Humid Dreadful Rain

Soft glow of the overcast sky and green leaves

My first High Dynamic Range(HDR) Photo

HDR of Adrian's shots

I was invited to join Adrian, Josephine and Andy in a PhotoOp at the La Mesa Ecopark. Had fun tagging along with them and talking to Andy about Miyazaki stuff.

It was a good opportunity to try HDR so I took time to compose the shot I wanted. Even with the brute power 'Rebirth' has, creating and editing HDR required me to leave my desk and do something else while it processed all that info. Imagine, an HDR PSD file is 93.3MB! The results are a little gloomy and washed out, but that was the mood as the rain was about to fall. A simpler way to get a better shot would be using graduated nd filter (don't nosebleed now, think tinted eyeglasses). Since I don't have one of those (yet), an HDR attempt is fine.

S is for Seven Years

Together with Mic's blatant slander on my err... unfulfilled desire, she gave me an S to post this:

1. September - Phats and Small feat Earth, Wind and Fire
2. Sets Go Up - Juvenile (OST Need for Speed Most Wanted)
3. Sucked In - Jerk (OST Need for Speed Underground 1)
4. Standing Right Next To Me - Arnee
5. Sugar We're Going Down - Fallout Boy

Comment on this post to receive a random letter from me. You will then be tasked to pick five (5) songs from your computer with titles that begin with that letter. And you are to post the five songs on your journal.

Any takers? :3

Brymac on Ice

There is no such thing as a practice life.

I've been thinking of this simple phrase since I came across it. It has furthered my desire to go out and live life. I'm also slowly taking down walls I probably built through the years. Given the chance, I'll go and try it. The amount of failures can be shadowed by successful attempts, its a matter of probability.

Swedish
I recently got my first formal massage. Aidz and I went on a night photo op, then decided to get one. Around 20 minutes in the sauna, a bath, ate some shabu-shabu then finally 30+ minutes swedish massage. I received a lot of elbows and knees, but all in all it was great. Whatever was causing my stiffneck probably got elbowed away.

Ice Skating
We went to MoA to celebrate Aimee's birthday. Ice Skating was part of the plan so we looked over the rink and weighed our chances against a battalion of kids. I've tried rollerblades now and then so I was brave enough to not use the rink wall. So after three hours, getting extremely wet, falling N times, straining my wrist and getting my hand 'toe-picked'... Ice skating is either not for me or I need tons of more practice.

Photo Op
While in MoA, I took some pics including Kimi's F1 that was on display. [Other pics here]

Like Losing A Friend
I said goodbye to something important. We've been through a lot together and I'm incredibly thankful to her. She held well enough and helped me buy her replacement. Bye, Tsunami(AMD Duron700)...
Here's how my station looks now:

Panography

Thanks to Gail for posting about panography. In a nutshell, its crazy panorama by taking lots of pictures in different orientation. So I present to you my attempt at it.

Would like to try High Dynamic Range Photography next. It is a good wake-up call on how limited dSLRs are compared to the human eye.

Cosplay

Last Sunday, I went to enjoy "O-zine fest" where the National Cosplay Competition was held. Click here for some pics of the event.

Is Pakistan Ready For You?

Mic had the idea of giving Marlon a better send off, so we planned this Friday night out. We thought we wouldn't reach 10 people... final count was 19 :). It was also Joey's birthday (hbd!). Thanks to all who joined us. Pictures are here.

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Pirated Sunday

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with Tubs, Emir and Lea. Johnny Depp ran away again being Jack Sparrow and kept the whole movie interesting.

We went to visit Dingdong at St. Luke's. It's a relief to see him smiling and telling jokes (it could have been the pain relievers though :P). Get well soon :)

[110]: A Wet July So Far

Blogger says that this is my 110th post. Hoorah, I really am a blogger.

I have been quite busy with stuff so excuse that fact that this will be a lengthy post.

Meeting with my cousin

A cousin of mine is studying law in UP Diliman. I decided to meet her (for the first time) during one of her long breaks. She is lively and fun to talk to. We talked about everyday thing and how her studies are coming along. After about an hour we decided to part ways.

Diploma

Since I was already in UP and I had a bit of time to burn, I went to pick-up my diploma. It has been more than 3 years since I graduated but never really found the need to get it.


CPL


Circular Polarizing Filter (1200 Php). I did decide to keep the cost of my photographic equipment to a minimum, knowing that its the person that makes 'great pictures'. Photoshop is amazing enough to replace most filters, but not this one. Polarization basically eliminates reflected/diffused light, removing glare and reflections on surfaces. Below are examples I took myself:


Mall Of Asia

This massive mall is the place to see these days. Being built on dodgy reclaimed land, it is built horizontally because the foundation doesn't seem to be capable of supporting more than 4 floors. It is visually more pleasing than the usual box-type SM buildings. It features 2 walkways/viewing ports that lead to the bay.
People come far and wide to experience its main attraction: an IMAX 3D theater.

Superman Returns on IMAX 3D

Good schedules and seats are hard to come by here. You need to go there to buy a ticket at least a week before you intend to watch. Superman Returns has around 20minutes worth of 3D scenes where you have to wear the special 3D glasses to see objects in the movie float beyond the screen and seem as if they will come at you.

3D scenes were mostly amazing, I enjoyed looking at the barn, the spaceshuttle and the broken boat. I do feel that some 3D time was wasted because they were in shaky situations where you could not appreciate depth or distance. For 350 Php, its a worthwhile experience.

Mini-despedida for Marl

Marl is leaving for Pakistan this Sunday (July 23) so the quattro regulars met up for drinks to give him a small send off. We moved to Bang Coffee afterwards to wait for daybreak. The rest of the pics are here.

Kat and Arnee

Its quite a surprise to find out that you actually haven't seen someone in 5 years. This was Kat's revelation that night, but it didn't really feel like it. Kat(hbd!), mayk, britan, tseri and I met at Gerry's Grill for dinner. We met up with Tseri's friend and hurried to Bagaberde Pasay.

We arrived at 920pm but even then we had to wait for ____ to perform. I couldn't count the number of times Tseri rolled her eyes during that set. Enough of that... fast forward.

Arnee sang a few cuts from her new album including 'I can't make you love me', 'You got it all' and 'Love Is' with her brother Jeffrey singing in lieu of Piolo. Arnee sounded great as she always does, and Elements band was amazing.