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Denim

A month ago, the employee engagement team of our department asked each of the sites to come up with a photo that focuses on denim - also the theme of that month’s townhall. The shoot wasn’t planned. We all just agreed to come early so we could shoot before the townhall begins. Everyone felt like, uhm, hip? Lol! 


We only placed second best for the entry we submitted, but the team thinks we should be the winners because of some technicality which we no longer raised - all judges came from the same site haha!


Huawei P9

After a year-long journey full of hope and hopelessness, I finally have a Huawei P9! Since I’m no longer using my Samsung Galaxy S6, I have decided to sell it so I could fund a Huawei P9 purchase.

For some it was a downgrade since my Samsung has a Super AMOLED display, it shoots 4K videos and it has a premium glass back feel. But all of these were not deal breakers for me. Then one day, I found someone who was willing to swap his three-month old Huawei P9 to my Android phone. I immediately set-up a meet-up to swap.

The phone was slim for my hand. I wish it was as thick as my old Blackberry Z10. But the good part is I could slide it inside my pants pocket with ease.

The major reason why I wanted to get one is the camera as this is the closest I could get to have a Leica camera. Nope, the optics weren’t manufactured by Leica but they co-engineered the software and performance with Huawei. And that’s good enough for me!

I have never been this excited since I got my Nokia 7650. That is the power of a mobile phone capturing images. The Samsung Galaxy S6 has a larger and faster f/1.9 aperture and it can also shoot 4K but the Pro mode of Huawei P9 is just so enjoyable to use.

“Oh my, I now have a Leica!”

That’s what I always say to myself when I’m staring at the dual cameras; that shiny Leica branding makes my heart beat faster. The camera interface is also fun to use! I can easily tweak the settings manually by just swiping through the controls on the screen. And the last time I enjoyed shooting manual was when I still have my Nokia 1020 working. And when you are in Pro mode, it lets you capture RAW files. Getting lost? Haha! RAW files are bigger in size compared to JPEGs as it captures more details and in raw. The advantage is you can easily tweak the highlights and shadows; and the best app to do this is on Snapseed. Google continues to develop Snapseed as it now supports RAW, unlike in VSCO for Android where RAW-support is still nowhere to be found.

By the way, I recently joined a summer phoneography workshop organized by D’yan Lang in partnership with Huawei Mobile Philippines and Dodzki Photography. The workshop highlighted the advantage of using dual cameras and the speaker discussed the importance of shooting manual as most of the times, if not always, you’ll get better results. After the one and a half hour talk, we applied what we learned. Below is a short video of the event.

Watch it here: https://youtu.be/VN1AchB0pj0

I’m looking forward to more photography time with this device. And hopefully collaboration with creatives and Huawei too.


Here are some of the photos I took during the event:

An old filmic look of Casa Uno of Circa 1900.

Breaking the rules. Harsh light and grain.

Not double exposure. See the silhouette of myself photographing Ukay Ukay Diva?

A dreamy effect of Cheska’s portrait.

Practicing food photography. I don’t need to add more elements as the table is rough enough to highlight the simplicity and vibrance of the dish.

One of the exciting features of Huawei P9 is the ability to mimic the aperture modes from the narrow f/16 all the way up to the widest f/0.95.


Creative Drought

There were times in the past when I almost gave up on my photography journey. Yes, I have capable cameras but there are things that prevent you from pursuing what you want to do. I just had to let it out of my mind.

I haven’t posted anything for the past 10 days which I felt bad as I have promised to myself that I will maintain this site by posting at least once per week. It could be the time of the year or probably fatigue and workload that led me to a creative drought. I am loaded by the tasks and projects I am handling and the future projects that will come, not to mention the three Six Sigma projects I am part of. It’s crazily overwhelming. Good thing I have an amazing manager who motivates me every day. But I’m starting to feel incomplete because I haven’t finished or even continued any of my personal projects (I’ll post more about it soon). Every thing right now is all about work. I must not lose focus. I shouldn’t be derailed. Some people would say “Take a break!” but I can’t… There are only two of us left in Cebu to do all these things. I don’t know if I’m making a point here, I’m really out of order in terms of creativity.