Shoot That Book: The Blue Sword

Shoot That Book combines my passion for books and my tendency to become trigger happy with a camera. My lack of photography skills is compensated by my enthusiasm. Basically, I like taking pictures of books.

Pictured above is my friend Chuchay, who read The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley based on my recommendation. She loved it and said that it’s one of the best books that she’s read. I love this shot because of several reasons – it’s a lomo shot that turned out really well (love the warm colors), it was taken by the beach and shows a friend of mine reading one of my favorite books. What’s not to like?

What are some books that you’ve recommended to your friends that they’ve ended up loving?

Beach Lomo Shots

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, then you’re aware that I enjoy posting lomography photos here on the blog from time to time. I love how vibrant colors are in lomo shots and how they always look old school. It’s getting harder to have rolls of film processed here in Manila so I don’t know how long I can keep this up. Anyway, my most recent trip was in Zambales a couple of weeks ago – in the town of Pundaquit, Capones island and Anawangin cove. Here are some shots from that trip (click to embiggen):

Can you see what’s written in the sand? Here’s a closer look:

And more shots:

Shoot That Book: Reading by the Beach

Shoot That Book combines my passion for books and my tendency to become trigger happy with a camera. My lack of photography skills is compensated by my enthusiasm. Basically, I like taking pictures of books.

I just realized that I haven’t posted a lomo picture in any of my Shoot That Book posts so here’s one taken in a beach in Zambales using my Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim camera. Film used was either a Kodak Elitechrome or Fuji Sensia and it was cross-processed. I love reading whenever I go to the beach although I can’t remember what was the book that I was holding when this picture was taken. I usually take chick lit or light and fun novels with me when I go on vacation so it would be easy to fall into the story. What about the rest of you, do you bring books with you when you travel? What kind of books do you bring with you?

Zambales in Lomo

I haven’t done a Wow Philippines post in a while so I decided to put up some pictures of my trip to Zambales last year. These shots were taken using my lomo cameras. Again, here’s a description of lomo from lomography.com:

It was in the early 1990s when two students in Vienna, Austria, discovered a small enigmatic Russian camera, the Lomo Kompakt Automat, and started a new style of artistic experimental photography of unorthodox snapshots. In the blink of an eye the Lomographic message spread around the planet.

I miss going to the beach! I’ve only been to the beach once this year, when I went to Coron, Palawan. Let me know what you guys think of these shots!

Ateneo In Lomo

Encouraged by what Emily said here, where she mentioned that she liked my Wow Philippines posts, I thought I’d share some more lomo pictures. I haven’t gone on vacation for quite a while so I thought it’ll be a good idea to share some old photos that I have. I already talked about lomo before but to those who don’t know, here’s a description from lomography.com:

It was in the early 1990s when two students in Vienna, Austria, discovered a small enigmatic Russian camera, the Lomo Kompakt Automat, and started a new style of artistic experimental photography of unorthodox snapshots. In the blink of an eye the Lomographic message spread around the planet.

Basically, lomo is playing around with lomo film cameras and shooting whatever is interesting for you. Lomo has this motto: “Don’t think, just shoot”, meaning you don’t have to spend hours trying to take a perfect shot. Just shoot at random and be happily surprised with what comes out. I used to love doing this, I would take my lomo cameras everywhere with me. But now I only take them when I go out-of-town because films are expensive! I thought I’d feature pictures of my alma mater today. Here are a couple of pictures of the Ateneo de Manila University, where I got my college degree. Click to embiggen any pictures.

Film: Kodak Elitechrome
Camera: Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim

I think my school looks even better in pictures than in real life. So, so, so. Let me know what you guys think of these and if you want to see more of my lomo pictures.

Coron in Lomo

This another picture-heavy post. I got my films processed the other day and I thought I’d share some of my favorite shots from the set. For non-lomo pictures of Coron, please click here. To those who don’t know, lomography (lomo for short) is photography using point and shoot film toy cameras. Here’s a little background info about lomo from lomography.com:

It was in the early 1990s when two students in Vienna, Austria, discovered a small enigmatic Russian camera, the Lomo Kompakt Automat, and started a new style of artistic experimental photography of unorthodox snapshots. In the blink of an eye the Lomographic message spread around the planet and people from North to South were screaming for Lomo LC-A’s. So they hopped on a plane, flew to St. Petersburg and negotiated a contract for the worldwide distribution of this fantastic little camera.

Click on any of the pictures below to see larger images.

Here’s the view from my seat in the plane (Camera: Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim, Film: Fuji Sensia):

The cross on top of Mt. Tapyas, which was totally worth the more than 700 steps we took to get there (Camera: Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim, Film: Fuji Sensia):

The next one is a shot of the beach in Calumbayan Island (Camera: Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim, Film: Fuji Velvia). I like the effect of the branches of the trees and the shadows that they cast:

And since I loved Malcapuya Island, here are two pictures of that place. First one was taken using my Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim with a Kodak Elitechrome film and the other was taken using my Fisheye2 and a Fuji Sensia film.

Hope you like these shots! Comments are always welcome.

Off to Palawan!

It’s summer here in the Philippines and the weather’s perfect for a beach trip. I’m going to Palawan for a couple of days with my friends. It’s my first beach trip of the year and my first time to go Palawan and I’m real excited. So I won’t be able to make any blog posts until the end of next week.

For book-related news, I already mentioned that I’ve imposed a book buying ban this May. So much for that! It’s just the first day of the month and I already bought Eyes Like Stars earlier today. I couldn’t help it! I was waiting for the hardcover ever since it came out but it never became available here so I was excited to see the paperback. Anyway, I’m bring Unwind and Pride and Prejudice with me although I know that I won’t be doing much reading while on vacation. These two books are the assigned monthly reads for two of my Goodreads groups.

With that, I leave you with lomo pictures from past beach trips:
Capones, Zambales
Taken using my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim and Kodak Elitechrome

Pundaquit, Zambales
Taken using my Fisheye2 and Fuji Sensia

Hope you’re all having a great weekend!