dux_carvajal's photostream

A few months ago, we had a client that needed us to shoot Manila's most well known landmarks in time lapse style.

I'm sharing one of my favorite photos out of the thousands we took during that week.

Can you guess where this is?

duxcarvajalphoto.weebly.com/1/post/2011/10/up-and-about-m...

Copyright: Dux Carvajal

May the souls of those who have died in this lake rest in peace

Today was not the best weather for shooting as it rained on and off the whole day while we were at Caliraya. We were almost unable to shoot the famous monitoring tower too since security was tightened after three people drowned at the lake last November and we could not go down to the lake shore for our angles. It's actually f****d up because they drowned just a few meters from the tower - all of them at the same time! Poor souls. We were told that they probably got caught in an undertow and were not strong enough swimmers to fight it. Scary huh? The tower was probably one of the last things they saw alive.

Ok, ok ok -that may be the case but we sure as hell won't let the road-trip come to waste. Besides we were not there to swim anyway right? So with a little persistence and friendly chit chat, the guard eventually let us through.

And then it started pouring. Brilliant.

Which is why I only came away with a few keepers. But it's cool, that's the name of the game. Sometimes you're blessed with gorgeous light. Sometimes you're given crappy shooting conditions:p To make the most out of the situation, I waited patiently until the rain let up just enough to have the clouds part and have the right amount of light shine through, bathing the tower in golden light before triggering the shutter.

Since it was gloomy weather anyway, I decided to reflect this in the image by once again converting the shots to black and white. This time playing around with the darker side of the palette for a brooding feel.

duxcarvajalphoto.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/iwitness.html

....But she will come back...

duxcarvajalphoto.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/northern-expos...

This photo does not do justice to the powerful presence this rock makes. I was looking for a nice foreground reference to illustrate the size of this huge boulder-like mass but couldn't find any.

Well, there was one angle that would've been great except from there, I couldn't fit the rock in the frame even at the widest focal length of my lens which was at 24mm. So I ditched that and with fleeting light, needed to shoot fast. Scrambling in near darkness, I finally decided to just plop the tripod and pray that this alternative angle turn out alright.

Note to self, get a wider lens!

duxcarvajalphoto.weebly.com/1/post/2012/01/northern-expos...