Flowers From Aunt Julie's Garden

When I was still doing my Project 365 and I am vacationing in La Union, I would often go to my Aunt Julie's garden to take flower pictures so I won't skip taking pictures during a lax day (at times I do take a day of just staying at home instead of roaming around checking tourist spots). This practice seemed to have become a nature for me, because even if I am not doing a photo Project 365 anymore, I still take pictures from my Aunt's garden whenever I am there.


I don't know the name of this flower, but I love the little clusters of flowers forming a bouquet. Initially, I took a picture of this with the flower on the right side, but the wind kept blowing and when I hit the shutter it was already leaning towards the left side.

textured with Kim Klassen's Happy Heart at hard light 30% and Rural Journal's Laundry Day Skies at divide 65%

About a few years ago, most of the plants in her collection included different kinds of Euphorbia. These plants are very easy to take care of because it doesn't need constant watering, but they do have thorns. I don't know why Aunt Julie stopped collecting this plant, and why the very few left in her collection were placed near the very old outhouse, but because they still produce pretty flowers, I continued photographing them.


Nowadays, she's collecting all sorts of hibiscus plants. She has so many plants in her garden now, though not all produces flowers just yet. I was lucky during this visit because two plants had flowers - this and the white one (same kind). By the way, the two bottom stigma pads were touching my lens as I took this shot. Very impressive for this camera to produce great macro shots even if the lens is already way too close to the subject.

These three images above were taken January this year, before I traveled back home after my cousin's wedding.


This one was taken last 04 March before we left the house going to the cemetery. That scary, big mosquito caught my attention, so I grabbed FiFi (my Cherry Mobile Flare cell phone) and tested its ability to take macro shots. I am very impressed. :)

I am not sure when I will travel back to La Union, but hopefully when I return, Aunt Julie's garden will have lots of flowers for me to take pictures of.

The Joys of Traveling

For someone who has motion sickness, it is very ironic for me to have a strong desire to travel and discover new places here in my country. Some fellow citizens do have a lot of complaints about the country - a few even badmouth how ugly the country is just because they have seen different countries (rants on a separate post), and while I recognize that we all do have the right to voice out opinions, I just hope certain people would also see how beautiful their own country is.

I don't travel that much (due to financial constraints), but whenever I do, I make sure I not only savor the moment, I also take the time to taste their food, discover their culture, and interact with the locals. Last year (April 2012), I was able to travel north and here are just a few of the many pictures I took during the three-day adventure.


It really makes me happy to photograph different flowers... and if there's a critter next to it, all the better.


I love watching travel-related shows, I love to browse travel magazines, and it makes me happy seeing places with my own eyes after seeing them on TV or magazines.


Likewise, I also love it when friends share their latest travel pictures or blog posts, because it allows me to know of places in my country I never knew existed.


Traveling for me isn't all about photographing different scenery, I also love eating different food - like this Pinakbet Pizza at Herencia Cafe. Pinakbet is a native Ilocos vegetable dish (string beans, eggplants, tomatoes, ampalaya, and squash cooked in fermented fish paste), and eating it pizza style was such a scrumptious discovery. Of course, part of my travels is entering different Catholic churches, and this particular travel allowed me to enter the Paoay Church, one of the four baroque churches in the Philippines, and the last of the four I visited.


For me, traveling alone gives me joy, but traveling with friends and family makes me happier.

Textured with Kim Klassen's "Canvasback," set to grain merge at 65%

This quote by Jawaharlal Nehru was such a fitting words of wisdom. Each place can be ugly or pretty to someone, depending on how they see it. For me, even if I have to return to a familiar place, one lesson I have learned is to see the world with a fresh set of eyes, and in doing so allowed me to have a much better visit than I had before.

So far this year, I have only traveled to La Union and Benguet. I am not sure if this will push through, but my brother told me some of his friends are planning to do a church hop in the province of Laguna, something I am looking forward to. What's very certain is that in a few months, I will be traveling with my dear friend K, exploring places such as Guimaras, Corregidor, Bataan, Boracay, and Iloilo.

Water Lily

This picture I took during my cousin Marge's garden wedding at Oasis Manila. Sister and I arrived at the venue quite early, so we took the privilege of roaming around for subjects we could capture. I found it nice that sister now has her own camera, which meant we could set a photo walk soon.

Anyway, there were quite a lot of water lilies near the bridgeway - some white with yellow center, some purple, and a few pinks. Some flowers were too far so I had to rely with the zoom, but this one particular lily was close enough for me to bend over and take a macro picture. However, the fear of me falling over or me accidentally letting go of my camera into the pond caused me not to create the depth I wanted, so for my edit, I made sure the focus is going to be on the flower (and the cute bee) and not on anything else in the image.


Like I always do whenever I wanted to create that depth of field, I start with the original size (2816x2112 pixels), and made a selection around the flower and its stalk, feathered it, and made an inverted selection.

Using the Gaussian Blur tool, I blurred the selection at 25px. Resized the image to the usual size (640x480 pixels) and used the "Fake HDR Plus" action to create quite a dark and strong image.

I then added a layer of Kim Klassen's "Happy Heart" texture, set to screen at 40%. I opened another Kim Klassen texture - "Shine", and ran the "Sunshine Action" to it to change a little of its tone. This edited texture I layered on top of my water lily image, set to Overlay at 80%. Flattened the image.

Final steps I usually do then follow - National Geographic script, Burn tool, then Unsharp Mask.

Creating edits are always random. I have downloaded a few scripts and actions from the GIMP Registry, and at times I try to use the actions/script that are rarely used. If it works, I'd proceed, if not, I will go back a few steps. There are times the final edit won't satisfy me and would go back to the first step, but for this image, everything just came together, making this one of the fastest edits I have done.

More Images from Baguio City

I truly felt I didn't take a lot of pictures while I was in Baguio City for two days, but it makes me satisfied and happy that I have more images to share to you guys.


{My entry for Texture Tuesdays}

The prompt this week was "Dreamy" and  I truly had a difficult time thinking what to share, until I saw this picture. Original image had more space... I actually cropped out one more dancer at the right side of the image to make the spacing tight. On one of my previous posts, I did say that I love my camera's abilities to blur backgrounds (making the subject clear), but one of the bad things I didn't like about this camera is its limited abilities to capture moving subjects. The space was well lighted, but it cannot really freeze moving subjects clearly, thus some of the elements appear blurred.

Editing this image, I first made a selection around these four dancers using the paths tool... feathered the selection at 5%, made an inverted selection and blurred the background at 27%. This step I used over and over on selections near the dancers' arms and faces to achieve a uniform blurred look. From the original size, I then cropped it to 1000x750 pixels and made a rectangle selection of 640x480 pixels. From there I made these steps:

• Applied the "Mute Colors" script, using desaturated overlay to tone down the colors.
• Added a layer of Kim Klassen's "Poetic" texture, set to overlay at 80%.
• Added a layer of Kim Klassen's "Trust" texture, set to hard light at 25%. Flattened the image.
• Applied the "Urban Acid" script at 20%.
• Ran the "National Geographic" script, using my preferred settings.
• Ran the "Romantic" script, with layers tweaked a bit so it won't be too rosy.
• Flattened the image and added my watermark.

For this prompt, the blurred body parts worked good because it appeared dreamy. Still, capturing moving subjects proved to be difficult for me.

February is probably the biggest month for Baguio City because it's this month that they hold the Panagbenga Festival - the festival devoted to flowers, as "Panagbenga" meant "bloom." The grand street and float parade happened last weekend, which I wasn't able to witness because I was there last Tuesday and left the day after. Time may be limited, but I was able to take flower pictures:


These two flowers I captured around the grounds of SM City Baguio (a mall).


This one (is this Baby's Breath?) I captured after the event I attended, and was part of the floral centerpiece. Another reason why I love my camera: I can go as close as possible and still capture a great macro shot!


These three I captured along the grounds of the Staff House, while we were waiting for our companions before we travel back to Manila. Flowers are truly abundant during this time of the year in Baguio City... and I am happy to share that I will be traveling back to Baguio with my family this weekend. Hopefully time will be enough for me to capture more flowers from the Summer Capital of the Philippines.