MOVED

click here for the new site

My posts from this blog will remain as my blog archives. New posts will be posted on my new blog. Please change your url to http://xoicexo.co.cc

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

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.

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.

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:

BHP Actions
This includes 3 different variations of a Russian Lomo LC-A Camera and 4 other effects.
Download: http://www.digi-gen.com/hold/bhp-actions.zip
Samples:

(A2D) Lomo V2
This includes 4 different variations, the original lomo, with medium vignette, with light vignette and without vignette.
Download: http://www.addictedtodesign.com/free%20actions/zip%20files/(A2D)_Lomo_V2.zip
Samples:

Lomoize V2
Download: http://www.digi-gen.com/hold/bhp-actions.zip
Sample:

ConceptDawg’s Fake-LOMO Adobe Photoshop Script
He had two scripts available, one for Lomo and another one for Holga.
Important Note: Unlike the previous actions, this one is a Photoshop Script. In order to use it, click on File – Scripts – Browse
Download: http://www.flickr.com/groups/technique/discuss/34317/
Samples:

I’ve always wanted a lomo camera but not the types that has heavy saturated colors but those with fisheye capabilities. I just thought that those with heavy saturated colors is very impractical since I can always do that in Photoshop. But having known this.. I never read tried it out until this last when my cousin went over to upload her pics on Friendster. Lomo’s were said to make an uninteresting photo become more interesting so I decided to search for a tutorial and found this one. There are other fake lomo tutorials out there but I find this one to be the most convincing.

Here’s how the first try looked like:

Original Image:

Lomoshopped:

Don’t you think it did looked more interesting?

Fascinated with the result, I decided to create a new Photoshop action from it and applied to some of my “uninteresting” friendster photos. Still bored, I thought that maybe there are some Photoshop Actions available for lomo effects and eventually found 2 but the results aren’t didn’t look like the one above.. I especially liked the vintage look on the first one.

Now here’s from the 2 Photoshop Actions I got from the net:

I’ve already discarded these photos but now I don’t have any reason to discard it ‘coz of it’s nifty effect. Ok, I know that lomo purists doesn’t approve of this but there’s no need to worry since I’d never post this on a lomo forum (errr.. lomomanila?) and claim it was taken from a lomo camera.

After ARCHcon2007, here comes another anime convention which is going to be held in Cebu. I would like to note everyone that this is still the 2nd organization who decided to organize an anime event here in Cebu, and is currently on their first year.

Honestly, I’ve never been to an anime convention since it’s quite rare to have such an event here. Although I’ve heard that ARCHcon started last 2004 but I’ve only heard about them around late October 2007 while they were advertising for their latest anime convention held last November 18, 2007 at the old Sacred Heart School Jesuit Building. I let the opportunity pass since it’s more like a hobbies convention rather than a convention solely for anime.

Now, here comes Otaku Fest organized by an anime org from UP Cebu. I immediately got interested because of their Photography competition. When I entered the Sinulog Photo Contest, I realized that I’m still bad with portraits and human interest. So, I thought about it and realized that maybe I should start practicing here. Doesn’t exercising our weakness overcomes our insecurities? Right, and this time, I actually had the courage to just go on and just wanna take lot’s of pictures without worrying about how the photo may look like and other stuff.

There’s a little problem though, it’s going to be held on a Saturday which my TV Arts laboratory class falls in the morning while my Layouting class falls at 3pm. So basically, I only have a 3 hour break if I don’t wanna miss my classes. Of course, it’s easy to just ditch the class and go to the convention but it seems like it’s going to be harder than I thought since last Saturday, I didn’t go to my morning class since we were filming a short film for the school and we’re going to continue by next Saturday. I’m not even sure if we can actually finish it by that time. And yeah, I mentioned that we’re going to continue it by next Saturday so that would mean that I won’t be able to attend my morning classes again! So by February 9, I no longer have the excuse to be absent. But I really really want to attend the event, I wanna take pictures and more pictures. That’s the only thing that occupies my mind right now.

Here are the mechanics by the way:

Photography:

1.)The competition is open to all interested individuals. Registration is at the venue itself.
2.)Photographs taken must be from the event itself, of any theme (i.e. Portrait, Human Interest, etc)
3.)Photographs are to be submitted on or before 2:30 PM of February 9. 5r size*
4.)Photographers may submit a maximum of 3 entries.
5.)Criteria for judging are:
50% content
50% composition

Now, another problem is, if I were to enter the competition then I’d have to hurry and print the photos before 2:30pm, that’s just ridiculous (I’m sorry if anyone’s offended by this), so estimating that the convention will open at 10pm (as what I’ve read from the previous posts at Istorya.net), I only have roughly 4 hours and 30 minutes to take pictures and have them printed, and not to mention that break weren’t even counted. But anyway, I’m not looking forward for the contest anyway, I just wanna take pics and that’s just it. If it’s allowed to take pics without joining the contest and I’m in!

Oh my God! I love this song… Anyway, I haven’t really seen High School Musical 2 yet, while I was browsing my friend’s page, she had this song as her background music. Of course it was the original and the melody from the start immediately caught my attention.

It wasn’t long when I started to get addicted to this song and I never left my friend’s page for more than an hour just to listen to this song.

This morning however, it still is my last song syndrome, I’ve read from the comments that there was an Asian version of this song sung by Nikki Gil. I loved her and was so damn proud when she sung the Asian version of Breaking Free, so I immediately searched for her version.

It was indeed very good and the video was very well done. I actually liked the original version better because of the emotions embedded in the song but obviously Nikki Gil’s voice was way better than Vanessa’s. Although I still like how Nikki Gil executed this song, it sounds more like a song (and I mean a real song!) rather than remembering how cheesy the drama was with Vanessa’s voice.

I really hate it when a new improved version comes out, it makes me feel that my current one wasn’t good enough. Anyway, here comes Digital Rebel XSi initially priced with $799 for the body and $899 for the 18-55mm IS lens kit.

These improvements includes a twelve megapixel CMOS sensor, 3.0″ LCD monitor, Live View with both AF modes (contrast-detect and passive), 14-bit processing and RAW, spot metering, improved AF, 3.5 fps continuous shooting, a larger viewfinder, SD/SDHC storage and a new higher capacity battery. Doesn’t really look like it’s the time to upgrade my 400D but I couldn’t do it anyway since I’m only a student and only ask for support from my parents…

Do you have memories you don’t want to forget?

Plot Summary: The anime revolves around two protagonists, Hirono Hiro and Asou Renji. On Christmas Eve, Hirono Hiro meets a girl named Miyamura Miyako who was chasing a purse snatcher. Hiro later finds out that Miyako also goes to the same school as he does and they start hanging out together. This made Hiro’s childhood friend, Shindou Kei, feel left out. Kei then tries to compete with Miyako for Hiro’s affection and a love triangle ensues. The anime also tells the story of Asou Renji. Renji meets a girl named Shindou Chihiro at an abandoned train station. He soon learns that Chihiro suffers from a type of amnesia where her memory span only lasts for 13 hours. He also discovers Chihiro’s dream of writing a novel, but she has never been able to fulfill that dream due to her condition. Renji then decides to help her fulfill that dream. [ANN]

Story: It’s a two-way story on 2 different guys, one involves a love triangle and the other had problems on their own. Think the story isn’t too original? Better think twice. Although the story isn’t that common, we’ve seen it a few times on several movies and some TV drama but this one primarily focuses on one thing, MEMORIES. It was conveyed that memories could cause sadness, despair, loneliness, heartbreak and helplessness, but there isn’t a reason to stop and carry the pain for the rest of your life. The first episode may be utterly confusing, I personally didn’t like it at first because I wasn’t able to understand the whole thing, but once you’ve clearly got a good grasp on the concept, it’s fairly easier to predict and you’ll just leave that right there and focus how your emotions will react while watching from one episode to another. Other than that, the series was very well planned that you can’t find any holes in the story.

Animation: Stunningly beautiful! This is the anime where creativity was applied to it’s fullest. As the mood of the story shifts, so is the animation. The animation here doesn’t define how vivid it was or how it has good perspectives but rather they mainly use still images and make use of colors as a primary spice on the viewer’s eyes. The animation signifies every mood of the story that will make the viewer’s emotions go with it. The animation as well gives the impression of the character’s inner desires in a psychological point of view. It was clearly presented in the animation how the characters were feeling that you don’t really need to hear any narration or talks just to understand it. It was presented in such a unique concept that seems completely new to Japanese Animation.

Sound: The sound goes fairly well with the animation. It helps to illustrate and build the tension that the animation brought. Not much to say about this.

Character: The characters were very well developed and well defined as it goes with the story. With them struggling with their frustrations and some psychological issues, you could see how much they’ve evolved in just 12 episodes and it doesn’t seemed rushed at all. The development was mixed fluidly all throughout.

Enjoyment: Definitely worth a perfect score, writing a review isn’t really my thing, but after I gave the last 4 episodes a marathon last night, I felt that it’s unjust if I won’t give a review at all. I felt ashamed that I opt to halt watching this until the next summer break, I could have missed a once in a lifetime anime. And not to mention that I already started to cry before a minute passed when I started with episode 9 last night. My tears fell nonstop until the very last minute of the final episode.