History, philosophy, photography, art, memories, food, books, movies, technology, cultures, friendships, conversations...
Born in the Philippines, living in the U.S., I straddle East and West in interests and desires. I am fascinated by cultural patterns and seek to understand their source in personal and communal histories and in people's beliefs.
Contact me at creator81@gmail.com.
Colors and shapes are becoming more important to me as an image-maker. After a day working at the computer I take a walk in the evening after the heat has dissipated somewhat. With Indiana now on Daylight Savings Time, the light lingers till after nine and then suddenly is gone. I have taken most of my pictures recently when I go for my walk in the evening, taking advantage of the quickly changing light.
I have been taking my Lumix DMC-FX50 when I take my evening walks. It takes good images but the main advantage is its small size. My Canon cameras are too large and heavy to lug. A similar experience is using my small Sony HDV handycam instead of the heavy HRV-Z1U to shoot video. The small size devices have allowed me to take more shots than I would have with the heavier devices. No wonder the industry keeps miniaturizing. Digital videomakers are especially prone to take unlikely consumer devices to create content that they then post-produce with software into amazing products!
Reflections on the water are a common enough ploy but there are few things in land-bound Indiana to compete with the gorgeousness of sky and water, especially late in the afternoon.
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Life is what happens while you're busy planning it. Two days already into official summer! It feels like just days ago that winter cold and snow were upon us, just weeks ago when I began my sabbatical in December 2007 that led to my departure from Lafayette Clinic. A lot of changes!
My morning routine has stabilized. For a while, no longer having to get up early to prepare to leave the house for work, I slept late. With daylight arriving earlier in the spring I began waking up as I used to when I had to drive 70 miles to Lafayette. I take my shower, do some yoga and meditate, then get my cup of Senior's coffee at McDonald's, visit in the garden for a while, maybe take a few photos with my small Lumix, then come back inside to start working at the computer. I break for lunch after one o'clock, fix the meal, sometimes cooking enough for leftovers for supper on another day, watch Charlie Rose or a cooking program on Create.tv, and start doing tutorials or working on photo or video projects until six or seven. I take my walk or go to the gym for a couple of hours. Alas, Bally is closing today. I bought my membership there a year before my condominium was finished in 1986. I've been going there for 23 years. I am sad to see it go but the change also opens up opportunities. I prefer to walk outdoors in the summer anyway. I might inflate my exercise ball and start doing weights at home again. I stopped weight training three years ago. Every morning in the shower I look at my wasting muscles and think I should do something about them.
The sabbatical was to explore doing professional videos. I had taken a certification class in FCP in the summer of 2007. Instead I found myself going into digital photography. I shot my first model in May 2008 after a trip to the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy. That was the first trip I took without my usual travel companion, my older sister, Merma. Shooting Kaleb was an eye-opener. Shooting landscapes and travel scenes is one thing but to have a live person in the studio (the shoot was my first using studio lights) was an inexpressible joy. My video camcorders gathered dust.
I started using the small Sony consumer camcorder again early this year but didn't shoot anything significant until I shot Babu and Visha's Jain guests this past weekend. I started learning iMovie '09 last month and am halfway through completing my first video in two years, a travel documentary of our Adriatic Sea cruise in 2007. For starters, I am doing just a portion of the cruise, the stopover in Dubrovnik. My next project is editing the interview with the Jain nuns. The more I work with video-editing, the more ideas come for other shoots I'd like to do. Travel videos have a commercial potential although I would have to shoot better videos first to produce professional videos that I could maybe market to tour members or tour companies. Next I want to do a documentary on the spiritual lives of ordinary people. I already have three video shoots for this project. These clips are a little better than the travel clips. Shot indoors, I've used a tripod for the camcorders so the clips don't need to be stabilized, a vital feature of iMovie. I'd like to be working in Final Cut Pro Suite again before summer is over.
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The AT2020 USB mike arrived yesterday from B&H Video in NYC. It is solidly built and plug-and-play on the Mac. I used it for a short voice-over on the video on Dubrovnik that I am working on. Nice clarity. The tone is warm and my mouth was more than a foot away from it. I am very happy with it. My next tool for video: a battery-powered daylight-color Litepanels MicroPro released at NAB last April. But I can wait to get that. I have tons of video tapes to practice on. I am still using iMovie and learning to use GarageBand. I figure I can start with the simpler video and sound program and advance to FCP, Soundtrack Pro and Shake as I get some experience (and confidence) putting together complete videos.
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I have not done any more work on learning Photoshop other than what I learn by trial and error when I process my daily batch of photos. I should. There is so much yet for me to learn. This is from Brandon's first photo shoot with me. I've processed a tiny fraction of the images. I was struggling to use a new Canon 70-200 mm lens during the shoot. If I had the space in my studio, the lens would be perfect. In the limited space I have, the 24-70 mm lens works better for me. I want to do more figures studies in future shoots. Meanwhile I am slowly, laboriously, moving back to doing videos. I am starting with literal baby steps. I am a fourth through finishing a travel video on a cruise to Dubrovnik in Croatia in 2007.
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I am amazed, and not a little humbled, how the quantity of light affects the evocative quality of images. Sunbursts through clouds, starring effects of light, and, of course, the way we use studio lights to utilize highlights and shadows–all are tricks of the trade, but tricks are the core of what makes images so powerful. Shooting world-shaking events or exotic landscapes and people does not require much attention to light short of making sure your subject is well enough lit but taking pictures of the workaday world in which we live that we see these images with reawakened eyes requires a closer study of light and its effects.
More images of this shoot at www.flickr.com/photos/karuna71
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I have two chapters left before finishing the two tutorials on using iMovie for making videos. iMovie has come a long way! I think I can make decent videos just with this software. After completing at least one video using iMovie I plan to go back to using the more complicated Final Cut Pro that professional moviemakers use to create digital movies.
My first project is editing a short video on the Dubrovnik part of the Italian cruise I took in 2006. I love travelogues. Before my sister persuaded me to take my first trip to Europe (Spain in 2001), I was content to be an armchair traveler. I still have one huge bookcase laden with thick photo-filled books about every conceivable country in the world. Through the years I have accumulated dozens of video tapes that I shot on many of the trips I've taken. They were unusable prior to iMovie coming up with this stupendous ability to stabilize shaky video clips. I handheld them because, after 9/11/01, carrying tripods and other pointy items in your luggage became difficult to impossible. Frankly I also just didn't know what I was doing. I have enough videos for dozens of travelogue movies although the quality of the finished product would be low, lower especially compared to what I have come to learn about professional or commercial movies. Still it's a start and I think I can make entertaining videos even with what I have. I aim to make cutting-edge movies, movies that really show creativity, new ways of looking at familiar sights, new ways of thinking familiar thoughts.
I want to combine travel shows with culture and history. I have been reading Bruce Feiler's three books on the Hebrew Bible that he wrote while actually traveling to the places in the Middle East where biblical events happened. What a powerful formula! The first book, Walking the Bible (2001), was a runaway bestseller and established Feiler at the top of this oeuvre of mixing travel with religion, archaeology and history. That led to his being asked to make a documentary based on the book for public TV in the U.S.
Next on my list are documentaries about people, how individuals choose to live their lives. I want to shoot ordinary people from different cultures talk about what coming to America has allowed them to explore and live about their native cultures, traditions and religions.
Finally, by 2010 or 2011, I want to start shooting videos in the Philippines, interviewing people and documenting the music and religious traditions that are quickly disappearing.
What I want to do is very ambitious. I don't know if I'll have the time before my body and/or mind give out on me. I just tell myself to do what I can.
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