My Top 11 Photos for 2006

Shot in a Desert in UAE

I started it last year where I show my top 10 photos of thr year now I'm showing you my top 10 Photos in 2006 actually its 11 just having hard time till the final minute to choose on which photos I will drop so I decided to post the 11.

A view of Dubai Creek by night

One of the many Mosque in UAE

Creek Park, Dubai

Somewhere in our neighborhood

Most of the photos here were shot in the UAE with a photo shot in Manila. Photos here are a mixture of Digital and Film (Yes I still shoot in Film even in the Digital days ) shots. And these were from my personal project and arrange in Ramdom order.

Portrait of a Friend

Portrait of CJ

Burjuman Plaza, Dubai



A street kid in Manila Bay



Somewhere in Dubai


In a Desert somewhere in UAE

Honorable Mention:

I also included a couple of picture though thay don't rank in the top 10 or 11 but they are pictures that are shot using my Cellphone so i thought to include them as honorable mention.

Macro this time

My first crack in Macro photography in years. Well I didn't even used a Macro lens (shame,shame,shame) but one of my Mentors told me before that he was able to do Macro photography for several years using a Close up Filter. So I used one to give it a try for my first subject I use what most of Macro Photographer used a "Flower". I have to photograph this flower early in the morning (on the way to work actually) because this flower wilt in the afternoon and have some fresh one when morning comes don't know the name but its similar to the Yellow bell but obviously its not Yellow so for sure its a different name har har har.
Well what do you think?

Now its Cricket

After shooting Rugby last week now its the turn of Cricket. Used to watched this sport in Star TV but even I watch it for hours still couldn't understood the game.
Last Thursday was our company annual cricket tournament. I have a chance to watch the game live and since I'm already in the area its time to bring out the long lenses and switch on the 5FPS mode of my DSLR. While I have a chance to shoot the game I begin to understand the it even just a little bit.
Here are some photos I shot.

Rugby

Just want to show some picture I shot during the Dubai Rugby 7. Its my first time to shoot a Rugby game as its my first time to watch a live Rugby game as I watch the sport every now and then in Star Sports when I was still in Manila. I seldom shoot sports and on that rare times I shoot a Basketball game. Well late this week I'm looking forward to shoot another sport which is Cricket as our company will held its annual Cricket tournament. For the now here are some Rugby game pictures.

Lately I started to enjoy listening to Podcasts. In my iPod I actually listen more to podcast than to music I always download even the past episode of the few podcast I subscribe in iTunes which ranges from Photography podcast to some Tech news and podcast about Mac. I enjoy listening to "Mac Geek Gab" have some news, useful information and tips about Macintosh a must for a new Mac user like myself. Right now I'm catching up with my listening . What I enjoy about podcast is I have something new to listen evey week.

Its raining

For the first time in my stay in UAE it rained.So whats the big deal well its the first time for this year that I experienced rain. Its just a minor drizzle but it lasted for hours so theres mud all over the project site. Traffic was much worst. Then late in the afternoon Power went out in the office. Suddenly feel like I'm back in the Philippines.

Update of previous post (What will happen to this??)

Just attended the awarding ceremony of the nationwide photo competition without expecting anything. Just went there to see my entry being exhibit in the hall and to chat with my photographer friends. Seeing the other entry makes me think if my photo did make an impact to the guest and judges.
As the awarding goes underway all the participant were presented with a certificate well at least theres something I got. Then when they called the top 20 finalist out of 200 entries well to my surprise my entry was one of the 20 finalist whooaa didn't expect that my photo did make an impact. We'll it will always be that way. Whenever I don't expect anything when wentering a competiotion I always got away with something.
(See the photo of my entry on my previous post.)

Zager

Zager001
Originally uploaded by mondp.

Its been weeks since I got hold of my Camera and did some serious shoot. Its not I'm lazy maybe I'm not into the groove of shooting pictures. Every now and then I just want to post some old pictures which does not yet appeared in any my galleries/blog.
This is one of them (I think). A portrait of a Colleague. Shot mid this year supposedly for my project submission when I took up Black and White Developing and Printing.
I did not submit this picture in favor of another picture. But this one is worth posting because its one of my Favorite Black and White portrait.

What will hapen to this??

This will be my entry in a Nationwide photo competition sponsored by our Camera Club. The theme is "Green Desert" the way I interpret it it should show trees in the desert. For the duration of the competiton I didn't have time to go deep in the desert again to shoot some pictures for my entry. So the logical thing to do is to look in my stock photo library and here's what I got that that will go with the Theme at least. Judging and awarding will be less than 2 weeks from now. Not to sound pessimistic I'm not really expecting my entry to win but for the record everytime I submit an entry for a competiton that I didn't expect to win I always come away an award (one of them First Place) but if I submit an entry with confidence expecting with an award I always get empty handed. So what will happen to this entry??? We'll find out in less than 2 weeks.

A connection at last

Finally got a connection from the house only thing I have to go out of the house literally in order for me to get a decent speed. Just okay for checking some quick email and to write a quick post such as this one.

Playing with Light

Doing some experiment shots a few months back this involve playing with available light in Interior shots. Came up with this shot of a stair with the light source coming from the skylight.
This was shot around 3:00 PM.
Place: Burjuman Centre, Dubai, UAE

One Lazy Afternoon in the Park

Last Thursday was a Lazy Afternoon. Half day at work with nothing particular place to go and nothing specific thing to do. I decided to go to a nearby park in my place and shoot some cityscape on dusk. The skyline was not that clear as there are some traces of sand storm but I still shoot some frames as I'm already in the place. This are some shots that I like.



The building in the Background is the Emirate Towers one of the landmarks of Dubai, UAE.

I'm planning to come back to take some pictures again hopefully that this time the skyline is clear.
Picture below are a view of a Man made lake in the park plus one of the park's restaurant and of course the Emirate Towers.

It happens to other places as well

Take a closer look at the picture. Whoever says that this happens "Only in the Philippines" is wrong look again. I will not mention directly where is it but if you know my current location knows where is it.

Digital IR Photo

A couple of months ago I showed a photo tweak to simulate an Infrared Photo. I've always wanted to do Infrared photography. Since Infrared films are hard to find nowadays what I did is what they called Digital IR photography where you tweak your digital image in Photoshop to simulate an Infrared Image. I'm showing you some of the image I've done so far. I'm still doing some more experiments in shooting as well as the tweaking to further improve these IR images.

I'll post again when I come up with new Infrared images.

Front Wheel

This is the latest from the series of bicycle pictures that I shot for the last 6 months. I will rest of my bicycle picture collection later.

Shooting Kids again

Its been a while since I shoot some Kids pictures. I seldom shoot Kids nowadays not that I don't like to shoot kids in fact they are one of my favorite subjects in fact I won first place in a photo competition a couple of years back with a portrait of a kid as my entry .
Its really challenging to shoot kids back in the film days I'll be happy to have 5 good shots in a roll.

Special pics

This is one of the rare times I took a snap on her. So its time to post her pic. I haven't post her picture before in any of my blogs and online galleries, so this will be the first time.
To some of you who knows me personally knows what I mean.

Another Portrait

Another portraits shot with the Lensbabies. I'm beginning to enjoy doing street photography but of course the usual etiquette specially when shooting people still applies and thats keeping me out of trouble so far.

Schumacher concedes title to Alonso

This is my favorite news of the day. It was actually a heart breaking loss for the German as he was leading Alonso for most of race until his unexpected engine failure.

From the F1 website

After
qualifying first and second for the Japanese Grand Prix, Ferrari were
widely expected to finish Sunday’s race in the same positions.
Unfortunately things didn’t go quite to plan for the Italian team.


All
started well, with pole man Felipe Massa retaining the lead at the
start from Michael Schumacher, the Brazilian then dutifully letting his
team mate by on lap three, allowing the German to take control of the
race - and supposedly the drivers’ championship.



Things started to go wrong for Massa just ahead of his first stop, when
he was forced to come in early due to a slow puncture in his right-rear
Bridgestone tyre. That handed the advantage to Renault’s Fernando
Alonso, who after his first stop was able to get back out ahead of the
Ferrari.



Even then, things were still looking pretty good in the red camp,
Schumacher maintaining a comfortable ten-second-plus margin over
Alonso. That was until lap 37 when smoke started to bellow from the
rear of Schumacher’s 248 F1. It quickly proved terminal, forcing the
seven-times champion to pull off the track and into retirement with an
extremely rare Ferrari engine failure.



Alonso was clear to cruise to victory, untroubled by Massa, who came
home 16 seconds behind the Spaniard. The result means Schumacher, who
went into Sunday’s race as favourite for the championship, now needs a
huge slice of luck at the final round in Brazil if he is to take an
eighth title.



He must win, with Alonso failing to score, something Schumacher insists
he is not even hoping for. “As for the drivers’ (title) it is lost,"
said the German. "I don’t want to head off for a race, hoping that my
rival has to retire. That is not the way in which I want to win the
title.”



Ferrari have a slightly better chance of winning the constructors’
championship. Despite taking just eight points away from Suzuka to
Renault’s 16, they could yet overhaul what is now a nine-point deficit
to their French rivals.

Michael is out

Currently  monitoring in Live Timing (on the net) the Japanese Grand
prix. Currently in Lap 45 and Fernando Alonzo is leading the race and
Michael Schumacher is out of the race looks like it will bolster the
championship run of Alonzo.



Geez I wish I could watch it live in TV instead of the Live Timing on F1 website. Damn this Sunday work in the office.

Michael is out.

Currently monitoring in Live Timing (on the net) the Japanese Grand prix. Currently in Lap 45 and Fernando Alonzo is leading the race and Michael Schumacher is out of the race looks like it will bolster the championship run of Alonzo.

Geez I wish I could watch it live in TV instead of the Live Timing on F1 website. Damn this Sunday work in the office.

My Flickr gallery is alive again

Was browsing this afternoon and reading Strobist blog and when I click on a link he was referring. It was a flickr gallery suddenly I was able to access flickr again I don't know how but I was able to access it. I opened a flickr account late last year and upload few photos on my gallery then just left it hanging because I have a couple of online gallery already. Tried to revive it few months back upon suggestion of some friends but wasn't able to since it was block here in UAE for whatever reasons I don't know. Tried to log in to my account and viola was able to upload some pictures in my gallery and deleted some pictures. I have updated my gallery feel free to visit it and leave some comments.

By the way the picture above is another one of my lensbabies shots

Heres another photo from my Lensbabies shot. Been practicing more portrait shots using this lens. I just like the effect of this on portraits.

Here is another picture I shot using Lensbabies. This time tried doing portraits. I will post some more pictures after I sorted out my lensbabies album.

Been thinking of featuring a Photo series that has a subject or theme. Couldn't think of a good subject but instead I thought of showing some pictures shot with my Lensbabies.

For the first one it will be picture of signal light shot using Nikon F80 and Ilford Delta Film.

More pictures in days to come.

Fisherman in the City

This is one of the not so old picture. I shot this over a year ago somewhere in Manila Bay. Just kept this photo in one of my CD archive didn't notice this till recently while doing my periodic search of my archive of photo (my photo archive is not that deep).

I just wonder what type of fish they capture in Manila Bay?

One of the Many Mosque here in Dubai. Located in downtown Karama. I just like the dramatic color of the evening sunset sky.

One for the Ages

While surfing the net I have a chance to browse to one of my online gallery. Included in this gallery were some of the shots I took when I was starting out in Photography dated back to 1997. All of the pictures here were shot in Kuala Lumpur, as I take a look at this photo some I wil say is a mediocre shot some I will say that I should have done this done that to make the shot better some I will say that I will take the shot the same way if I will have a chance to shoot that subject again.

This was was shot in Film and the pictures were scan with my long gone Flat Bed scanner so the color quality is kinda off.

Sad to say that the pictures in this gallery are the only copies I got and the 4R size copies I left in the Phillippines (The negatives and the digital file of these pictures are gone)

To see the pictures please click HERE

Phone cam pictures

I always want to go into "Lomography" I'm fascinated with taking weird photos with a little beat offbeat color. Currently I wasn't able to get a Lomo camera for me. Enter the phone cam as what others called the digital lomo well we say it came close. I've been toying around my phone cam (SE K750i) I shoot anything that catches my fancy seems I always carry around my phone everytime I go out.


In my effort to came out with lomo effect shot I used the burst shot picture of my phone its 4 frame shot in successively. And did some adjustments in photoshop here are some pictures I came out. Of course I still want to have a lomo cam in the future when I found one in the local stores here (so far I haven't seen one locally).