My first digital SLR

I finally got myself to take up basic photography. My friend Christian sold me his old digital SLR for only P5,000 -- provided that I cover his workshop fee in our basic photography course, which only costs P3,000 for five weekly sessions. It was a good enough deal. So I got my first digital SLR -- an Olympus E10 -- and enrolled both of us at Photoworld Manila's Basic Photography Workshop.

Soon enough, I found myself inside historic Fort Santiago where classes are held. The first part of the workshop included a techy lecture about aperture, shutter speed, and other settings that we all needed to know to take good pictures. It was held in what seems like a former dungeon and its concave walls -- except now, the dungeon has become like a small photo gallery with a dazzle of framed photographs of vibrant colors lined across the white-washed walls. Being the claustrophobic that I am, I still felt that I was in a dungeon with fellow prisoners -- all wanting to go out with our weapons (our cameras) to conquer the world.

When our captors finally allowed us out of the dungeon, we all went out, armed with our gears, and became captors ourselves -- except that what we captured are images and patterns of anything we can find inside Fort Santiago. We started shooting photos of the most mundane of things like leaves, grass, water... or even asking the guardia sibil and kutcheros to pose for us.

And so adjusting my own camera's aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings, I now have my first taste of photographs using digital SLR. And here are the results of what I learned...

Fast shutter speed to capture and freeze moving objects, like tiny drops of water in a fountain...



















slow shutter speed to see lines and patterns the moving objects make -- in this case, the water cascading like a weaves of cotton...





















low aperture for shallow field to focus on foreground (the red flower) and blur background (the palm trees behind)...

























high aperture for more depth of field to make background clear...

























panning the camera to capture a fast-moving object... (thanks to my model by the way, a guardia sibil with a bicycle inside the fort)




















my second try at panning... this time, I tried capturing a running horse.



















Of course, I just need to take photos of people there... Here is a baby on his first educational tour of historic Intramuros...




















A girl hanging out with her friends by the fountain...

























And of course, photographers like Christian who's always on the lookout for subjects, and missing them because he's busy looking somewhere else, hehe.