Black and White

I came across a bunch of files in which I used my camera for 120 B&W film for the first time. These are what came out.

Photos taken in Cubao. This is beside Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf near Gateway Mall and Araneta Coliseum across National Bookstore.





And over here is Meow, my girlfriend and best friend. I am often with her. Not only does she support me, isa sya sa mga promotor o, kung hindi man ang nangungunsinti ng mga kalokohan ko.

These were taken during Bern's wedding.






The next one is a picture from the old Nemiranda Art House by one of the coolest art teachers I know, Nemisio Miranda, Jr.. He moved the art house a few blocks away. The structure is still there in Angono and is rented. This sculpture, though aged, is still great. We had a few lessons with him last January, and I hope we could have more lessons soon if he would still accept us. We've been really busy with work and spending a lot of money on the house we are moving into.

I used to think I could make excellent pictures if its Black and White. I guess I was wrong. At least, I am learning. I blame my digital camera for giving me good B&W pictures. These were shots taken using my Diana F+ Camera.

Covers

Whenever I hear a Glee song, I hate it. Even before people started hating Glee, I hated the songs. I hate the way most people massacre good songs by unnecessarily belting and doing whatever vocal thing they do. Magaling na kayo kumanta, tama na. The latest cover I've been hating now is The Black Eyed Peas' Time of my Life. I like the original and I hate what they did.

I hate it when singers make a mediocre version of songs, making it not much different the original. I don't see the whole point. A good example of that are the songs on Glee. Okay, they use it for the TV show, to inspire people not to take drugs and be responsible, like the girl character there who got pregnant and gave the baby up for adoption. So it does have a point. 90% of the songs on that wonderful and inspiring show are, sadly, either mediocre or an insult to the original singers (who for some reason makes them use their songs).

I can't get over the fact that they used a lot of Queen songs.

I also hate it when they make songs ugly like 10% of the songs on Glee, the local singers we have in the Philippines who can't compose any new material, and the Black Eyed Peas singing the Time of my Life by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes.


I could name more, but my mind could not bear remembering the sacrilege. Let the hurting stop.

Photo Collage

Just adding the photo collage that I did on Picasa that I am currently using for my Gallery page.

Salvaged photographs

A couple of months back, I was planning to enter this competition. What I had in mind was creating a double exposure with my illustration and some landscapes. When I had the film developed, I did not anticipate it to look flushed. I did not consider some factors, and it ended up overexposed due to the flash bouncing back from the black background I was using (it was by the way just paper).



So I was a bit too ambitious for my own good. It took me months to make myself look at the files again, and I knew I had great standalone pictures (and film) wasted. And it's only now that I viewed them again.

Of twelve shots, these were the most decent ones that came out (one not being a double exposure at all).

Scorpion Turtle Snake

Meow and I were talking about people, about whether people can change their ways of life if they had it a long time. She related a story, a familiar one that you may know as well.

(The story may not be accurate coz I am writing it based on recollection.)

There was a scorpion who asked a turtle to ride its back to cross the other side of the river. The turtle said no, saying that the scorpion would sting him with his venom, and he would die. The scorpion then said that if he did so, he too would die from drowning when the turtle stops swimming.With this logic, the turtle allowed the scorpion to climb his back and rest on his shell, as he swam the river.

Nearing the riverside, the scorpion stung the turtle. In his dying breath, the turtle asked why, and the scorpion replied that he can't help it. It's his nature. So they both died.

Hearing the story, I think I heard of it before coz it's so familiar, and I must have somehow forgotten it. I still feel sorry for the turtle.

Then I remembered a story of the snake I read in a Filipino textbook when I was a kid.

There was a man who found a sick, injured snake. He took the snake to his house where his family lived. He cared for the snake, cured and fed it.

Eventually, the snake grew healthy. The man went out for a while. When he returned he saw the snake, just about to strike his small child. He took his bolo and killed it with with one blow on the head before it bites his child.

Normally stories in our books have a moral. It could be about respect, diligence, honesty and all that stuff. It normally has a wise quote there for us to interpret.

This one had something that ran along the line about never trusting a snake or snakes are traitors. Back then, I did not understand the point of the story. Only later when I was older that I realized that it's a metaphor. Hahaha!

So, do I trust people who seem to be, by nature, evil or have been evil or who was raised in an evil environment. I am not sure, really. So far, no encounters yet. So what was the point of this post? It has no moral or point, I think. Or maybe it does.

The Movie that Gay Filipinos are Talking About

Yesterday, I agreed to watch the movie Zombadings with my girlfriend and her housemate, a good friend who's been feeling down lately. She's been interested to see the movie after watching the trailer on Youtube last week. Now she and friend needed to cheer up (both have problems unrelated to each other), so we watched the movie.

The movie was fairly amusing, and would be even hilarious by other people's standards. While I admit that it had a lot of funny parts, there were things there that I think I understand the joke, but did not make me laugh. Amusing but something that would not make me laugh out loud.

On the other hand, Meow and Joyce, both of whom are more indoctrinated in gay culture, sub-culture and things like that, were having so much fun watching it.

The comedy goes like this. There's this boy Remington who made fun of gay people as a kid, until one fateful day in a cemetery, he made fun of one who cursed him to become gay when he grows up. Years later, Remington grows up repesenting pretty much all the ugly stereotypes we have of the bad things in men (lazy, brash, etc.).

He meets a girl he really likes shortly before he turns 21, then the curse started taking effect. This is at a time when there was a serial killer at large in their small rural community who's been killing gay men (all found with messy hair, wide eyes and open mouths like The Ring, differing not much if not for the streaks of mascara dripping fom their eyes). At that time, the curse took effect and he started to act gay, talk like the stereotypical gay men we see on TV and have feelings for his best friend.

The three of them then go on a hunt for a cure for Remington's affliction, amid a killer who may know he is gay.

Now, suprisingly, the movie had the kind of ending that I like. And all the actors in the movie were very good. It would have been a predictable ending if not for the fact that the gay community in real life would have wanted an alternative  ending, and so, I did not think it would end that way.

A day after watching the movie (yes, it had me thinking), I realized that it was not so bad. It had elements of an almost good movie.