Good news from heaven the angels bring

"Good news from heaven the angels bring,
Glad tidings to the earth they sing:
To us this day a child is given,
To crown us with the joy of heaven"

A blessed Christmas to all :)

~ Mik and Tere :)

Brian and Bethz Pre-nup Photoshoot

I did text Brian and Bethz this morning and they gladly allowed me to share some of their prenup photos. :)





















Big thanks to the couple! From the day I met them, they're very fun to be with. Full of laughter. 101%. ;-)

I'm back. :)

It's been a while. :) I'm finally writing again. Some of you may wonder what the heck happened to this blog. The simple truth is I only haven't used my camera for quite a long time. :-D I attended activities and went to different places but I didn't shoot. Why? My camera is just too bulky. This is the reason why I envy people with point and shoot cameras. These cameras are small and you can bring them anywhere and shoot almost about anything. How I wish I have one as well. :( Yes, quite ironic since a lot of people wish for DSLR's instead. :) Reality rule # 76: What you don't have is basically what you'll be looking for. :) So Mik, why don't you buy one? I don't have the luxury as of this time sad to say. I have to invest more on photography equipments and I have to help my wife with our other business. Speaking of my wife, here's a photo I took of her in our recent trip at the Lakeshore, with our dog named Casper. Casper the friendly dog. :)



Ahihi. :) They joined me when I had a prenup photo-op recently. I wish I could share some prenup photos I took but I have to get the permission of the couple involved first. I'll text them up tomorrow.

I wish to close by sharing something. It's been VERY stressful and SERIOUSLY challenging the past weeks but I thank God there's always a reason to smile. He is the reason. It should work with you as well. :)

Goodnight and God bless! :)

For Multiply Users

Reposting the last image for Multiply users. :)

Ava Revisited... Revived

I'm sure most of you are familiar with this photo:



It's the one on my blog's title space. :) I took this photo last May 2007. The model's name is Ava. It somehow made a trademark in me since I used it in my very first calling card. I personally like this photo.

Tonight, I was really a "tambay" and I decided to change my computer's wallpaper. I used our friend Google to look for superb/amazing wallpapers but I didn't find any interesting ones until I found this image:



It's not really eye-catchy but I felt "kiliti" with this image. :-D Out of nowhere, I decided to play with this image with Ava's photo using some techniques I learned in the past and the result was amazing! I mean I like it as far as I'm concern. I felt I'm like an artist tonight. Random thinking/thoughts. Manages to come up of something out of nowhere. I mean it's hard to find two photos that will combine nicely at least. Here's my new wallpaper:



I hope you like it, too. :)

Renovated

I didn't like the first design I made for my website.  It's actually funny and some of you may agree.  ;-)  A photographer's website that doesn't have a gallery.  :-D  And I feel it's full of wordy crap instead.  So I decided to make it a real photographer's website and make it simple yet complete.  

Designing a website for your company is really hard.  You tend to look at others' websites and get ideas from there.  Not bad but you'll find out one way or another that a lot of website elements aren't really needed.  So you're better well-off designing out of the box.  That's ok.  As long as you are delivering well your company, why not.  In my part, I just need a portfolio and contact details.  But I feel I need to include "Rates" so visitors will immediately get ideas about my services as well.  That's about it!  I hope you like my new website.  It's really simple.

http://miktoldoya.com

Let me know anytime if you have a suggestion on how I can make it better.  

BTW, since the final design of my website is really simple, it's also a lot cheaper.  :)  It's like live a simple life and you won't have much headache.  :)

Art and Anne Pre-Nup

Here's my childhood bestfriend's wedding coming soon. :) December 27 is gonna be a military wedding. Something different and I'm very excited about it. :) Here's the pre-nup photo session we did last week. Or was it the other week? Anyway... :)















I certainly enjoyed this shoot. It was very tiring, too. I concentrated most of the time during the shoot. I did prepare for it and it's worth it.

I'm also glad Art and Ann are on a high mood. Love is in the air. It's the main ingredient for the best pre-nup photo session a couple will ever have.

Nail them!

Well, literally. Here are just few of the stuff I shot for a construction company recently. I never knew such nails exist. They look like missiles and believe me, there's even a bullet used as nails? Wala lang, naaliw lang ako. :-D

I want to thank boss Errol (a former co-worker) for reminding me that it's always nice to go back the basic. During my jewelry shoot prior to this, I was like "if only I have that four studio lights I need...". Errol reminded me about taking advantage of what I have now and stop with those "if only". With those in mind, I did a good job with just natural light by the window and two flourescent lamps overhead. You have to love photography. You don't need expensive stuff to come up with pro-level shots. :)















P.S. I still need to get those lights! :-D

Another jewelry shoot but this time...

... let's post more than two or three photos. :-D

But first, it's been a while. I really miss shooting but I made a promise (oh boy, I hear someone shouting "is made to be broken") to shoot more from now on. I have a new shot list: HDR. But let me not talk about that for now. So how am I? Mmm... saying the phrase "been very busy lately" is so "plastic". :-D Ok, I have been busy with my wife and our business. It is simply time consuming to plan, strategise, decide, worry, and all, and see the outcome. I'm enjoying it however. It's just that I miss shooting. Let me squeeze in HDR tomorrow and I'll update my blog right away. And oh BTW, I've been quite busy also with Friendster. :-D I freakin' don't know how to use it. :-D So I won't be sharing it for now. I'll try improving it first. I hear some of you laugh... yeah, laugh! :-D A very good friend was actually laughing hard when he found out I have a blog, I have my own website, but I don't have a Friendster account. Even a 5-yr-old gal has a Friendster account! I was speechless. :-D So anyway, before I get this typing to nowhere, here are the photos I'll be sharing. It's a photoshoot for my wife. She'll be selling her sister who is abroad some jewelries. So basically we'll be sending these through email first... then fly to Australia. Not! ;-)













Here's an interesting subject. My wife wants me to emphasize on this ring and I sucked. The first pic below was the most decent already among my repeated shots. Others we blurred. And this one is somehow blurred still. Good thing, I used RAW. :) RAW files are great to enhance. It saved my butt. :)

Before:


After:


The photoshoot turned out not so bad. Photographers however will criticize these photos as awful. They're right. I only used two lights for this shoot. I will need at least four lights. And to really please my fellow photogs, I'll need that 27k lense. I'm poor. No budget for those. I have to save up. Someday... Someday... :)

Nix

This is so late. :) Beth, please tell Nikki here are the photos. O:-)

Beth, Ryan, and I took a break one afternoon to shoot Nikki and Maix. It was kinda unplanned so we decided to shoot at Clark cemetery since it's pretty close. Very close... to SM so we can eat right away afterward. :-D It was our first time to shoot after hibernation if I can call it that way. Good thing, Beth has so many ideas running inside her mind. I'm very impressed with her preparations. I was kinda unprepared that time. I even ran out of batteries in my camera. I failed to charge it the night before. I don't know what I was thinking. :-D We plan to shoot again sometime in the very near future. Maybe then I'll be more prepared. It's really no joke to have a shoot like this. I wish I could have more great shots. :)

Nix photos for now... :)

8-8-8 Wedding

Churches were packed with couples getting married last August 8. For some, it's a great number combination. And one of the couples to tie the knot that day was a family friend. Quite unfortunately though, I'm not the one who covered the event. They already made reservations long before I went full-time. :) I was only with my mom since she's a Ninang so I find myself with no company at all. This is where my camera comes in. Great companion. :) Here are some of our gigs:









I was also quite bored during the reception so I just played around.

Very lazy evening

I just finished writing that Apple fever thing. I have a lot of things to do tonight instead of that. Job-related. It's just that the weather is making me VERY lazy. It's cold and rainy outside. It's very quiet everywhere in our place as well. I just hate it when it's like this. Not the weather. But my laziness! :-D It's gonna be a lot of catching up tomorrow. :) I have to go to bed now even if I'm not that sleepy yet. Good night. :)

Apple fever?

Disclaimer: This is no way an ad for Apple products... if it is. :-D

I just bought the 2nd iPod Shuffle for the week. It's for my mom. The other one was last weekend. It's for my wife. I also bought two Altec Lansing BXR1121 speakers for both iPod(s). The result, priceless music and sound experience for the two most important women in my life. :) iPod has always been the leading MP3 player. Second is Creative. When my wife and I were checking some MP3 players last weekend, I can't see that smile I'm looking for whenever she tries those "China-made" players. I then told her this isn't what she's looking for. But having a half-Chinese partner, they want whatever is cheap. I asked her to try the iPod instead. That's where the smile I'm looking for appeared. I told her that smile is priceless so we'll take the iPod. She was about to react about the price but I told her it may be pricey, but the experience is priceless. What a great excuse to buy expensive stuff huh. :) I asked her if she wants the Nano (iPod video is just too expensive for me). Again, her Chinese instinct punched in. She said she doesn't need that small screen. I told her she can watch movies with it. She said it's gonna be no way she'll be watching movies with those tiny screens. That was like a slap in my face. :-D So it was the Shuffle indeed.



My mom has the bluish violet color and she simply love the sound also. So it's like Apple fever is getting along well with me or us. What's next? iPhone 3G? Mmm... nah. But I'll be using a lot of Apple products now especially in my job. Will I be putting Apple stickers in my car's windows? Mmm... nah. Will I be getting iPod Touch in the future as photo viewer? Mmm... nah. I still want the Epson P-series. So you see, Apple is great but not all the time. Therefore, I can say I might not have that Apple fever still.

How about Bose fever? Me want that. :-D Someday... someday!!! :)

Uploaded!

While the revised design of my website is in the works, I decided to post the first design still. I've been too busy with a lot of things lately and I can't find time to sit for the new design. I think this is gonna be good for now. :)

http://www.miktoldoya.com

I hope you guys like it. Feel free to email me anytime for comments and suggestions like how can I make it better, etc. With regard to the gallery, I'm trying to learn something but the set of codes I need is making my mind go crazy. So please bear with me. Gallery to follow. :)

Shifted... to Mac :)

I finally shifted to Mac. Thanks to Ryan. Super kulit kasi! :-D But it's very nice really. Maybe I need a day or two to get used to it. I'm good with that. The other exciting part is the rig is FAST! Core 2 Duo at 2.0 Ghz with 2 GB of RAM upgradable (and usable) up to 8 GB. For now, 2 GB is more than enough. The processor is not top-of-the-line but it's very powerful already for my job. I tried multi-tasking "to the max" a while ago and it doesn't consume even 25% of the whole memory. I also tried loading 800+ images I took on an event last weekend and the pictures simply showed smoothly all at the same time. No more waiting. With my Core Solo, 1GB RAM WinXP, it's very sluggish. Not the PC's fault. It's powerful. Memory management is the problem. I won't have problems layouting wedding albums now. No more excuses not to finish them when I need them. :-D A bonus to that is a 22-inch LCD monitor and superb music output by Altec Lansing's VS4121. Sweet. :)

Paging kong Marco... this is the real thing now. :-D Kong Marco is a very good friend who also helped me A LOT with PC softwares before. And we played with a particular program that will transform my XP into a Mac. It's a skin. It's Windows XP but the interface is Mac. It's a cheap software and it instead damaged my operating system (OS). All hell breaks lose and I reinstalled everything. Windows, all my programs, and I even did a bloody hard drive partitioning, which I really don't like doing myself. Trying-hard Mac-ing. :-D But no more of that now. I'm a real Mac user now. Job calls for it as well. :)

BTW, I'm sure Elle will be very happy about this also. She's one of my makulit Mac friends who also tempted me non-stop to shift. ^_^

Coming Soon...

... is mik toldoya photography's own website. :) It's long overdue actually. We've been developing it for weeks already. Version one is currently uploaded somewhere out there in cyberspace but it's on a testing stage. I have some beta testers helping me how to make it... somehow nice. :-D A friend suggested the background color isn't nice. We decided to work on version two then. A completely new design! Sounds crazy huh. Indeed. :-D Hopefully, we can pull this one off the soonest time possible. Wish me luck!

http://www.miktoldoya.com

I just came from a shoot. Corporate event. Very tiring but fulfilling. I'm gonna be busy reviewing the photos tomorrow and I still have one wedding album layout to finish. Just four pages away and I'm a bit lazy now. :-D Honestly, layouting a wedding album is sometimes draining/exhausting. Or maybe I'm just a perfectionist.

My bed is calling me now. Ciao! :)

Moi Paella

It's been a while! I have to admit, it's kinda hard being an event photographer. Projects are usually months ahead! Although I'm good with that. Patience is a virtue. :-D I'm like a farmer waiting for my crops. Anyway, I'm glad I have a shoot this coming weekend. A batch reunion. Is it considered as a corporate event? The last one I had is also a corporate event two weeks ago. Two days of very tiring shoot and I really mean it! I was with my buddy photographer Ryan. There's so many photos that it makes me lazy to browse them. I'll post some photos from it sometime... soon. :-D

Now on to my topic, my wife cooked something special for me today. ;-) And it caught my camera's attention as well. :-D

"Moi Paella"


Do you think it's delicious? IT IS!!! :-D The best paella I had. It's jam packed with ingredients and she knows the taste to look for. :) Here's a secret for guys who wish their wife to get the kind of tastes they're looking for: Treat your wife regularly at your favorite restos and somehow discuss with her about what could be the factors why a certain dish is so delicious. Guys, it's a win-win situation trust me. :-D