Adventure Awaits

I've never been this excited in months (or years, maybe?) This may also be the first time I have ever enjoyed packing. This is a good sign. Looks promising.

This weekend, I'm going on a hike to climb my second mountain for the year! Big fat Yay!

I am very anxious, but looking forward to seeing mother nature again and God's beautiful creation. I don't know what else to expect except that it's going to be really cold (and I have low tolerance to low temperature). Here's to hoping I make it without injuries. I'm very hopeful to see this amazing world from a another "angle."

So after wrestling with the bag, I finally got everything in. It actually doesn't feel that heavy. But I'm sure I'll be able to feel the weight after hours of carrying it on my back.

Adventure awaits. See you when I get back!

Bay East Panoramas

I think I had never visited the Marina Bay area as often as I did in the past month. I went there for three consecutive weekends and, no offense to anyone who might simply love this place... but as beautiful as it still is, it doesn't qualify to the list of places I never ever get tired of coming back to no matter how many times I've seen it.

One time and I went there to tag along with a friend from Cebu who was visiting, and twice I went there to take long exposure shots of The Gardens. I never got things done during my first visit. Despite the fact that I went there by myself with nobody in control of my time but me, sometimes I still cannot get over how bad this habit of mine is, (eternally late). I promised myself to be there by 2pm but my lazy ass got there at five... thirty. So naturally, the sunset shots I wanted to take were no longer possible as I had to find the spot I wanted.

I made up for the shots I missed during my second visit. This time, I found the place to setup my tripod to get the angle I had in mind, that is, the Garden domes, the Supertrees, the Marina Bay Sands and the Singapore Flyer in one frame, with a body of water in the foreground.

Before I got to Bay East, I had to pass through Satay by the Bay and Marina Barrage. That was actually an area I saw then for the first time. At Marina Barrage, there were quite a number of people flying kites, which kind of surprised me (in a good way). It was nice to see that people still fly kites today seeing almost everyone is into gadgets and all. It was a great place to take pictures, but I was late for my sunset shot so I had to just walk past, hurriedly, almost running actually.

Sunset , I heart you forever!

I arrived at Bay East a bit late for sunset. I was lugging around my camera and opening my tripod while walking. Along the way, I already found a few other people taking photos with all their gear set up already at the perfect spots.

I wanted some photos for my Instagram so I also took snaps with the 4s.

This time, I tried shooting RAW. I seldom shoot RAW because I never felt that I needed to. I'm really pretty much satisfied with jpegs. This was processed using Lightroom 5 using a computer running Windows, never been a fan but it will suffice. I did wish the foreground had been smoother and had appeared more mirror-like but I guess maybe you need filters and other accessories for that.

Singapore skyline, sunset in single frame

six-frame panorama, photo merged in Photoshop

Evening shot, seven frames

I also went back to the Supertree Grove just to take panorama frames of the trees. No more light show when I got there. I think you might already know why.

ten-frame panorama, Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3

That day, I took about 125 frames for the skylines and Supertrees, all 125 had already been filtered because I never keep scrap photos in my camera. They are simply a waste of precious disk space.

The Gardens Photo Walk

The Gardens By The Bay (hereafter known as "The Gardens"), is one of Singapore's newest tourist destinations. It definitely looks impeccably designed and you will surely not want to miss taking at least a single photograph when you see it.

I have never been really that interested in gardens. Flowers are, of course, beautiful things but sad to say they don't excite me that much. That is also why I haven't gone inside the gardens ever since I arrived here.

Not until recently, when I discovered that one of my housemates, who is also a photography enthusiast, owns a wide lens. I got lucky that he is also a Nikon user. And I have always wanted to shoot with a wide lens. I love wide angle shots. And I have this thing for landscape photos with teeny tiny people in them.

There are a number of attractions, the two domes you easily recognize from afar are the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome. Those tree-like structures, are the Super Trees in the Super Tree Grove. There are fees required to see each attraction and there are some packaged fees if you want to go and see all of them, by yourself or with a group. Discounts are offered if you are a resident (not a tourist).

I went there on a Saturday, a lazy one, as all Saturdays are to me. I got there mid-afternoon leaving me very little time to explore the entire place. I decided to go in the Cloud Forest. I'm no flower person but I'm definitely one who gets excited about unusual looking things, buildings and structures in particular.

Here are some of the gazillion photos I took with an iPhone and a D90 armed with a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 and my trusty Nikkor 35mm 1.8D (a.k.a the lens I almost never take off my camera). I used the latter in a few detail shots and the former in anything extra wide you see below.

The Gardens viewed from the side of Bayfront Station

This will meet you at the entrance, albeit artificial, still looks grand and towering.

A first look at Xander

You'd think photographing a newborn is easy because all they do is sleep or lie on their back, but it never actually is.

My friend's new bundle of joy, her firstborn Xander, popped out of her recently and at day 22, we thought we'd take pictures to remember the beauty and fragility of babies and what joy it can give you just by looking at their wrinkled skin and cute little teeny tiny hands toes.

I'll be honest, we just managed whatever blanket and pillow we found in their house. I wish I had those stretchy woven fabrics that you can easily wrap around the baby, but had none. Instead, we had a scarf. It would have sufficed except that we were inexperienced with posing babies. We were in a room with a nice big window, we just placed him on the bed with a lot of pillows underneath a blanket.

Extra care was taken in wrapping him and making sure he kept sleeping. He woke up in the middle of the shoot and well, we continued anyway.

We tried our best and decided it would do for the afternoon.

 

Post-Valentine Thoughts

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. In some parts of the world, today is still Valentine's Day. In my opinion, it has become a highly-commercialized day when people (have this notion to) feel obliged to give flowers and sweets to their significant other and later on share photos of those on Facebook.

I would like to think that Valentine's Day, (although St. Valentine started all the flowers and sweets kind of stuff) is a special day to reconfirm love that you show to someone everyday. I think of it as an extra special day to express love in doing something special and meaningful. I mean, you can give flowers and sweets any day, everyday. What's so special about doing that on Valentine's Day? There should be so much more than merely giving something you can buy from a store. 

What is special and meaningful are the intangible things. They are those that you never forget somebody made the effort of doing for you despite anything. The effort behind a gift is what matters the most. That, to me, is a gift that trancends time; a gift that doesn't wilt nor melt in your mouth. It speaks so much more of a person's desire for someone to be happy, and isn't that, my friend, what love is all about?

A colleague told me yesterday, that no matter how small or insignificant something is, if someone gave or did it for you without you expecting it, it will definitely mean a whole lot more than the expensive ones.

Nevertheless, i hope all of the people i love and care about are happy and content with how they spent Valentine's Day. After all, the most important thing is to be happy. Life is too short to be anything but that.

More of Ubin Island

This is part two of my first Pulau Ubin entry. These are the rest of the photos I took with a D90. Everything shot from 25 December 2013.

View From The Top: Mount Talinis

Enter 2014, I seethed with a sense of adventure. I don't know where it came from but I hope more is coming. And I believe I started this year right, crashing out the first thing on my list: to climb a mountain.

I had never been an outdoor-kind of person. I like the outdoors and I enjoy travel but I never thought I would enjoy doing things like biking on rough trails, let alone climb a mountain. I promised myself I would do more firsts this year, learn a new hobby, go to a place I have never been to and meet new friends along the way. It's the best resolution I've had in years.

I took the opportunity to climb Negros Oriental's second highest peak, Mount Talinis at 1,903 m.a.s.l. I had little to no expectation as to everything I would be seeing or doing. I just knew I wanted to do it and that I knew I could.

Bathe In Golden Light

One good thing about having a sister when you are a portrait photography enthusiast is that you always have somebody to model for you, even if they don't want to. Lucky for me, my sister likes to have her pictures taken so it was easy to plan a portrait session and get things in order.

We took these photos in a beautiful garden in Sibulan, Negros Oriental fronting Jo's By The Sea. It's a huge place situated on a hill with a large sculpture of Mother Mary to welcome you near the entrance. I had done a couple of engagement sessions in this garden before. The sun shines from the west at golden hour giving you beautiful light that never disappoints. Every. Single. Time.

My CNY Vacation to Dumaguete

The past two weeks had been a great refresher to my seemingly (and slowly becoming) monotonous life in Singapore. It was a great way to kick off my year and to start putting some new plans into action.

Where did I go to, you ask? The one place every person wants to go to. Home.

I took the chance to return to Philippines as Chinese New Year in Singapore commenced. I had been looking forward to that trip for months. It had been six months since I last saw Dumaguete.

Coming home felt a bit weird at first but as soon as I saw our house, my family, my friends and everything familiar to me, things felt right again.

One of the highlights of my vacation would be my first mountain hiking trip, which was so kindly organized by a mountaineer friend. It was quite an adventure and a memorable one at that. It was packed with so many firsts. I was proud to have reached that high up from the ground, as I never was the outdoor type of person. I aimed to go up and back down without any help but due to some unexpected foot and leg pain, I had to humbly accept help.

I will tell you about that climb in a dedicated blog post but one thing I can tell you is it's true what they say: "it's the journey and not the destination." My only (slight but negligible) regret was how I missed a lot of opportunity to take photographs along the way. I was (and still am) a newbie mountaineer and I got too focused on every step I took in climbing up and down so as not to injure myself. In the end, my companions had more photos to take with them home to share with friends. It's actually not really a big deal because there are always more chances to go back. At least I still have vivid pictures of the fantastic views I saw from the top.

Overall, it wasn't bad for a first climb. Here is a scene I photographed while we stopped to rest along the way. I must tell you that photographs will never be able to give justice to the beautiful scenery up there.

The rest of my vacation consisted of painful trips up and down the stairs because of body pain caused by the hiking adventure, dinner and lunch dates with my few good friends as well as occasional walks along the quaint but disheveled streets of Dumaguete.

Pulau Ubin

My first visit to Pulau Ubin was last Christmas 2013. At Changi Ferry Terminal, two friends and I took a 15-20 minute ferry to the island around noon time. It costs only $2.50 per person for a one way ride. While on the ferry, you get a great view of the sea and feel the cool sea breeze on your face. It's a wonderfully refreshing sight especially when all you see for months are buildings, roads, cars and shopping malls. It was a great day. It was after all Christmas Day.

The place is known to be frequently visited by people who wanted to go cycling or just joy bike riding along hillside bike paths as well as rough roads. There are a lot of shops that offer bike rentals (and quite a number of choices) that range from $6-$10 to use for the whole day.

These photos were shot from two different visits to Pulau Ubin. The second time I went there, I accompanied my housemate to take landscape photos. I took the chance to borrow his wide angle lens to take photos of my own. I instantly loved the wide focal length at 10mm. As you will see later, self-portraits are very convenient.

view from ferry upon leaving Changi Ferry Terminal

a lake along the bike trail to Check Jawa Wetlands

Dear 2014

The year that was 2013 had been eventful, especially the second half of it. A lot happened and did not happen, most of them I do not prefer to enumerate. Let's just say I had a fair share of laughter and tears. There were so many good and some bad memories, but despite that I carry in my heart the lessons those experiences have taught me.

If you'd been following my blog posts (or the lack thereof), you can guess that getting a job overseas was one of the the highlights of my year. It had been a long-delayed plan which I was supposed to accomplish two or three years ago but never got the resources and time to push through with it. I finally stepped-up and got on that plane prepared to face disappointment in the face if I ever get to meet it. Thankfully, I found work after a week. I couldn't be more thankful. God has always been so good to me and I am grateful for His blessing every single day.

What 2013 taught me

- Stay focused on your goals. If you want to do and be something, get up and do it, there is always a way no matter how impossible it may seem. Nothing happens if you don't get up your ass and do something to make it happen.

- Everything happens for a reason. I am a strong believer of that. Nothing in this world happens 'just because'. Good things happen, maybe because you deserve them, because you made them happen, or maybe you are lucky or maybe because it is meant to happen for you. Bad things happen because you made them happen, or you made a mistake (which is ok because we're all human but you can try again), or maybe you're just plain unlucky, or... maybe the good things aren't supposed to happen... yet.

- Expectations fcuk things up. 99% of the time.

- Life is ironic. I could sing every line of that Alanis Morisette song and still not be able to convince you that it is. It maybe different for others but to me, life has proven to be ironic so many times I've already lost count. One of which is having to leave when something just gave you a reason to stay.

- Trying may or may not give you what you want but if you fail at it, at least it will give you the satisfaction of knowing that there was nothing more you could have done, for you have already given it a shot and you already did your best. Most of the time, it is worse to keep wondering if things might have turned out better or different if you had at least tried. And sometimes even, it takes more than one try to succeed. All this sounds cliche but it takes a person to experience things for themselves to be able to say how true these things are.

In 2014,

- I will try to step out of my comfort zone. I am one of those who loves that zone. I mean, who wouldn't? It's everything you've ever felt safe in. In my case, my comfort zone has so many aspects, from places, to food, to habits, to preferences in doing things. In short, I have never been one to take bold risks. This year, I will, not promise but I have every intention of, taking more risks, for the sake of living life the way it should be lived.

- I will see new places and meet new people. I am actually shy and reserved especially in the presence of strangers and crowds so this is not something I don't find easy.

- I will learn to travel new places on my own. I am usually paranoid about a lot of things on travelling solo things but like i said, I will control my paranoid brain and tell it to shut up.

- I will learn new hobbies and explore more of nature. I've always known that this world is seriously one giant amazing creation of God but I've never had such a renewed spirit of wanting to see all its glorious beauty with my own two eyes.

- Grab any chance to be happy, because life is unpredictable like that. It's best to do things while you still can. Do it now. Because "later" almost always becomes "never". Often we wait to do things until we are ready. But the truth is, we will never be ready. We just have to do things whether we're ready or not otherwise they will never get done.

- "Fortune favors the brave." And most of the time, what you are afraid of really won't hurt you in the end.

- "Life is not meant to be lived in one place."

- I will conquer new heights. I mean that literally and figuratively. I look forward to my first major adventure in March. Can't wait.

It may seem a lot but most of those can be summed up in a thought or two. I may have had a moment of epiphany when the new year came. I don't know if it's just me or the new year that resolutions always seem quite a hype but one thing I'm sure of is that I always live up to a promise. I'm always true to my word.

I also want to take the chance to say a bold thank you to all the people I have shared memories with in 2013 and the past. Nothing in this world would ever be the same without you in my life, no matter how boring and dull it is or it may become. Please know that you make it more colorful just being in it. I know not many people read this blog but if you are ever one of those whom I've shared a significant amount of time and thoughts with and you happen to read this, I just want to say that I appreciate you in every way.