The Digital Light Scribe

I was seating in front of my laptop browsing through some of photos from yester years when I realized that 2011 is my twentieth year in photography. Impossible as it my sound, I started my learning journey when I was 12 years old when my uncle taught me the basics of photography through his film SLR camera.

Though I don’t have any photos left from my film days, I have the floods of typhoon “Ondoy” to thank for that, I have kept some habits I developed during those years shooting film. I’ve used these basic photography concepts when I was in TV broadcast production and even more when I became part of several video production houses as multimedia artist, camera man, and editor.

But, it has only been this last 7 years that I really gave photography a lot of my time. In the last 7 years, I have met people with the same or even more passion for photography. It is also in the past 7 years that my brother and I took our passion to the next level by putting up our own photography studio and doing photography professionally. Though we no longer get 100% of our income from photography (hence, we are no longer technically professional photographers), my brother and I still continue to pursue our passion for photography.

Three years ago, I started teaching small groups of newbie and intermediate amateur photographers for free. I would set up photo walks to give them actual shooting advise. I even conducted basic photography workshops at home. All these I did as a way to give back to the photography community. Truth be told, I learned actual and practical lessons from unselfish professionals who were willing to be patient with me.

Here are some photos of our sharing sessions:

[Show as slideshow]

This year, I will continue sharing my skills mainly through this blog. I’ve also received requests for workshops. I will also do that.

If you have any question about photography, just shoot me an email at russel@beginnersphotographyguide.info.

Let the learning continue!

Cheers!

When I got an invitation to join a photo bloggers tour of Ayala Westgrove Heights in Laguna, I instantly said yes, without even knowing what Ayala Westgrove Heights is. I guess I just wanted to shoot something different for a change.

I really didn’t give it that much thought until when we were about to start the trip to the location. Along the way, our guide gave us some information about the place like it was a high-end residential subdivision at Silang, Cavite (Google Map here) and that it was really “nice”. Ok, I’m a technical writer by profession and “nice” is one of the very vague words we don’t use. I wanted to clarify this but she said that we should see it for ourselves. Ok fair enough.

One thing that first struck me was how far the road trip to the place was. If you’re coming from Makati, you have to go through EDSA, Paranaque, Alabang, SLEX, Santa Rosa, then a few more kilometers from Nuvali, BEFORE you reach the place. I was thinking, “why would you go through all that just to go home?”. Well, the answer came when we arrived at the place. The place was VAST. It was filled with thousands of trees. Utility cables were under ground. The streets were WIDE. They had the Central Park that spans SIX hectares. They even have a church, the St. Benedict Church – Westgrove that can rival some of the best churches in Manila. They have their own security force, their own water treatment plant, their own cell sites, and their own Mercury Drugs store. Ok, the place is awesome. It was no surprise why those who can afford the lots there decided to stay there.

I can go on and on about how I WANT to live there, but I’ll just let the photos tell the story.

By the way, there’s an open house there on 3o January 2011. If you want to experience the place I suggest you take the trip and enjoy Ayala Westgrove Heights.

And here are the photos.

[Show as slideshow]