This is actually the very first public event I photographed. I was quite reluctant because it was going to be a sports event but I didn't have the optimal equipment for it. I'm also not really into shooting famous people (I have leanings to social and travel photography) in action but what the heck...Angel will be there. Besides, I have been trying to understand my D80's matrix metering and I thought that this event would be a very convenient ground for practice. And so I went without any idea what was going to happen...I just thought that I'd like to shoot some nice women portraits, some wide shots of the stars in light moments, and of course action shots.
Now with the shots...
This is the only portrait shot I liked. I love how Rhian Ramos and Bianca King did a comical here. I remember there was this picture of Bianca King torridly kissing another girl in the internet. If you knew this, you'd see this differently. Rhian even jokingly said to Bianca, "Kaya ka natsitsismis e..", after this shot. How did I make them do this? I didn't, the girls were just having some fun.
Joyce Jimenez beautifully lies down as the Yellow Team take their break. I snapped this and then attempted to shoot Joyce from the front...I pushed my luck too hard that she sat down immediately when she saw me. I got this fairly nice environment candid instead. Star-struck as I was, I think I scared Joyce. When I saw her the first time I just kept following and taking a snap of her. I just kept snapping that I actually forgot to reset my exposure compensation and white balance as it started getting really cloudy.
Shooting sports should have action shots mainly. My lens, however, was quite slow. This is only problematic, however, if you have a shallow depth of field. What I did is to stay as far enough so that I'd have a deep DOF (though i still miscalculated the shutter...Mark Herras was still blurred) or shoot actions that aren't fast for my lens...
You should know who you shoot. In events like this, a photo sells more if you have photos of more significant people. I failed in this aspect in covering this event. I didn't know who to shoot. Except for a handful of shots like that of Rhian and Bianca, I actually ended up shooting like a paparazzi. I was so close to the stars that a call of their names could have made them give me a smile or a comical pose. The problem was that I was too shy and I didn't know their names. I shot paparazzi shots and I had f***ed the settings of my camera most of the time. I had really bad exposures and blurs most of the time. Yep, it was a very frustrating shoot. When I shot with my P&S, I thought having a DSLR would make things less frustrating. This is the most stupid thing I ever thought. DSLRs give you control to almost everything that can be controlled in pre-processing the shot. It's basic Math...the more parameters for you to control, the more likely that you can be mistaken. The last photo is a classic example of this frustration. I don't know who this hottie up to know...that out of focus blur is actually one of those rookie mistakes you will have most of the time when shooting with a DSLR.
It was a very bad shooting day overall but still I had so much fun. I just watched Kapusolympics and I saw myself in some of the shots. I looked like a pro actually as I followed the actions in the virefinder like a robot...cool!
PS
I'm technically more of a 'Kapamilya' because I always get to watch (or just listen to or have glimpses of) 'Walang Kapalit' or 'Maging Sino Ka Man' or 'Deal or No Deal' every time my sister or Papa prepares dinner. Note that I can only watch locals because I don't have cable TV, I don't watch TV much...not even those series DVDs from Quiapo. Seriously though, I think the 'teleseryes' from ABS-CBN are of much better quality.:D
