PAPA'S BIRTHDAY AT FERIA

My family decided to celebrate my father's birthday at Feria. I fell in love with their Chinese food, california maki and shawarma.

Their desserts are also mouth watering and very delicious.

 saw this very cute baby girl so I didn't let her got away without snapping some photos of her.

 My father is my fashion police officer. He is my commentator if I wear something not pleasing.

I learn from him that wearing appropriate clothes and looking good are very important.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPA

I LOVE YOU :)

WHY I LOVE SURPRISING MY FRIENDS

I love surprising my friends on their birthdays. If time and availability permits I wish I could do it to all of them but sadly I am quite busy lately yet I never missed greeting a close friend on their birthday. I make it sure to save it on my phone and write it down on my planner in case my phone will be stolen. I remember when I was in college and had limited financial resources I organized surprises to my girlfriends on their birthday and buy small cakes for them. There was even an instance we asked permission from our teacher to spare a little time on his class so we can throw a little surprise on our friend and he gave us a go signal and even participated on our surprise. 2 years after that surprise a teacher asked us to share to the class something that you will never forget in your life? and my friend shared to the class the surprise we gave her on our birthday and I was happy that she treasured that day. There was another surprise I organized on my friend's birthday that was almost ruined by the rain, It was June and I was out with my another friend looking for a chocolate cake and we didn't bring umbrellas that afternoon and we had a hard time looking for taxis and I ended up crying for the misfortune we encountered but in the end we still surprised my friend with our uniforms super wet.

A friend asked me these questions :

why do I love surprising friends on their birthday?

First because I grew up doing that. When I was in Highschool birthdays were really a big thing. Whenever someone will celebrate her birthday our teacher will always makes sure that there will be a little classroom celebration. I spent my highschool in an all girls school so it was a norm to give letters, balloons, hugs and kisses to the celebrant and when I reached college I had all the luxury of time organizing surprises because my time was not divided by friends and a boyfriend it was all for my friends LUCKY THEM HAHAHA...

Is it my custom to greet my friends at 12 midnight on their birthday?

Yes. Until now my bestfriend with different time zone makes sure to greet me at12 midnight (GMT+8) on my birthday. There was even a time that all my girlfriends will have a game on who can greet first on the celebrant but if it's before 12 a.m. you are disqualified. So girly and immature doings right?? hehehe... You can't blame me I grew up doing that but one thing I will never forget was the time I drunk too much alcohol and wasn't able to greet my friend at 12 midnight and greeted her the next morning and she really reacted so much like I missed her birthday and to think I still greeted her on her birthday but not at 12 midnight so I said sorry and from that time on I never missed any birthday without greeting at 12 midnight.

What do I usually give on birthdays?

I give cakes. Its the sweetest thing ever on a birthday and a little message.

What do I get on surprising my friends?

I don't get anything but I gain friendship and loyalty. A simple greeting will make their day so why not greet? It doesn't cost anything yet it means so much to someone.

Do they surprise you in return on your birthday?

Every birthday I don't expect a surprise because I might be surprised that there's no surprise HAHAHA but yes my friends surprise me and never fails to greet me on my birthday.

Leslie's 23rd birthday. I love her so much that on her day I went out looking for a chocolate cake and a letter for her birthday. She inspires me to love life.

 Salie's 23rd birthday.

I cut 23 papers and handed out to 23 of Salie's close friends and let them wrote down what they like about Salie and Their wish for her. Secretly we asked her friend from Manila to answer questions about what he likes about Salie and it was all fun!!! and our friend also suggested to print the man's face and do a mascot.

And for my 23rd birthday my friends gave me 23 messages and 23 cupcakes.

DEALING WITH OUR WEAKNESSES

Did I mention I played volleyball for our team? Naaaah I don't think I mentioned that on my blog. It's something I'm shy to admit HAHAHAHA. The reason behind for not sharing it is that I'm such a booo booo player. I admit I'm afraid of flying balls it freaks me out! The story behind why I joined the volleyball team was that we lacked players HAHAHA.. so it was something like you-gotta-do-it-for-the-team. Before I said yes I told my friends not to expect too much from me and they all laughed and promised to teach me and fair enough I learned a little but not too much. 

So there I dealt my weakness with flying balls and there were times I wished I didn't join for I consider myself as a nuisance to the team but they didn't make me feel that way. Awwwwwe!

Dealing with weaknesses have 2 choices either you face it or walk away.. All I can say is don't walk away from it while not trying its better to be a loser but had given everything than a person who walked away not trying...

It's so sad that there will be no more volleyball time for us now, we are back to our normal life of going home early on Friday nights.. I will miss Salie and Jonah's stints on the court and how they can make the crowd laugh so hard.

These photos were some of our winning game shots we landed on 3rd place not bad enough for us. Kudos to our best players in the team Sheila and Honey who were very impressive all through out the league. :)

 GAME FACE LADIES

 Forgot to mention our boys also bagged 3rd place for men's division

 After winning the game

 Team Canizares 

With my friends who supported the game by cheering for us. Kayo na ang supportive!! hehehe :)

Let's call it Bohemian

When my friend Angie told me she wants to have a bohemian shoot I gave her a YES! I love bohemian concept it ensembles a beauty not everyone can appreciate because of it's uniqueness in nature. Curious as always I researched about "bohemian" and its origin and I found out that bohemian is someone who lives an alternative lifestyle usually creative and have an extremely different tastes in music, literature and fashion, It started in the 19th century in France when they believed that they have to stop living the conventional way and to start wearing and showing to the people who they are through the clothes they wear and the music they play. It was called the Bohemian movement although that movement ended however they left a large influence in the genre of music and fashion.

This photoshoot was made possible with the help of my friends in Accenture and my friend in YFC

Thanks Claire, Jesil, Riza, Mitch (Angie's cousin) and Nica (my friend in YFC) and also to my friend Aby for coming with me =)

Thanks to Angie for the make-up, Style Avenue for the outfits used and cheers to the other photographers who were with me in this shoot.

Photo editing secrets

While we were packing up after the Red Valentine shoot in Fort San Pedro, I noticed a little girl maybe 7 or 8 years old holding a Canon 1D series camera. There are also other photographers in the location so as the little girl was in action with her professional camera body whom I highly suspect belongs to her father their eyes drooled with jealousy. Come on! That's like Canon's most expensive camera body and every photographer's dream to own.

If I'm on the little girl's little shoes I don't give a damn how much the camera I'm holding what's on my head is that I love to take a photo and document everything and be artistic on it. When I was young my love for colors and how I gave importance to every little detail on my art project influenced the girl I am today. I prefer to overdo my project so that it can cause attention. 

That explains my style in Photography I prefer to work with natural light, play with the sun and of course colorful location. 

                                                      Photography - rule of thirds

When editing my photos I love it when everything is surreal, something extraordinary and vibrant eye candy colors.  I edit using Lightroom 4 that's all for now my photoshop CS6 is still to be installed hopefully this weekend if my friend will do it for me. 

I play the colors surrounding my subject and usually decrease the saturation level to not destroy the skin tone of my model. I also choose the temperature to use depending on how the sun hits my subject, see that's how important the sun is for me I'm not a fan of external flashes so I depend on the amount of sunlight that hits my model most importantly the face. 

I make sure to use contrast, sharpening, noise reduction and highlight a little. That simple!!

So how to achieve good photos? Don't rely on editing, focus more on getting a perfect photo and enhance it with any editor you have. Again photo editors are enhancers so don't depend too much on them. A bad photo is a bad photo no matter how much editing you do :)

Capture an emotion then apply the photography rules, since I'm a newbie I choose to obey them for now. Sooner or later I might break them HAHAHA..

RED VALENTINE

It's been like 3 weeks since my last entry and believe me I was having a hard time creating a post again because I forgot how to set my photo to its default size (set by me). I was shocked when I uploaded the photo and the result was a distorted one so I have to open my previous posts and inspect their HTML codes, enough of that and let's proceed to the story of Red Valentine =)

February 2,2012 - The day of the shoot.

Morning that day I met with Angie (blogger) and we attended a seminar or more likely an orientation of  a life changing agency. HAHAHA..Had lunch with Angie at Ayala and met with Kpat and Chikeedu.

We went to Fort San Pedro for this Valentine shoot, as we pay for the entrance it was so funny when the in-charge let Chikeedu and me pay only the student rate and charged Kpat and Angie the regular rate HAHAHAHA :P

Valentine's Day is almost there and Love will be in the atmosphere that day but lucky are those who will share it with their partners and blessed are those who never give up looking for their the ONE.

Here are the photos of that shoot

more about my model, Her name is Christina Duque a very good friend of mine. We work in the same company and I admire her simple Filipina beauty. This shoot was supposed to be done last December but something happened to Chikeedu so we have to move it.

Behind the scenes 

Angie also a blogger and an awesome make-up artist was the over-all-in-charge of ChikeeDu's make-up

Salie a dear friend of mine was so funny that day, She was late but  kept us all laughing all throughout the shoot. Thanks for supporting Sal I love you! HAHAHA =)

A photo of the team (Me, Salie, Chikeedu, Angie) photo by my friend Kpat, He by the way is my teacher in photography so I owe all my photography knowledge to him.



I can see a lot of emotion on the photo below. Love it so much :)

We ended that day with dinner at Silogan ni Gian and watched Shutter since that movie is all about photography and headed to SM =)

FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

I wish for tears that results from abundant happiness and no longer because of longingness

I pray for good health

and strength

2011
My heart was captivated by someone special  (not a boyfriend) that I consider the greatest love of my life. He never missed a day to call or text me, He was not afraid to tell everyone that he adores me, He fought for me when my teacher made a mistake in my grade, He made me laugh all the time, He taught me about Buddhism and I shared to him about Catholic Religion, with that I learned to respect other beliefs and culture, however,  he has to leave for a job offer and I had to accept that he is just so smart to work here and that there will be a lot of job offers for him since he tops the class and sadly I also accepted the fact that I am not gonna be part of his future.
Everyday I think of him wishing he does the same till I am no longer blinded by the truth that he will comeback for me and those princes coming back for his love of his life only happens in fairytales and not in reality.

Farewell my friend.

I wish you love, happiness and contentment in life.
You will always be remembered and our friendship will be forever treasured.
And if we meet again by fate my old friend I hope there will be a lot of stories from your priceless adventures.

2012

was my year, I met a lot friends. I started a new hobby, I started to go out again and enjoy life and gave my heart a break :)

2013
  Please surprise me  :)

I'm gonna LOVE again like I've never been broken

number 13 means something to me so please year 2013 fulfill my long time dream.

LASTLY

THANK YOU FOR READING MY POSTS LAST YEAR THIS YEAR A BETTER BLOGGER WILL ENTERTAIN YOU EQUIPPED WITH MUCH BETTER INFORMATION AND PHOTOS