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Short Update

I surely haven’t been blogging lately, but now, here I am again for a few updates. So a lot had happened

• I lost my SE K608i and had it replaced with my new ally… SE K800i.
• Lovelife got complicated
• Haven’t watched anime nowadays except on the typical shounen occasionally.
• Gotten addicted with Jdorama particularly Hana Yori Dango
• Got a Premium Rapidshare Account (yey!)
• Gotten interested with Film Photography, particularly Lomo
• Realized and accepted that I really do like Photography
• Reunited with an old friend
• Been hanging out a lot at Multiply lately
• Been shopping like crazy via online
• Currently focusing on human subjects
• Met a lot of new faces and new friends
• Felt so free now that my mom permits me to go out with friends at night

Here are some photos from the CIT Lakambini held last March 2, 2008. After two school events, I guess I’ve gotten better with human subjects which is btw considered as my greatest weakness in Photography.

More here

Aspiring Photographers

Today is my mom’s birthday so my younger cousins came over. While I was taking a break, I decided to play with them and take pictures of them holding our old SLR camera. They loved it so much that they even wanted to try my 400D since our old SLR camera is no longer operating. Anyway, it’s fun taking pictures of babies and it’s great to expose them to other things at a young age.. who knows? You might be looking at the future Manny Librodo.

Sinulog 08 winning photos were digitally manipulated?

SUNSTAR NEWS

Speak out: Sinulog photo tilt
By (Writer’s name withheld)

SINCE 2000, nothing has been done to professionalize and uphold the rules of the “Sinulog photo contest.”

Every year winners (especially those who manipulated their entries) laugh their way to the podium and losers get dismayed and question the process of judging.

Still, contest organizers and judges do nothing to find ways to detect and prevent digital manipulations of submitted photographs. The same rules used for almost a decade are applied even as technology on photography is getting sophisticated.

This is why the Sinulog 2008 photo contest was again hounded by controversy. Most of the winning and non-winning photographs were altered/enhanced through digital manipulation.

Even if the judges’ services are voluntary, they should be conscientious, like checking the basic conditions of the event: weather, sky hues, significant street decors or markers, etc. that would affect the pictures taken.

In this year’s fluvial parade, the sunrise was not bright. The sky was cloudy and there was even a drizzle. So how in the world can a photograph yield a dramatic tobacco color contrasting the dancers on motorboats in the fluvial parade?

Had the judges knew of the situation at that time they could have easily disqualified photographs that were clearly altered/enhanced through digital manipulation, which is a violation of the “un-updated and un-enforced” rules.

In the higante-float-puppeteers category, the rules state that the entire higante or puppet must seen with the ones carrying it in each photo entry. But look at the winning photos that will be exhibited at SM City tomorrow.

A number of winning photographs were obviously altered/enhanced through digital manipulation, thus yielding a vibrant image that is of magazine and/or billboard quality. Had the organizers said that such is allowed, then rich photo buffs could have hired graphic artists to augment their chances of winning.

Ricky Ballesteros noticed this and wanted to disallow it but the judges said that, “halos kaning tanan gi-photoshop man ni, so i-apil na lang na!”

The practice is a disgrace to the true spirit of the Sinulog, a mockery to the Holy Child and an insult to photography.

Some suggestions:

–Get a software that would determine the quality, history and watermarks of a photograph. (Even film when scanned yields information if viewed on the right software).

–Hold the judging in a well-lighted spacious room, not the one under the Cebu City Sports Center grandstand nga maghuot na ang mga illustration board nga gibutangan sa entries.

–The judging should not be done in less than a day. In prestigious photo contests abroad, judging more than 3,000 photographs takes a week or more.

–Limit the number of entries.

–Include this in the rule: The original structure of a scan and/or camera file must not be altered by digital manipulation. Only changes that can be made using conventional darkroom techniques are allowed.

What this means is that images should not be altered so much that the image is completely different than the original shot. Images created with the use of masks, borders, backgrounds or other effects will automatically be disqualified.

Optional rule: If a winning photograph is an “altered” photograph, the winner must return the prizes he got and must be suspended/barred from entering future contests.

Anyway, I did join the Sinulog Photo contest but didn’t submit any entries since all of them were just like funshots and still incompetent enough to be submitted. But little did I know that there are actually people who had lots of guts to digitally manipulate the submitted photos when in fact, it was clearly set in the rules that it must be from the original take.

You can view the winners and it’s photos from CebuAsia. If I had known this would happen then I could just manipulate mine as well… lol.. But kidding aside, it’s really sad that Photography became a pool for graphic artists rather than those with passion of photography.

Anyway, it’s over. Hopefully, next year’s judges would be competent enough to differentiate what’s edited and what’s not.

Want your photos Lomofied?

If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll see that I’m really getting the hang of this. While it’s always great to take photos unedited, there are times when our photos won’t turn out the way we want to, or to put it simply, our photos sucked. This kind of technique may be favorable to those who just wanna expose their photos at Friendster or other social networking websites. Of course, many of us doesn’t want to present any dull photos, if they could only enhance it then I can’t find any reason why they won’t. But anyway, it’s intended for the OCs and vain people out there who are lazy enough but wanted to achieve this kind of effect in a few clicks.

While many people doesn’t want to spend their money on a lomo toy camera, people can resort to editing them digitally by using Adobe Photoshop (other image editors will also do but these actions and scripts will only work on Photoshop). I’d like to note that the first 3 are Photoshop actions while the last one is a Photoshop Script.

Also, I don’t claim that these script and actions are mine. These belong to their respective authors.

Now, I’ll be using this fairly dull image, as some people said, lomos makes photos a lot more interesting…

Original Image: