glass

glass, originally uploaded by bR!@n.

As my first post on this supposed to be photo blog, I think it is just appropriate to put this shot that got me hooked into this hobby. Taken more than three years ago on our trip to Batangas, this shot was my first attempt of portraying art via photography.


As a kid I kind of knew that I'd be interested in this kind of thing.. if I can afford it. I have always appreciated looking at pictures growing up, specially portraits. There's something about bringing out the personality of people in photographs that I find admirable. I later found out that it was not easy to do this in real life, but that's not our subject for this post I suppose.


Back in college, I took this art appreciation class and I kind of enjoyed it. (I wanted to take the photography class back then but my budget kinda didn't let me.) One final project for the class was a field trip to Batangas and the instruction was simple; "keep an eye out for art". Everybody was supposed to find art anywhere we could within the trip and it's our choice on how we will present it. I chose pictures back then because it was the easiest thing, just find beautiful stuff and take pictures of it. I used a film camera because we don't own and can't afford the digital ones. My pictures we're total crap, but it was then that I realize that taking pictures of art is not just as simple as pushing a button.


fast-forwarding to three years ago, the GF and I decided to go on an out of town trip to Batangas to take on this challenge again. I have just decided then that I could take this hobby seriously and maybe even get one or two tsamba shots here and there (in the premise that somehow technology will help improve my non-existant photography skills). I just bought my trusty H5 then, which I still miss now, and just went to try this thing again. After about 10 minutes arriving in Anilao, sitting in the terrace overlooking the waves, sipping our very welcome welcoming drinks (it was a very hot day and we commuted all the way), I took this shot noticing the pair of glasses blocking my view of the ocean.


I didn't know what it was called then, but later on I learned of this thing called "still life" - taking pictures of inanimate, ordinary objects and try to represent them in a whole new artistic way, far off from how they are ordinarily perceived in everyday life. I became a fan of this kind of photography instantly. It was very different from my original perception of taking photographs - just finding beautiful things and clicking away. This presented the challenge of finding beauty in things we normally take for granted. It also presented the answer to why I can't get a pretty picture of already beautiful things. It turns out that seeing art and translating them into photographs is not an automatic process. The photographer will always play a part on how the object will look like in their photos and it will require the eye for art to be successful. It was also fun and I sometimes even surprise myself with the results. It's easy enough to find subjects since it can be anything, anywhere and it provided me a lot of practice.  


From that one shot, I knew I will be at this for a long while... I needed a lot of practice anyways.