Happy Father’s Day

stuck in Bali

So it comes to be that I will spend my first Father’s Day without my Cacing! It doesn’t really feel so bad as I always thought that the celebration is an imposition of Western mores on Filipino culture and on Asian culture at large. Perhaps it is the unconventional in me that I tend to look at Father’s Day as commercial trivialization of fatherhood. That said, I would certainly look forward to the day when my daughter Cacing will “surprise” and regale me with greetings and gifts when she comes of age. Cynicism goes out the door when it comes to your children and that time will arrive quite soon enough.

So where am I and what keeps me away from my family this week?

Work. It is an 8-day trip for me covering the Jakarta, Surabaya, Bali, Lombok and Makassar. I am already midway of my business trip and should be back in Cebu in 4 days.

Bali Arts Festival

Meantime, I was able to squeeze some downtime yesterday to watch the Bali Arts Festival. I’ve watched performances of this annual Festival several times in the past 15 years, but this is my first time to watch its much talked about opening ceremony.

Part pomp, part religious ceremony, the opening parade (meped) of the Bali Arts Festival gives you a glimpse of the diversity of Bali culture. It’s like watching Cebu’s Sinulog grand parade. In celebration of Father’s Day today, I am featuring male portraits from yesterday's parade. These are somebody’s fathers and somebody’s sons.

Happy Father’s Day!

Our First Year Wedding Anniversary

How kind can time be? Exactly one year ago, last April 23, 2007 in Bali, I and my wife shared a wish to share a lifetime together. A year later, we become three. Cacing, our precious daughter, joyful and spirited, infects us daily with a fresh thirst for life and a new sense of purpose.

Love of the selfless kind has just begun.


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/80s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, +1.0EV
Cebu City, the Philippines
phototip: A red background always works.



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/60s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, +1.0EV
Cebu City, the Philippines
phototip: Be ready and capture spontaneous moments.



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/100s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, +2/3EV
Cebu City, the Philippines
phototip: To prevent blur of those special moments, set at the highest ISO possible.

the Cacing Diaries #6

Today is a special day. Cacing is two months old!

Time is stealthy. Next thing we knew our daughter is already big. She squirms in bed nowadays and soon she should be able to turn on her side. When she lies on her stomach, she can already lift her head on her own and turn it side to side (we still support it just in case). She now vocalizes frequently and engages us in a conversation with her oi, indi, oo and aw. Her eyes can already focus on us although she still prefers to look way up, infatuated by the fleur de lis-like cornice running around our living room ceiling.

She just got her vaccine shot yesterday and she was brave. She only yelped once when her pediatrician injected her in the thigh for DPT, IPV and HiB. She did not cry! Ironically, it was when she was administering her oral rotavirus vaccine that she did for she already was sleepy and cranky.

Overnight we monitored her as her temperature shot up a bit, from her basal 36.8C to 37.8C. No fever though as it was short of 38C. The pediatric paracetamol was not necessary.

As reward, today, her birthday, we went to the SM mall right after hearing the 9AM mass. Babies outgrow their clothes every two months so we bought a yellow green spaghetti shirt (P79) and a salmon pink halter and bubble skirt ensemble (P249). What excited us the most were her cheap hair clips (about P1 each) as her hair already is long and unruly.

Lunch was at the Cebuano restaurant Chikaan. We had clam soup, spicy eggplant with ground pork, crab relleno and tomato salad with pork belly strips. Cacing, of course, only had milk. She cannot have it all!

After a quick shopping for supplies at the supermarket, we went home as Cacing gets tired and cranky quickly. We passed by the Maria Clara Café near our home in Talamban where we bought her (er, rather ourselves) three pastries: a chocolate ensaymada, a petit strawberry shortcake and a hogel holf (?) cinnamon-raisin bundt cake.

Then it was pictorial, pictorial, pictorial.

Happy Birthday Cacing!


Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/800s, f/2.5, 50mm, ISO 200, +2/3EV
Cacing and her hogel hoft cinnamon and raisin bundt cake
phototip: Plan the shot. As a two month old baby still cannot support her head, Cacing had to be propped on the arms of her nanny. I used my left in pushing the cake in front of her while my free hand was holding the camera. I had to be patient in waiting for the moment when Cacing got interested and pursed her lips, as if to blow the candles.



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/40s, f/2.5, 50mm, ISO 800
phototip: It’s all about the angle. Cacing looks like she’s sitting here in a pose. Actually, she is lying on her back on her crib. This was a product of stalking.



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/80s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, +1/3 EV
Her look of surprise is priceless. Up close, I could even see my shadow in her eyes.



week 8
Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/80s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, +1/3 EV
Cacing vocalizes a lot in monosyllables. Not bad for a 2-month old.



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/60s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, +1/3 EV
Cacing can be such a poser sometimes…



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/40s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800
For her birthday, my wife and I brought Cacing to SM for lunch. Cacing is seen here enamored by the overhead lights at the Northwing.



Canon EOS 350D Digital, 1/100s, f/1.8, 50mm, ISO 800, -1/3EV
Cacing’s glamourous look is provided for by our good friend Malou in New York: a Ralph Lauren top and denim skirt ensemble. Her hair clips were from SM and they were just about a P1 per piece!

Flower Shots for the Non-Flower Person

I have nothing against flowers but it is just not my style to populate and sow my flickr photostream with blooms. But today, in one of those rarefied moments called for by the occasion, I am posting a flower in flickr. This is in dedication to my mean sister, whom I and my meaner brother affectionately call Lall.


0.013s, f/5.6, 55 mm, ISO 200, +1/3 EV
Dakak, Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, the Philippines

Chemist that I am, I always approach photography like a laboratory experiment. This is not to say that I don’t succumb blissfully to the occasional stock photo syndrome. Case in point is the I-can-take-that-kinda-photo above. There is always something universally pleasing with a direct vertical-drop shot to isolate the starburst form of the lotus and frame it with an unblemished leaf floating on the lush moss-laden evergreen pond.

Colors and shapes will always be your friend. Here are a few more phototips.

Be aware of subject-background distance to create the DOF blur
Even with regular dSLR kit equipment – and I don’t have a macro lens – you can create the beautiful background blur by using the widest aperture. In terms of “f” value, the number must be at its lowest. The blur is visually most attractive, if the background is sufficiently far from the object. If too near, the background will be too sharp and distracting. If too far, the background will be just an indistinguishable haze. In the image below, I shot the flower with the purpose of making the pink makopa flowers on the ground blurry. The orange flower, the subject, was only secondary, and was chosen precisely because it was some distance from the ground, about 3 feet I guess.


0.067 s, f/5.6, 41 mm, ISO 400, -1/3 EV
Talisay City, Cebu, the Philippines

There is actually an optics formula to calculate the desired distance of subject from background to create those little diamond-like compression spots or bokeh blur. I probably could improve the blur to make the spots more classically circular, but I was not in any mood to climb on a chair to photograph another flower more distant from the ground. In the real world, you take what you get.

Create varying background and foreground layers
Again, set the camera at its widest aperture to create the narrowest DOF (depth of field). For the kit lens of my Canon 350D rebel camera at 50mm, this would be f/1.8. Then, choose a flower subject that is crowded with other elements (other flowers, leaves, shrubs, whatever) that are several feet deep. The different layers behind (background) and before the subject (foreground) would then appear in varying levels of blur, from just unsharp near the point of focus to a complete blur at the field’s most distant end. The shot below is from a corner patch in Kobe where pansies were planted to form the word K-O-B-E. I have to bend and shoot along the direction of the row that is more than eight feet long. This is easier said than done without stepping into the flower patch. In this shot, the red pansy is in sharp focus and the others behind it blur out until they disappear completely.


0.005s, f/1.8, 50 mm, ISO 100, -1/3 EV
Kobe, Japan

Incorporate motion and use slow shutter speed
In my travels, me and my tripod are a happy pair. Even if flowers are my subject, I try to capture them in slow shutter speed and capture motion. If there is no movement, create it! One time after having breakfast in my hotel in Bali, I passed by a stairwell landing with standing basin of water strewn with rose petals. I could pictured it flat but the image would just be like a commercial spot for a spa. Then it came into me that I can create a whirlpool with my hand. I varied both the speed of manual swirling and the time of exposure and shot photos of various combinations. I found the shot at 2.5s taken at the top speed of the swirl to be quite fascinating - a vortex in red and pink.


2.5s, f/9, 28 mm, ISO 100, -1/3 EV
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia

I still thought that there is one thing missing above. The whirl may resemble like a dreamlike giant rose but it lacks an anchor to deliver context. What, where and how the photo was taken? I then realized that the human element I can add is me. So I whipped the water aggressively, dipped my left hand to interrupt the water revolution and frame the shot. So here is my hand, as guilty as can be.


0.6s, f/5, 27 mm, ISO 100, -1/3 EV
Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia

Now, while I was doing this, passersby must have thought of me mad. But I’ve done worst things other than playing with water. Like calling my brother and sister mean for instance.