The Truth and Nothing But….

I was just tagged by Lydia of Ever Mine, Ever Ours, and was given the honest scrap award:

The rules of the award are to write ten things about yourself and then pass the award onto seven other blogs that I follow and am inspired by.

1.  The very first book I ever read was a book on Dinosaurs. In 3rd grade, I bought bought a blank book that had a cover with dinosaurs on it and wrote out information about dinosaurs in it. It’s still somewhere in my house.

2.  I remember when I first came to America, I got into an argument with a teacher over the pronunciation of the letter “V” vs. the letter “B”. In the filipino language there are no V’s or F’s in the language, so “B” and “P” is used a lot…

3.  I wanted to be a paleontologist when I was little. And I knew how to spell “paleontology” in 2nd grade. By 4th grade I knew what an Epanterias amplexus was and had read Jurassic Park.  Four times.

4.  When I was eight years old, I remember watching the pick 4 lotto on local television, and guessing 3 of the four numbers right in the correct order.  I have never come close since.

5.  When I lost my gradeschool best friend Sean to a car accident at 17 years old, Dear Irish Boy was played on the flute at his memorial service.  I had never been moved so much by an instrument being played and vowed to eventually learn it.

6.  I still haven’t.  And I’m ashamed of myself for it.

7. I dream about traveling one day and bringing a camera or two with me and rolls of film. The trips would be to Europe and Asia (separately). I plan to make books from the photos I took with each trip.

8. Speaking of traveling I’d like to work for National Geographic one day on a photography project. Not sure what I would do it on, but that would be cool nonetheless. Maybe I could do that with the Europe and Asia projects.

9. Give me a good beat and I can dance to anything. As long as it doesn’t involve break dancing (bad knee) I’m able to dance to anything (Think Step Up)

10. I’m a hopeless, utter romantic. I’m in love with the idea of love and that’s probably why I do what I do =P

The people that I admire:

Ben Chrisman: His photojournalistic eye and on-the-spot composition is incredible and amazing. I can only hope to develop an eye like his someday.

Joe Buissink: One of the revolutionaries, he is the single reason why I got into wedding photography.

Yervant: His creativity in postprocessing helped inspire me to experiment with photoshop and postprocessing in order to find my own style.

Cliff Mautner: His knowledge of light and how it’s utilized in shaping the face and subject is without equal.

Jose Villa: Choosing to go against the grain and use film in a digitally-dominated market, his gung-ho attitude and resulting perseverance are inspiring to me.

Caroline Tran: Her creativity and nostalgic post-processing are refreshing to me. It’s something I can truly look up to.

Now I wonder if they’ll do it =P

Success: 8 words that lead to success:

TED:  Technology, Entertainment, Design. This is a website that I feel everyone should check out at least one time.

8 words for success:

Passion: Do it for love;  The money will come.

Work: Confucius once said: “If you have a job that you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Good: But your nose to the ground and become damn good at what you do.

Focus: The other words are useless here if you can’t focus while doing them.

Push:  Through shyness, self doubt, fear.  Pushing through will be the only way to know for sure.

Serve: Don’t do it just for yourself:  Serve others something of value.

Idea: Listen.  Observe.  Be curious.  Ask questions.

Persist: Through failure, and through CRAP:

• Criticism
• Rejection
• Assholes
• Pressure

You can view the video here:  

One Morning In Brooklyn

When you start photography (digital, not necessarily film), you shoot for numbers. The statistics are in your favor. You shoot and experiment and see what turns out. If you like it, you keep it. If you don’t, delete.

They say however that when a photographer reaches a certain point, they become one with their camera; they know their camera so well that the image is already captured and finalized before the camera is ever touched. That one image is all that they will ever need.

It’s a moment of clarity and inspiration that is a huge step in the development of a photographer’s abilities and career.

This was that image for me.

The very first image where for that split second before the composition and the click, I knew in my mind what I wanted in the image, and how it would look.

It is now one of my favorite images of all time, one of my inspirations to keep my photography skills going.

And I couldn’t be any happier =)