture could affect a viewer’s perception.

Wrapping up, he said that we should study successful photographs and figure out why it worked. He recommended the books below before wrapping up one of the best lectures in the course so far.

• Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking by Julieanne Kost
• Perception and Imaging, Third Edition: Photography–A Way of Seeing by Richard D. Zakia
• Take Your Photography to the Next Level: From Inspiration to Image by George Barr
• The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world’s top shooters by Joe McNally

Click here to view photo album

When I woke up last Sunday, it was raining and gloomy outside so I considered not showing up for our scheduled outdoor photography workshop at the Treasury Gardens. I don’t like shooting in the rain and since it’s supposed to be about shooting outdoors, there really isn’t any point huddling under cover is there?

Hubby won’t have any of it though, he thought I would be missing out on a great opportunity if I don’t go. So I went and was glad I did. The rained stopped just as we were being handed the list of the exercise photos we were supposed to take.

The exercises involved taking photos of a single person standing up, then sitting down then filling up the whole frame with just the subject’s face. Next is to take the same sort of photos with two people in the picture, then again with a statue. We were also asked to take photos of flowers and Cook’s cottage using a big then small aperture. I took some of the required photos and then some. My favourite part of the workshop though were the extra exercises not on the list like practising panning, taking portraits with rim lighting and using environmental objects as reflectors (i.e. putting your subject beside a white wall).

We finished just before noon and it was good timing too as the skies darkened once again.

Click here to view photo album

My work mate liked my photos of the worker statues yesterday that she asked me to bring my camera with me today. We went out together at lunch time and took another go at shooting the statues with our own cameras then swapped cameras. Here are my own shots using my Nikon D40x.

 

A work mate brought her Canon 400D today and I had a bit of a play with it. Most of the photos I took were fuzzy, dark and had the focus on the wrong thing. It was a bit frustrating because I wanted to test the lens, a 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, which is supposed to be tack-sharp and allows heaps of light. I guess it goes to show that a good understanding of how your camera works is the foundation of taking good photos.

Anyway, these are the best of the batch and I loved the depth of field on these. It’s a bit of a cliche but I just couldn’t resist taking photos of these businessmen statues!

 

I’ve been studying Spanish for the past few weeks now. It’s something I had wanted to pick up since I was very young. I had wanted to be able to read the old history books, documents and literature from the Philippine Spanish era.

I only picked it up because I was itching to master another language apart from Tagalog and English. I thought that maybe I could continue learning Chinese or Japanese but changed my mind about the two.

After watching Spanish films like El Espinazo del Diablo (The Devil’s Backbone), Labirinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) and El Orfanato (The Orphanage), my interest in Spanish was rekindled. I watched the films with the English subtitles but I realised that I could pick up a lot of what the characters in the film were saying even without looking at the subtitles. I knew some of the words because these words are part of the Tagalog language, Tagalog words loaned from the Spanish tongue.

That got me thinking. Instead of Chinese or Japanese, maybe I could learn Spanish first instead. I might be able to master Spanish faster than Chinese or Japanese. I’m very keen on learning Spanish to begin with anyway.

After a few weeks of studying, I did find that Spanish was a lot easier to learn than Chinese or Japanese thanks to all the Spanish words I already know. I also found the pronunciation easy too because of its similarity with Tagalog. In the end, I’m enjoying myself and feeling really motivated.

I want to be able to watch more Spanish films without the assistance of any subtitles. I want to be able to read Jose Rizal’s letters and works in the original Spanish. I want to gain a better understanding of the culture we Filipinos share with the rest of the Hispanic world.

Speaking of the Hispanic world, as an aside, I found this funny film clip of an advertisement from Spain about their Metro trains:

I really liked the commercial but apparently there were Filipinos who found the ad offensive, for some reason. I can’t see why. The Philippines in the ad looked tranquil and charming. The townsfolk all seem very pleasant and in the end, they were able to make their own Metro!

Anyway, I got to get back to my studies. ¡Hasta luego!

It all started when Gabriel opened a tin of tuna to prepare our breakfast sandwiches for the next day. He was in the kitchen and I was in the rumpus when he exclaimed that something’s not right with the tin he just opened. Imagining the worse, I thought there was something dead and rotting inside the tin, or something that shouldn’t be there, like maybe a dead insect or something. There was something inside the tin that shouldn’t be there alright, but it was not a disgusting insect or anything rotten.

You see, the tin he opened was labelled Caramelised Onion and Tomato and yet the contents of the tin had a white sauce instead of the expected red. We were so dumb-founded that we both stared at the tin on the counter for several seconds, maybe even a minute or two, trying to reconcile the label with the contents and wondering what the hell has gone wrong?

We ran a fork into the center of the tin to see if maybe half of the contents are right but all we saw was tuna, mustard seeds and white sauce. I was still staring stupidly at this suspect tin while hubby got another tin marked Caramelised Onion and Tomato from the cupboard. He opened that and breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the expected red sauce. Looks like the first tin of tuna was an aberration after all and didn’t affect the whole batch.

Curious as to what the first tin contained, I proposed that we eat it. Horrified, hubby said that maybe I shouldn’t and maybe it’s not safe. Well, if curiosity killed the cat, this cat could have been killed by a tin of tuna because I ate it anyway. I poked around the can some more, smelled the contents, tasted it and proceeded to spread it onto a slice of bread. It tasted like tuna with mayonnaise and mustard and a later search in the manufacturer’s site made us conclud that the tin actually contained the Seeded Mustard Mayonnaise flavour. It was nice and hubby actually liked it but we were still disappointed that we now have one less Caramelised Onion and Tomato and we were already looking forward to that for our breakfast the next day.

The next day, I showed the tuna of the photo to a work mate and she said that I should write the manufacturer expressing my concern. I was planning to send the company a proper snail mail complete with a print of the photo I took of the two tins side by side. Having to compose the letter, print the photo and then mailing the letter just seemed to be too much work though and I finally settled on filling out the online form on the manufacturer’s site.

It took a couple of days for them to reply. The contents of the email basically had a reference number on it, inviting me to call their customer service lined on weekdays from 9am-5pm. At this point, I just couldn’t be bothered anymore and replied to the email that I have given them all the information they needed to rectify the problem (I sent them the barcode number and the numbers stamped on top of the tin, but not the photo as there isn’t a facility to attach photos in their online form). That was a couple of days ago and I thought that was the end of it.

However, I got an envelope bearing the manufacturer’s name yesterday containing a letter, a page of recipes flogging their corned beef and a mail order cheque for $3. Here’s part of the body of the letter.

Incorrect labelling is very unusual because of the strict precautions taken to ensure that each container has the right label. What may have happened in this case is that an error has occurred either in sorting or in feeding labels into the machine, and this has been missed during final inspection before packing.

As a result of your report, our Quality and Production staff have been advised so that corrective action can be taken.

We are concerned that you have been inconvenienced as a result of this incident and, as a gesture of goodwill, we have enclosed reimbursement for your purchase. We value your custom and trust you will continue to enjoy our products in the future.

Should you require further information do not hesitate to call us on our Consumer Services Helpline (number given).

And with that, I suppose that is the end of the whole tale. I’m still a bit wary of their product though and haven’t bought anything else from them since the tuna incident. I buy things from manufacturers expecting that I get what I paid for and that it has passed stringent quality checks. Although package mislabelling doesn’t seem to be such a big deal in this instance, it somehow casts a shadow of doubt on what else could go wrong or has gone wrong in their production process.

Would I buy from their brand again? Not if I can help it.

I’m not a fan of anything pre-mixed but figured I should probably try some before I knock them so when the local supermarket had a promotion of 2 cake mixes for cheap, I bought two. This is the first of the two I’ve baked. I followed the instructions on the box exactly, going as far as timing the mixing on the stop watch function of my mobile phone. It’s pretty much fool-proof I guess, just add two eggs and milk.

The finished product came out looking just like the photo on the box and the cake was moist and had a very nice texture to it. We weren’t too keen on the lemony taste of the cake though and I bought most of the batch to work. A work mate rated it “very nice”.

Hmmm… maybe this pre-mix thing isn’t too bad after all? Don’t know about that though as I scanned the ingredients list on the box and saw several ingredients with numbers in them (477 or some such thing). I guess they’re okay for when you’re in a pinch or just can’t be bothered making things from scratch but I won’t make a habit of it.