Crazy Cupcake Fairy

Photos of the cupcake-inspired dress I made for my Pattern III class a few terms ago. I did this photoshoot for my portfolio. You can look at my new online portfolio here. I always update it with the better things I’ve done related to fashion.

My model is my sister and two of our dogs Natassja and Santi! I was going for a fun, nostalgic, childhood dream-like mood with a bit of noir twist. Whatever that is! haha but these are the photos that came out of all the nonsense. I basically told my sister to go nuts around the house. Some of the photos we had to do while mom wasn’t watching *cough, when she was climbing tables and chairs, cough*

cupcake fairy meets garden fairy

wanna see a cupcake do a cartwheel?

cupcake + water don’t really mix.. maybe a strawberry shake instead.

climbing not just walls

Santi licks the cupcake fairy

Mad about photography

Happy New Year all!

One of the items on my 101 list is the 26 Things photo scavenger project. There is a list of 26 words and you take a photo for each word, and that’s it. Pretty simple. =) The newest one is going on this January ‘09. And I’ve already started. Another one I’m doing at the same time is one of the lists from before, the 26 alphabets (you take a photo for each alphabet) because it seems fun. All the photos are here and I’m constantly updating it as I take more photos.

New photos:

The gold house..

Since we don’t have street names yet, as this village is new, it gets interesting how people tell visitors to get to our house. Ours is usually described as (at night) “the house at the end, the gold one with all the lights.” I guess our orangey walls and warm lights make it look golden. I think warm lights are much much better than stark white lights that wash out all the colours at night.

Mom and dad were walking Igor and Tassja earlier and passed by some landscaper/gardeners. Mom talked to them to find out their rates.

Mom: Which houses here have you worked on?
Gardener: *describes the houses for which they’ve done landscaping for*
Mom: To work on our garden, what would your estimate be?
Gardener: Which house is yours?
Mom: The golden-orange coloured one.
Gardener: Oh you live there? We thought Jericho Rosales lived there! (Btw, Jericho Rosales is a local celebrity.)
If it was me the gardener was talking to: *toink* huh? Ew no.

And our place being a bird sanctuary, there’s a lot of strange bird calls and cool looking birds. Before taking Santi for a walk, I saw this one on our wall:

It’s beginning to look a lot like..

Christmas.. =)

From Inside a Moving Car

Capturing random but meaningful photos from inside a moving car must be an art.

First, it takes some getting used to to realise there’s something worth taking a picture of. I once saw a funny sign while driving down a road I most likely will not pass through any time soon. I took pains in pointing it out to the other people in the car so they can see it and laugh with me. If I had just taken a picture, it’d have been lots easier to show what’s so funny. Other than that, it’s pretty useful to have proof when something wrong has happened, like car crashes or other accidents. A good photo or two of the scene as-is (untouched) is all you need and you won’t have to look for pen and paper or cellphone to take note of license plates. No one can lie and get away with it. I mean, there’s a reason there’s hardly a single episode of CSI that goes by without someone taking photos of the crime scene, right?

Then there’s the camera draw. Sort of like how cowboys draw their guns. You have to do it fast. Look-for-bag, open-bag, look-for-camera-pouch, take-camera-pouch-out, unzip-pouch, pull-camera-out. All at lightning speed- or as close as you can get. Picture-worthy moments spotted while in a moving car won’t run up beside your window for you to take a photo of. Competent equipment helps a lot. You only have a few moments and if your camera takes a few seconds to start up, you’ll end up trying to console yourself with the ‘arty’ photo of the dust trail/skid mark that the cool Lamborghini left behind. And mind the settings. Automatic setting for digital cams are your always best bet. I mean, try to take moving pictures with your camera set to night-shot. Yup, very bad.

Now you’ll have to deal with the photo taking itself. You are moving and chances are, the shot will come out blurred in the wrong way. But blur isn’t always evil. You can try moving with the car while you take your shot. If you do it right, the foreground subjects (e.g. grass) will come out blurred with the main subject (e.g. a sunset) well focused. You also need to remember that you’re taking the photo from out of a window. It’s a pain trying to avoid including those wipers or other parts of the car in the picture.

Of course if all else fails, you can always have the car stop. But you have to admit any good photos taken that way won’t be as “amazing” as if it was taken in a moving car. And one last important thing: NO flash. Unless your window is rolled down. What do you get when you take a flash photo of a scene on the other side of your window? At best, a good abstract photo of mostly white.

So much for that, here are some photos.

Sundown

An overcast, rainy day.

A wee hill.

Nature

Raindrops

They’re called law enforcers for a reason. They ideally should enforce the law, not step on it like what this guy with no license plates is doing.

(Along SLEX) I thought the Koreans came to the Philippines to study English. The way I see it, either they learned nothing or someone should sue whoever made this poster.

(On the Skyway, Monday the 30th) We saw this jumble of cars clogging the speedway. Everyone turned around and drove the wrong way. It took us a few days to realise what’s going on here.

Try to guess why they’re doing what they’re doing. Answer in the next photo.

=s

On to other stories (and photos).

I always thought my name’s uncomplicated. I’m always proven wrong.

All photos above (except the last one just before this, duh) taken by this lil guy here. Not Paddington. The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-N2 10.1 megamixel camera. What a mouthful. I won it in the Candy Magazine Blog Awards. It’s very good. Takes clear photos with little fuss and is easy to use.

Speaking of the Candy Blog Awards, here’s the video of the dinner when the winners were given their prizes: Click Me!

R. I. P. Lolo