Merry Christmas from Tim Medrano

Merry Christmas Y'all!

Alright, first of all, thats not my cute baby. He is Baby Enzo, Reuben and Karen Ostrea's first born. Second, that beer was put their by his parents. No, he is not starting young!

UP Lantern Parade 2009

click photo to view the complete web gallery

Our final year to participate in the Lantern Parade. It was bitter-sweet as nothing went as planned. Even the after party didn't go as I had expected... None the less I had a blast seeing all the elaborate floats and costumes by future artists and designers of UP Fine Arts.

JV + Cathy

Photographer: Tim Medrano

Preps: Great Eastern Hotel

Church: Parish of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

Reception: UP Diliman Bahay ng Diliman

JV and Cathy are office mates at Infocom. JV is a web developer and Cathy is a web designer (Perfect help for my thesis!!). According to Cathy, JV is the camera shy type and would need coaching to pose. I guess Cathy coached him well right after our final meeting before the wedding day because I didn't have problems with him posing for the camera. Cathy, however, made our shoot very, very easy and fun. She did all the poses like a pro! Watch the Slide Show

Quick Composite Images (Flabby Tummy ALert)

I just shot myself topless on a Sunday afternoon. I got really bored and decided to do some composite images of me boxing myself. It was an experiment more than a real shoot. I must admit I haven't this very often and what I'm going to tell might not apply to all applications. I did this in an hour more or less. The longest step was editing the photos.

Tips to remember:

1. Have a good concept in mind.

2. Have a consistent lighting set-up.

3. Use a tripod!


First, set up you lights and camera. Test and adjust to take and stick to it. You will be shooting a lot so you will have a lot of options. The important things is the shots are lit and shot exactly the same.

Second, select photos that go well together. Factor in position and complexity of the extraction.

Third, layer the photos in one file in photoshop reducing the photo you will be erasing to 60% so you can see what you are erasing.

Optional, if you are going to adjust the look of the photo creatively, do it after all the compositing is done to get maximum consistency.

Breaking through the Creative Slump

I'm going to quote Steve Simon a photojournalist that I admire about being better at photography. He says:

 "If you go out and shoot, you'll be better at taking images even if you don't want to be better."

It is true in a way, but I want to go on a different point of view about going out and just using your camera a lot to get better. I really do not mind if I got "better" or not. But I guess the whole point of me starting to take me camera with me to school or wherever, again is to find a "perfect" shot. If there is one thing about this post that will further confuse you is that I'm going to contradict myself in saying that there is no perfect shot. That said, as photographers, painters, dancer or whatever you are, there should always be that unreachable dream you take with you wherever you go. I call it my personal "kick in the butt" constantly pushing oneself. Yes, you will probably never get that perfect shot. But then again, you'll never know. So keep shooting!

That said, here's more photos of today.

At least one of them were surprised.

Intention

December 1, 2009