I got up early and wondered around the beach and the colour of the water was such an amazing sight! Some days the water is so amazingly blue with all the aqua colours. I just had to take a few frames!
Archive for the ‘General Ramblings’ Category
Day 63 – Amazing beach today
Posted in General Ramblings on December 1, 2009| 5 Comments »
Day 61 – My Birthday
Posted in General Ramblings on November 28, 2009| 2 Comments »
Today is my Birthday…. yeah! I decided to put the laptop and camera down and just enjoy the day. Well… almost… I took a couple of photos at Sunset. Its hard to resist with the sunsets here in Boracay.
I’ve also included a couple of quick photos of my apartment and the surrounding grounds in this post.
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Day 60 – Sun rise to sun set
Posted in General Ramblings, Outdoors on November 27, 2009| 4 Comments »
Today I decided it was time to shoot various images from sun rise to sun set. This meant waking up at 4:45am! It was very dark and continued shooting till around 6am. Then it was time to head over to Bolabog beach again later in the morning to see what was going on and then to the top of the island. Then finally back to Bom Bom bar for sunset on the bean bags.
Day 58 – Various Photos
Posted in Flash, General Ramblings, Outdoors on November 25, 2009| 12 Comments »
Here is a collection of photos that I’ve taken over the last few days.
Day 55 – Miss Earth
Posted in General Ramblings on November 24, 2009| 4 Comments »
I was fortunate enough to be in Boracay for the Miss Earth event. However, I was not fortunate enough to get a photographer pass 😦 Mind you, I was competing with Reuters and other news agencies! 😉 I got a spot on the balcony which proved to be okay for most shots with my 200mm lens. With the lighting conditions at the event, you had to have a F2.8 or faster lens. I worked in manual the whole time and mostly shot at ISO 800, 1/160 sec, F2.8. For wider group shots, I shot at F5.6. I later found an ISO 640 combination that worked well enough. I had to be quite careful with my shutter speed even though I was shooting with a monopod.
I was later told that I was seen on the TV broadcast with my camera! 🙂
Here are some pics from the event…
Day 52 – Miss Earth Cocktail Party
Posted in Flash, General Ramblings on November 22, 2009| 10 Comments »
In the evening of day 52, I attended the Miss Earth cocktail party and of course my camera came with me! 😉 The first person I saw was Miss South Africa as I was walking to the bar. Said Hello and we ended up chatting for some time. 🙂 When it was time for the contestants to introduce themselves, everybody came out their point-and-shoot camera! Well… I put my 70-200mm lens on and people soon stopped getting in my way! 😉 Long lenses are great sometimes!
The lighting wasn’t that great and I didn’t want my photos to obviously look like they were flash lit. So I ended up using ISO 800, 1/80 sec, F2.8 and the flash at -0.7 FEV.
My first few images weren’t that great because when the contestants were talking through the microphone giving their “save the world” speech, all I got was wired looking expressions. So I decided to shoot the contestants waiting to come on to the stage area. Nobody was shooting here and I instantly got much better results. And when the girls saw my long lens pointing straight at them, they often did a little pose or smile.
I also had the pleasure to meet with Miss Wales’s family. I spoke with them for quite a while and the evening was a joy.
Tonight (Day 55) is the main event. I’m trying to get a pass to be with the other photographers so wish me luck!
Day 52 – Miss Earth contestants wondering about
Posted in General Ramblings on November 20, 2009| 5 Comments »
In the afternoon, the Miss Earth contestants were wondering about the island… Here are a few frames. I attended the Miss Earth cocktail party in the evening… those images will be in another post.
Day 52 – Kite Boarding Images
Posted in General Ramblings, Sports on November 20, 2009| 2 Comments »
Well today… I decided to use the action sports photography techniques that my cousin Barry taught me in Melbourne. Boracay is a major place for kite boarding and wind surfing. The Bolabog beach is perfect because the beach is shallow for a long way out. This means that if you fall off, you can easily get back on.
This is pretty much my first attempt at this sort of photography… so it was more of a practice session and inspect the images afterwards. Sports photography is quite hard and the pros make it look so easy! There’s a lot that you need to look out for and framing is extremely important!
I noticed that the reflections of the water were quite strong and I decided to use my polarising filter to remove the reflections. Wow! You can really see the colour of the water in some of these images!
Let’s have a look then eh…
Day 49, 50, 51 – Getting to Boracay Island
Posted in General Ramblings on November 19, 2009| 5 Comments »
It was sad to leave Australia… I had a great time and loved seeing all the family! I woke up at 4am on the last morning and the airport taxi arrived at 5:10am. My journey took me to Sydney (1.5 hrs) and then on to Manila (8 hrs).
My time in Manila was quite stressful! In fact, I nearly came back straight to the UK! Let me explain…
The Philippine peso is a restricted currency. This means that you can only bring in or take out a small amount of cash in/out of the country. The last time I was here, it was a $100US worth in local currency (about 4,500 peso’s). I ended up bringing 4,000 peso’s. The restriction is now 10,000 peso’s which I didn’t know.
Knowing that 4,000 peso’s wont get you very far when traveling, I tried to cash in some of my travelers cheques at the airport. None of the banks and currency exchange places wanted to change them!! This got me a little worried and so I tried the ATM, “Sorry cannot contact your branch”! Fortunately, I had $30 AUS which I changed and that gave me an extra 1,240 pesos.
I decided that maybe the banks were closing soon at the airport and they simply couldn’t be fussed to phone up for the approval codes. So I got a taxi which cost of 500 pesos, checked-in into the hotel, showered and went across the road for a pizza and a beer.
During the night I did start to worry that “what if?” nobody would change my travelers cheques? I only had 4,000 pesos. If I continued to Boracay and still couldn’t change my money into local cash, I might not have enough to get back to Manila’s international airport. So I had to find a way to change cash in Manila before leaving for the airport the following day.
I set myself a time limit that if I could not change some my travelers cheques by 10:30am, I’d have to arrange to go back to the UK. The last place you want to be is in a foreign place like Manila with no money! I tried all the banks within a visible walking distance from the hotel (you don’t want to wonder too far in a place like Manila). None of them would change UK Pound Sterling travelers cheques. They would only do US Dollar cheques! My immediate thought was “travelers cheques suck!”… On my way to the hotel the night before I saw a HSBC bank about 1km down the road. I got the hotel to arrange a “safe” taxi… When I arrived at the bank, I had smiles when I asked to change my travellers cheques! Whew! I cannot describe the relief I had!!! Even the cashier commented that I looked tired! Eish! It was 9:45am.
The HSBC bank would change £300 into local currency which was okay with me. I also drew out £260 at the ATM inside the bank which gave me a total of 42,000 pesos. But now wondering around Manila with that much cash gives you a different feeling! You don’t want to be carrying that much cash either! Gees, what do you do? Carry no cash and have travelers cheques which mean nothing to anybody, or, carry hard currency which makes you a target!
I spoke with a British fellow in the hotel who comes to the Philippines once a month. Last week he was in the south and said it was a very dangerous place down there. For those that don’t know… the South of the philippines is not a safe place for any body! That is where kidnappings happen and there are groups of muslim extremists in the region. Anyway, this chap said last week he had to “change a lot of money” at a money changer in the middle of the street where everybody could see what was going on. He said it was not a pleasant experience! I can only imagine… In fact, this guy was going back down south this week… no way would I be doing that!! Eish!!
Getting to the local airport and onto Boracay was plain sailing as they say. I was much more relieved and when I saw the island from the air… well…. I was very excited to be back! I got to change my money on the island with no problems, paid for the apartment and started settling in…
Having not really eaten properly for 2 days, I had a US imported Angus Steak and a beer! Just what I needed! And the following morning, I had a good breakfast and I’m now starting to relax…
The pics below was my walk to breakfast…
Some Family Portraits
Posted in General Ramblings on November 19, 2009| 1 Comment »
Here are a few family portraits I like… I took these whilst in Australia.