Estan Cabigas

What a blast! Last Friday marked the culmination of our Digital Photography Workshop at the UP Film Institute. After a week of intensive lessons covering the photography basics, camera gear familiarization, composition and many other topcis, my class headed out to the Sunken Garden in UP Diliman for their hands on shooting.

It’s heartening to see their photos. Although, as exepected, not all are immediately perfect as it is but during the critique session, I, more or less, demonstrated how to better capture or frame a particular photo: does the photographer need to move a few inches to the left or right or even go down for a better angle? Focus more on a particular element? Adjust the settings for better exposure? This are just some of the things that, I imparted. Of course, there were promising images. With better adjustment of contrast and saturation, might already be a winner.

The workshop participants were a varied lot with the youngest at just 12 years old. There were college and high school students and professionals all wanting to know how to better take pictures, understand their equipment better, or just to start Photography as a hobby.

Prancess, one of the younger participants emailed me to share her learnings, which I do appreciate a lot:

…A few important and core lessons I learned from our class:
What is my intent in taking a photograph?
A photo should excite and make a viewer interested.
This is a chance to share and inspire others.
Learn to see order in all the chaos in the world…

Keep on shooting guys. Hope well be able to schedule a fun shoot together soon.

It was unexpected, but a text from a researcher of the TV show in GMA, Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho was just enough to get me excited, forcing an unscheduled trip to Taggat Lagoon in Claveria, Cagayan.

The travel feature, done in six segments focused on places, food, people and, of course, for this special, me as a travel photographer. I was shown packing up and answering questions like how to pack and what to bring, what it is to be a travel photographer, being mobile, sense of place as well as enjoying places and the local food.

Check out my post in Langyaw.com for an in depth story about this shoot/trip and a link to the video.

After (more than) a while, I’ve updated the starting page of my portfolio site, estancabigas.com.

Its now segmented with enough information about the photographer, important updates like workshops, news, FB page as well as the latest blog post in one glance. The slideshow is still to be updated with new portfolio images depending on new works that I will be including at my main portfolio gallery.

All these were designed from bits and pieces of code and inspired from two of my photographer friend’s sites. More to follow soon.

Fellow photographer Lester Ledesma will be conducting a photo safari in Hanoi and Halong Bay 17-21 March. That’s next week! At just P25,000, the safari already includes round trip tickets, accommodation, meals and a free handbook. A bargain, if I may say.

Check the Hanoi photo safari site for more info.