Event Photographer

I'm starting to really love this kind of job. I enjoy doing it and I'm improving. There are a lot of challenges but I'm learning to overcome them. Camera settings, flash settings, available light, venue space, wall textures, etc. It's also nice to see people smiling at you. Well obviously, yes, they will smile. LOL. The latest event I covered is a 1-yr-old birthday party. It's my 3rd 1-yr-old birthday party coverage since I started event photography 3 months ago! Fourth one is on October. I wish to get more. :) Here are some photos from the recent shoot:











Thanks to my best bud Badette and fafi Brye for putting their faith in me. I'm no veteran but I'm very happy they loved the images. It's flattering to hear words like "I want them all printed!!!" ;-)

Optimus Prime!

Meng, a good friend of mine, bought himself a toy. It's literally a toy. :-D It's a 12-inch Optimus Prime. Yeap, the Autobot daddy. My fiancee will definitely kill me if I bought myself one of these. It's not a cheap toy but it's just that boys will always be boys regardless of the age. Ladies, please understand that. ;-) Meng is very much in love with his Optimus Prime so as a tribute, I took some pics of it using my mini studio. :)





Feel free to email me if you wish to see the rest of the set. mtoldoya@yahoo.com

Cheers! :)

Done with the crab!

The month is almost done and I'm also done with the crab. :) After starting from scratch, I found out that I still end up very similar to the first one I did. I guess I was doing the right thing after all. :) I asked a bunch of people about it and they all liked it! One comment from a friend though is the reason for cutting the main subject has to be compelling. I appreciate that one. But I did cut it as I meant it to be. :) I have some criticisms/comments with my own work also but I didn't hear them from those people so I guess I passed the test. But I'll keep on improving! By the way, the people I asked are consisting of businessmen, photographers, computer geeks, and caterers. I'm done with the crab! LOL. Below is the final image. The print output of this one is simply "yummy"! :)

Still confused... with the crab!

I was able to revise the crab shot last night. Still, I'm not satisfied with the output! It's basically the same as the 1st one. But I'm not giving up. I'm positive I'll fix the problem. I printed a hard copy of this photo from a photolab and it went very well that's why I'm really confused again. LOL. Maybe it has something to do with the photolab machine. ;-) But what I'm seeing is I have a problem dealing with white balance. It involves the use of a gray card and calibrating my monitor. I hope I can have my monitor calibrated. :(

I'll meet my friends Lee, Beth, and the others tonight. We have this photo/art project for an exhibit we'll have on September. I'm excited about it since this will be my first exhibit. Let's see what photos we need to get. I think they assigned colors for each of us. :)

Going back to the crab, I'll get back to him tomorrow evening. ;-)

Confused

We had a special dinner last week and I ran quickly in my room to take a shot of my meal. I shoot in RAW. Somehow, I'm not happy with the outcome. But before I go with the shoot details, I wish to focus on 72 dpi. Some photographers prefer to post images online at 72 dpi. What I did is I used 72 dpi at 500x333 pixels. I think that wasn't a good idea. Just click the pic below. Nyarp. :-D But I have a workaround here. I'll post a more improved copy of the pic below when I have the time. It's a busy Monday for me. :)



Criticizing my own work, I think white balance is an issue. It's my first time to shoot using a mini-studio and I discovered setting the white balance is very crucial. Anyway, practice practice practice lang... :)

P.S. Confused... coz this crab pic is giving me a hard time justifying my work!!! lol. I'm looking for areas of improvements. I know there are. I'll show this to my friends for C&Cs once I'm happy with my pic. :)

Shooting Jewelry

My "boss" and I bought some photography gears for product shots last Saturday and I started shooting last night. First in the list is my mom's jewelries (the reason also why I needed to acquire the gears) and believe me, it's not that easy at it may seem! I need to practice more and purchase more stuff needed to get what I'm looking for in the shoot. I'll see what I can get from the mall later. :)

At play

While thinking of product shots, I thought of taking a first step. I haven't bought my equipments yet for a mini-studio but out of nothing to do, I paid a tribute to one of my toys. :)