Saturday, July 14, 2012

My First Pre-Dedication Baby Shoot!

    
   An old childhood friend of mine contacted me to do a shoot for her adorable baby girl! This sweet plump faced baby's name is Liv. And she just turned 1 today! This shoot was done last January a few days before her actual dedication. It was quite a challenge for me to take photos of a baby under a bright light. She cried half of the time!! It took us the whole afternoon till 8pm to get decent photos of her. I took nearly 800 photos that night! Crazy! But it was such a nice learning experience. Also I got to catch up with old friends! 













x


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Nail Decals x Oral Communication


    Our Oral Com teacher gave us interesting homework this week. We had to make a How To video. Now, the reason I had a weird iPad shot (Which was really unnecessary.) is because my prof told me to use our iPads to record ourselves. I had a perfectly working High Definition camera at my disposal, why would I want to use my 5mpx iPad to record my How To??? But I didn't want to completely disregard her rule. So, I still used my iPad just incase she brings it up.

    If you get bored during the middle, don't worry, it gets better. Also I'm so sorry for the over cut-ins. I wanted to make it as short and as funny as I could muster!

Excuse my weirdness.

x

Monday, July 9, 2012

Living by Faith



So I got this mind blowing revelation in church yesterday. The Bible says for us to always live by faith 24/7. But what does it really mean? I honestly didn't know. In Habakkuk 2:4 it says "...the just shall live by faith." How can I live by faith all the time in this world with such a worldly system? How do I even know I'm living by faith anyway? These are a few questions that have been boggling my mind for YEARS. 


I basically grew up with the church. And I can honestly say I'm only truly growing up spiritually at this stage of my life. I have God, family, and an amazing group of friends to thank for that. I am so blessed to be around such spiritually helpful and mature christians. And up until this Sunday did I only get the answer to my questions. "How do I live by faith 24/7?"

Funny story, the Pastor who was preaching also was asking the same thing to God for years now. And as she grew spiritually and through the years of preaching, she finally got it. Living by faith is filtering everything else out through the Word of God and rejecting anything that doesn't go with the Word of God. And it all made sense to me.

Honestly, I'm not there yet. I'm still being perfected by God. And I admit, my filter has a few holes once in a while. But now that I have this standard, this revelation, as to how I can live by faith... It's like I have a blueprint, or a map to a maze that I have been walking in for years. I was in the dark, and that revelation turned on the light. And now that I can see the truth, I will definitely try harder to live by faith. I have a guideline now.

There are such worldly things out there, and it will be hard sometimes to filter them out, but like my pastor said, "You see it, you hear it, don't do it, don't say it."


Let's just say this "filter" is a Banig. A Banig is a woven mat for sleeping or sitting used here in the Philippines. In this worldly system, you have to rise above by living by faith. Now think of your faith as your Banig. If your Banig is loose, it can break easily. To tighten up your the intricate weaving of your Banig, you have to keep "hearing and hearing by the word of God" (Rom 10:17) Imagine you're on a flying Banig above the worldly system, you'd want that Banig to be tight, wouldn't you? And with that strong Banig underneath you, you would be safe, and God can show you the world... Shining, shimmering and splendid, as He sees it through His word.

I saw that image on tumblr. It's a screen cap from the movie Pi.

Let's re-phrase that in relation to walking by faith:

"When your mind becomes aligned with the word of God, you will filter everything else out and find faith everywhere."

And just like that, living by faith is like the easiest thing to do.

x

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Perspectives

     And we have a winner! Okay, remember that post I did about Something special? Well just a recap, that whole photo-set got scrapped because those were too easy. But moving on, I was challenged to do something artistically challenging. Capturing a different side of my subjects in black and white. I know, it's so easy to take an annoyingly self proclaimed dramatic or deep photo by just changing the mode of your camera. I say that with the utmost sarcasm I have in every bone of my body. But let me just say: It is unbelievably hard to capture true emotion and the heart of a person in a black and white photo because it there is no color to work with. Color can do so much to add to the feel, and depth of a photo.

    This collection is called Perspective, because the idea is to give the viewers a different perspective of the people on the photographs. 






    Essentially I asked each subject a bunch of questions, until we all got a little bit more comfortable for me to ask about their life story etc. Although they knew that I was taking pictures, I gave them at least 30 minutes each to get comfortable infront of the camera and the blinding light. With that said, those photos up there are all candid shots.

    This next set wasn't supposed to be with the first set. I took an accidental one of Charles and I really liked the effect of it. Also it fit into my concept of Perspective. The photo looked dramatically better when I rotated it to the right, also we got a high grade for our finals. - Happy Dance! -


    These are also all raw photos in terms of facial photoshopping. The only photoshopping involved was to sharpen the photo, and that's it. I'm really proud of this set. 

   With this set came a photo collage of almost all our pictures and a few videos compiled into one whole video. Enjoy!


Saturday, July 7, 2012

Tignan Mo


    For our Filipino Midterms, we had to compose our own song, record it, and make a music video. I was absent for one week and I came back to find out that we had to make a filipino song. I panicked and did an all nighter. I've never been a good song writer. I've always been at a loss for words, or in simpler terms: I am no song writer. I sing, but I suck at writing. But the God and a blissful one sided crush was on my side. I was inspired. And surprisingly, after sleeping at an unholy hour, I finished the song and recorded it the next day. It all fell into place, and everyone loved it.

    Because of all the adults scaring me about copyrights, I am sad to say that I cannot post the video and/or the mp3 here. But here are some pretty screen caps I so dearly took time to pause, screen cap, and play for all you people out there to at least get a taste of the video. 




    We shot the video behind the Mall of Asia with my group mates and other classmates. The video was shot and directed by the brilliant Cristian Escolano (who is making it big in the OPMV industry btw), and edited by the amazing Jasper Salimbangon. It was such a fun filled day, and we got to hang out at Maicah's right after to shoot another video. 

Here are a few BTS shots:











So, so fun.

Recording outtakes: 







Hopefully, I get my copyright things settled and I can post the song here soon! :) x



Humanities Project: Something Special

Stoff

Some people rant and stress about their humanities class. I hear countless tales of how scary the prof is. How tough and strict she is. There was stress, and there was a bit of ranting. But I seriously love our prof in Humanities. Ms. Sam is tough but she is a good teacher. Our class always puts her projects first and foremost when it comes to schoolwork. We love the pressure and the insane amounts of workload we have to face. Because projects from Humanities are things I treasure. I work hard on them. Blood, sweat, and tears. Some, literally.

This was done for our Finals project but got completely scrapped because Ms. Sam thought it was too easy. Like I said, she was tough. The concept was, "you, you and something special you love, and then a photo of that something." Artistically, it was pretty easy. The circumstances were hard though. We had to go all the way up north to shoot this. And a week before finals! So for it to be scrapped completely a week before finals? Yeah. Stress.

Even though these were sort of "easy," doesn't mean they aren't good pictures. Plus we had tons of fun at Kuya Allan's house. And we got to meet the adorable Sia! 

Kat

Allan & Sia

Charles

Me
Oh wow, my hair was firey back then.

Sia

This is Sia. She is so adorable. She loves  How to Train Your Dragon.  Yes she does.

x


New Layout


Changed my layout for what I think is the 3rd time? I think... A fresh page for a new name. Nothing too fancy. I'll probably change it again when I get tired of it, but for now I think this is good. Yup. I think I like this.

I'm supposed to be doing homework but I was itching to change my layout!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Growing Up

I'm alive!

Yes, yes, I know. And this won't be some lame apology post on how I've not been blogging. (Which, by the way is part Blogspot's fault because mine was broken for a while.) In any case! This post is about change. I've been thinking that i've grown out of my old lifestyle that leaves paper cranes around. I've been to college, and I have in fact, turned the big Two-Oh. That's right. I'm 20. And you know what? It feels as if I haven't changed at all. But as I look at the me now, and the me before? A whole lot has changed. Not that it's a bad change. It's a more grounded change.

I feel that I cannot live up to my blog's name. When I made this blog, I was still floating around and enjoying life. But now... I'm still enjoying life, but something is different. I feel the floor under my toes. I'm not just aimlessly floating around. I am on a path, I'm walking and I'm going somewhere. Once in a while my feet leave the ground, but I get pulled back down and set on the right path again.

And with that said, I'm changing my blog name to something more grounded, and something more personal and more me. When I was the paper crane girl, I was a little girl on the edge of adolescence building a path and a world but I couldn't exactly walk on it due to certain circumstances. Now, some circumstances have changed and I can finally walk the path I've made. I'm not saying i'm perfect and that i've done all the growing I can manage. No. I have so much growing up to do. But from where I started this blog, I have grown, and I exist now, but i'm still on a road to discovering myself. And someday I will rise and amaze this world, they won't see it coming. (Haha, I can dream can't I?)

So, drumroll please..... I am changing my blog to Sidlantis. After my tumblr blog name that my amazeballs friend came up with. (Hi Lois!) Only now do I realize how a name can have such meaning to me.

It is my name, and Atlantis put together. Let's not focus on how it sank and how mythical it was. But the idea of it challenged and inspired so many adventurers and curious minds to search for this magical city. And my nickname, Seed, which we then shortened to "Sid" to make it sound catchier, is a symbol of growing into something bigger than yourself.

And so I conclude a dream and a goal: I am sidlantis, and I will grow into a something bigger than myself and will inspire adventurers and curious minds.

Cheesy! hahahahaha

The paper crane girl sort of caged me in to be just that little girl. And for a while there, I wanted to just be a little girl. Growing up is a huge responsibility. But this name is freeing me to grow and to inspire. I hope you all understand and not hate me for changing my name! It just means a lot to me...

I'll be changing my URL, Title, and layout soon!