Sweet Shot Tuesday | Still Life

Last Sunday, I set up one of our cleopatra chairs for a short shoot. I needed to come up with "Classic Still Life," and since my early knowledge for still life often involves a table set up with fruits and vase or wine glasses, I just made use of the plastic fruits we have since I wasn't able to go out and buy fresh fruits.

I took several pictures, and I chose this for my share because this focuses more on the fruits. I didn't add any textures for this, what I did was to run this image using the vintage script, then ran the sov:normal script with grain. The grain added the texture in this photograph.

*** Jenn ***

Quotography | Memorial Day

The Philippines doesn't celebrate Memorial Day, but I still wanted to join this week, and here is my share:




This picture was taken November 2010, when K and I were on a holiday. The day I took this picture, we were in Metro Manila and wanted to roam around. Our destination was supposed to be the Sarao Jeepney factory, but when we found out that the factory closes at 4pm (it was already 3:30pm), the driver of the van we hired just suggested we go to Fort Bonifacio instead. I quickly thought about this cemetery, and we were happy that the place's guards let us in.

This picture is just a part of the Manila American Cemetery. At 152 acres, it is the largest cemetery in the Pacific for U.S. Personnel killed during World War 2. There are also several Filipinos and one British National buried here, but this cemetery is primarily for US personnel killed during the war. That means, if a US citizen living here in the Philippines served during the war and died just today, his remains can't be interred here in the cemetery.

I chose to share this picture not only because this is the American Cemetery, but also because in the short visit we had, one American man came to us and shared to us stories of some of the buried personnel. War is a very selfish thing - it rips relationships, it breaks the hearts of many, and the people who selflessly offered themselves are really heroes. Each cross in this cemetery is a testament that there are indeed people who are so willing to give up many things.

*** Jenn ***

Live Every Moment | Vibrant Colors

For this week's prompt, I chose this picture from the Pahiyas Festival, which I took last 15 May. Every festival celebrated here in the Philippines is actually a feast of vibrant colors, but since most of the popular festivals are very far from where I live, the Pahiyas Festival was the second festival I attended, thanks to an invitation from a neighbor and friend whose family hailed from Quezon Province.

The colorful lanterns and flowers are called "kiping," these are thin wafers made from rice paste. They uses big, mature leaves as molds, and is actually edible, though of course you need to cook it. The Pahiyas Festival is celebrated every 15th of May in honor of San Isidro Labrador (St. Isidore the Laborer), in which the people of Lucban are offering different kinds of produce.

*** Jenn ***

Fabulous Friday | Sunset 052611

I really thought I would have to choose another picture from last Saturday for my photo share this week. It rained almost everyday the past week, causing me to stay at home, so I wasn't able to take pictures even if I wanted to.

Yesterday, I was creating and installing the cute little page tabs and cupcake icons on my Food Blog - I Live to Eat! when a friend tweeted, "I just saw the sky turned to dark gray from bright orange, keep safe everyone." Metro Manila was spared from the wrath of the strong typhoon, but because it was too strong of a typhoon, some areas in the northeast part of the country still had some rains. A few minutes after reading the tweet, I looked outside (our front door is always open) and saw a streak of orange in the sky. I quickly grabbed my camera and took this picture.

In April, I got to take the fiery orange sunset color from this side of our house, but the wire fence was blocking the view. Feeling a little gutsy, I took the metal ladder and climbed to its topmost step and took this picture (I zoomed my camera 8x, by the way).

I feel really blessed seeing this awesome sunset colors, because about 10 minutes after taking this, the rain fell.

*** Jenn ***

Edit Me! | Week 02

Welcome to the second week of Edit Me! The image was posted last night (my time), but it was just this morning that I was able to work on the edit.

The SOOC shot was provided by Misty of "Through a Photographer's Eyes." She is also this week's guest judge.

For this image, I was able to do two edits:

As soon as I saw the image, I thought it was like a painting. It also looked a bit vintage-y, so with that I came up with this steps:

• Applied the Vintage Effect action.
• A pass of the Brauer's Warm script set to 25%.
• Applied the Canvas Texture set to multiply at 75%.
• Applied Kim Klassen's Yesteryear texture set to overlay at 50%.

I was actually quite happy with this one, but I thought the canvas texture was quite too strong. I actually was already writing this post when I decided to play with the image again and I came out with this:

This one, I guess is more on the vintage side. This was a very drastic edit because I edited out the houses behind. With this one, I wanted to concentrate more on the wagon. Since it was at the center of the image, I decided to take out the houses to make the image more balanced, since it had more space under.

Steps I made:

• Using the clone tool, I edited out the houses and the itty bitty details - like the electric posts, and the brown things on the lower left side of the image.
• Applied the Vintage Effect action.
• A pass of Brauer's Warm script set to 25%.
• Applied Kim Klassen's Yesteryear texture set to Multiply at 100%.
• Applied Kim Klassen's Sweettart texture set to Soft Light at 75%, just to give it a pinkish tone, since most vintage effect pictures tend to look a bit pinkish.
• Unsharp mask set to 0.75.
• Burn set to Shadow with range of 10.0 and opacity of 100%.

As always, both images were edited using GIMP. I do hope me taking out the houses was okay, I was a bit hesitant in doing that, but I still went with it.

*** Jenn ***

Sweet Shot Tuesday | The Venice Piazza

Last Saturday was probably my favorite day of that week because not only was I able to eat awesome foods, I was also able to set foot at the McKinley Hill in Fort Bonifacio for the first time.

This part of the Fort (including the Bonifacio Global City) looked so posh that I somehow felt I was traveling overseas. True to what the name of the place is, it partly looks like Venice (Italy). Well, I still haven't traveled out of my country, but based on the books, magazines, tv shows, and movies, this place really gave Filipinos a slight taste of what it's like being in Venice.

This picture was post-processed using Kim Klassen's "not too shabby" texture.

*** Jenn ***

Quotography | Photography

Every Mondays here on this blog, I do Happy Monday, but I haven't participated in a while, so I decided to join Quotography, and here is my share:


This picture was taken April 2009, when us Litratong Pinoy bloggers met up for the 2009 Aliwan Fiesta. We decided to meet lunch time so we could eat together while chit-chatting, then after, we walked to the CCP grounds to take pictures.

It was still quite early when we finished eating, and since it's rare for us to personally meet, we went to Harbour Square to take group pictures and the signature "1, 2, talon" (1, 2, jump) pictures. While Lino was setting up his camera for the group shots, we took our own moments to take pictures of the harbour.

The woman in the picture is Iana, whom I personally met for the first time that day. She is one awesome photographer, and her photographs are really great!

About the quote, I chose this one particular quote about photography because it is something I agree with 100%. Whenever I take pictures of places and things, it doesn't matter if the subject is good or not (in anybody's opinion), it's just a matter of perspective, I believe.

This picture was processed just today - using GIMP, Kim Klassen's portrait texture (one set to overlay 100% and another layer set to multiply at 50%), and Pea Zobrist font. The quote was taken from Think Exist.

*** Jenn ***

ps - linking this picture to Color Splash Sunday, too.