Saturday Tid-Bits

Hey guys!

Lots of news to get thru this week, its been quite eventful as I'm sure many of you know! Lots of new toys coming for us all to play with! The Ipad, Ipod 4.0, CS5, Wooh! I'm sure if you're any kind of tech reader you know this by now! Are you excited? Dissapointed? Stoked? I for one am pants on head excited! (term coined from Yahtzee over at the escapist magazine). 2010 is turning out to be one heck of a year! This coupled with with those constant game releases (Almost done with AC 2, bout halfway thru on Bioshock 2, and dont get me started on Dragon: AofOrigins. Still got Mass Effect 2 on my list and Just Cause 2 to pickup and probably the best Splinter Cell Game I've ever played (at least on the demo) Comming Up. AHHHH not enough time! To top that off we got Glee next week, and A brand new season of RedVsBlue. I'm in geek heaven. In between all this I need to squeeze in two jobs aswell as photography and design time. Not to mention I'm also learning to program for the Iphone (why do I feel that these Items should be prioritised differently o:)) God knows where I'm going to find the time....oh did I mention I'm also back into comics? And feverently learning japanese more so than ever? Yes I'm nuts. Anywho I'll stop on rambling. I've got another post comming up just for that :D, in the meantime enjoy these pics of Manila I've taken here there and around!








OH P.S. You will all be happy to know, after being the advocate of Worpress for the longest time, and recieving several complaints to make the jump the new website design has been finalised! :D. Now comes the fun part.....coding.....ugh, I'll keep you all appraised on how that goes! But if all goes well the move should be done in a few weeks! Enjoy!

The Local VIllage

So earlier this month I was lucky enough to head home with my Camera  from working during daylight hours so I decided to take the oportunitty to drive around and see what sprang out at me. After a short drive around herea re some of the results!

Manila Bay The Third part

I realise after having seen my two previous HDR Images, it probably tends to leave one expecting a similar level of calibre from any following images, not exactly the wisest of my decisions in my attempt to impress with my photography lol. However despite that I did manage to pull out a couple more Images that I was particularly happy with that didnt require the processing and time spent in putting together an HDR Image.

This first one is my particular fave from the following batch.

It was taken from the very same boat as my original HDR as the sun was begining to set producing a beautiful oportunity for some sillhouwhettes. However unfortunately it was rather cloudy and the beautifull sunset I had been expecting promtly dissapeared behind a clump of clouds choosing to reside just over the horizon, ruining that moment of perfect light where the sun just about direclty shines through the boat giving me the perfect Image. But as is life and ESPECIALLY photography, you dont really quite get what you want.

As for the following images most were taken earlier in the day, I'm particularly happy with the one with the sea as a backdrop. I was quite pleased to see the way the sea reacted in the background as an out of focus subject creating some nice circular reflections. I'm not sure if it was because of the distance between my subject, the lens and the sea behind the subject, or weather the position of the sun had anything to do with the way it was beautifully reflecting back into my camera but further experimentation will certainly be on my list of things to investigate.

Now before I continue yammering on and put you all to sleep here are the remaining pictures:

Enjoy!

also I'm to lazy to continue to translate this into spanish xD I'm sure google translate will do an amazing job though :D

Manila Bay

Manila Bay Boat_HDR
Originally uploaded by sbalani

And so here it is, the blog post of the week. Not that I have much to post about these days, however thats something i hope to change...soon. It seems I may have an impending buyer from my camera extracting shrilling screams of joy from my masculine voicebox. I am just that step closer to a D300 and flash goodness. Oh all the things I have planned....I hope not to dissapoint. Anywho this picture is from my previous trek with my D40, when I went off to Manila Bay! Much to my surprise it was quite a pleaseant walk-about adn with the sun just starting to set created a virtue of oportunities to shoot all sorts of things.....if only I had flash xD.

Anywho this was at around 5PM with probably the best setting sun I was going to get as the sun was promptly setting, and whilst it created a nice sillhouwhette I felt the picture told more of a story and drama if it were properly exposed. Without the aid of a tripod or an able fash system I was forced to handheld a series of shots and pray for photoshop to do its thing. And as always, it delivered in beautifull HDR my rendition of this Image. However it doesnt end there. I DID manage to get some nicer sillouwhettes of when the sun was a bit higher and more orangy, especially closeups which I am quite happy with. Something to reassure me that as I await my new toy my skill has little but deteriorated. My biggest fear. Hopefully I will be able to quell such fears and resume shooting on a weekly basis once I get my equipment in order but for now I leave you this lovely picture to enjoy . And if you're lucky There may be a second post this week. If not! see you next week!


oh and as usual the rest of the pics from manila bay can be found hencewith:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbalani/sets/72157622384859460/

or by simply clicking on the image.

New Site on the way!

For those of you who might have recently logged on to my main site, sbalaniphotography.com may have noticed a bit of a makeover has occurred recently. Now I warn you the site is only 90% Finished. It should be free of bugs and quirks, the only thing missing is my Texts which continue to remain in draft format. Aditionally my quest to rid myself of my Canon 40D in exchange for true flash simpleness remains at a standstill, with listings beeing placed on AyosDitto, Ebay & Facebook marketplace...its Seems I may have to think about selling the pieces seperately....ugh effort, but what to do, my lack of shooting is starting to get horribly annoying.

Some people have asked me what I think about the new 7D and Canon's first step towards flash goodness. Hmm for some reason I'm not particularly convinced about the workings of this, as what makes Nikon beatifull is in adition to its flash trigger system is also its flashes, the actual light bursting, blinding devices coupled wth TTL goodness. After having so recently released the 580EXII are they really going to bring out a MK III so soon flagshipping a new flash system? I highly doubt it, and with Nikon having caught up in terms of lens quality with their Nikkor brand it seems just silly for me not to switch over to Nikon. Although I have gotten attached to my lenses & Camera, I dont think their worth the headaches.

As for today's Images I'll be uploading a batch I took from last week when I was down at Mall of Asia, shooting around Manila bay (Got some hopefully nice HDR's) aswell as some very late Japan Images from my backlog so Enjoy!

And as usual, the full batch of photo's can be accessed directly in Flickr.

Scott Kelby 2009 Photowalk

Version Española abajo

Hey Guys! Thanks to all who voted on my images in the SK Photo walk to help me choose which to submit! Its very much appreciated! For those who are Interested the Images I posted up are the following two.

Now for a little information on the photowalk. As many of you know Scott Kelby (The Photoshop Messiah), began organising this yearly worldwide event last year to which I was not able to take part in due to the lack of time and resources available to me at the time (Travelling is not particularly a great time to organise oneself for a photowalk like this). However this year with the prior knowledge that I would be in the Philippines I already began looking ahead of time at which groups I could sign up with. However I did this a little late and was limited to which groups I could join with. I ended up joining one which was touring one of the many Manila Malls, Greenbelt. To be honest I was initially dissapointed that this was the only group I could attend, however it turned out to be more of a promising photo-walk than I had Imagined. I'd visited the mall but never as a photographer, and running around with a camera shots just kept jumping out at me. Had it not been for jet lag tiredness and the dropping light and my lack of an easy to use flash system and tripod I could have spent another few hours roaming and shooting. The rain made it especially interesting as for the longest time i've been wanting to shoot post rain Images of subjects with droplets and puddles and whatnot, but strangely enough I didnt get that many oportunities whilst in London (fancy that) although that may have been due to the lack of grenery which is what photographs exceptionally well after or during rain.

Español

Hola Gente! Gracias a todos vosotros los que votasteis mis mejores imagenes para el SK PhotoWalk. Para aquellos que esteis interesados en saber cuales son las imagenes que elegí para el concurso, son las siguientes dos:

Ahora, un poco de información sobre el PhotoWalk: como muchos de vosotros sabreis, Scott Kelby (el mesias del Photoshop), empezó organizando este evento mundial el año pasado al que no pude asistir debido a la falta de tiempo y recursos en ese momento (al estar viajando, no era el mejor momento para organizar un PhotoWalk de este tipo). De todas formas, este año, sabiendo que iba a estar en Filipinas ya empecé a ver en que grupos podía apuntarme. Acabé apuntándome al grupo que hacia los tours por uno de los centros comerciales de Manila, Greenbelt. Sinceramente, al principio estaba un poco decepcionado ya que este era el único grupo al que me podía unir, sin embargo, resultó ser mejor de lo que me había imaginado. Ya había visitado este centro comercial, pero nunca como fotógrafo. Si no hubiese sido por el cansancio del viaje y del jet-lag, la luz y mi falta de experiencia para usar el sistema del flash y el tripode, podria haber estado un par de horas más sacando fotos. La lluvia hizo que fuese más interesante ya que desde hace un tiempo he querido fotografiar imagenes post-lluvia, temas con las gotas de lluvia, etc.. aunque suene extraño, no tuve estas oportunidades en Londres aunque puede ser porque allí no hay tanto "verdor" que es lo que los fotógrafos suelen buscar después de un día lluvioso.