Dark, Flooded Cities After Ondoy

Few cities' areas are still flooded and without electricity after storm "Ondoy" struck Luzon last Saturday. Luckily my Pasig city apartment is elevated and some not-so-lucky residents living on the ground level are still paying the painful price of the storm's aftermath.

Here's an appeal by Marge Francia: Help UNICEF save and rebuild the lives of children affected by tropical storm Ondoy. To make a donation, please call our hotlines (02) 758-1000 / 758-1442 or deposit to UNICEF's Metrobank account: C/A 066-7-06631209-3. Your donation will provide children with essential medicine, safe drinking water, hygiene kits, sleeping mats, and bed nets. Help them TODAY!

The 1st Filipino AB Photography Students

Meet the historic, AB Photography graduating class of De La Salle University-College of St. Benilde, School of Design and Arts (DLSU-CSB, SDA)! It's great honor for yours truly to be part of their prestigious faculty. Now here they are in the sprawling Makati studio of Adphoto (the Philippines' most successful advertising photo studio) with Harvey Chua, John Chua and Dennis Araneta learning all they can. Photo was made by Earl Choa (the gentleman below the video cam). My message to them: do justice to the degree program! I'm sure they already are so the world better watch out for them! Credit goes to Leo Santos as the brave Chairperson of this program. Kudos to DLSU-CSB! What an overdue degree program for Pinoys.

Get Exposed @ The Food Locker

There's a party organized by the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde School of Design and Arts AB-PHOTO Seniors starting at 6:00PM Friday, September 11th at the Food Locker near the School of Design and Arts (SDA) building. It's time to get to know and give a warm welcome to the new AB Photo students and the new faculty! This incoming batch will be the second generation of the new, historic AB degree course. The party organizers are the vanguards of the program-how thoughtful of them! Please contact Chard at mobile no.: 09063667616 for all the details. Young photogs of the Phillipines unite! TGIF indeed!

PhotoWorld Asia 2010 Poster

We now have the details of 2010's PhotoWorld Asia! Every January is the "Christmas" month for all Filipino photographers alive. Never has such an epo exist with so many expert speakers on sundry photography at such a low fee. Thank the Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation , Inc. (FPPF) for it! Mabuhay kayo!

Joan's Glam Call Card

Here is my new layout of Joan's callingcard. She wanted a full-color, glam look to it without spending a lot on printing cost. So I had it printed on Kodak photo paper. Makeup was by Nina Dumpa. I used an old Nikon D70 DSLR for tis shot with a Nikkor 50mm AF-D lens which behaves almost like an 80mm portrait lens on APS-C sensors.

Graceful Strenght & Beauty in Motion

Effie Nanas' Dancentre studio (at the Shangri-la Mall) trains some of the most talented, beautiful and graceful Filipina ballerinas today. Equally elegant is their colorful 2009 souvenir program for which I shot their advertisements and covers again. Their successful U.S. tour this year is testament to Effie's world-class discipline in the art of classical ballet. Congratulations ladies!

PMTV Title Cards

Director and video editor Gilbert Obispo hired moi to do some of Philip Morris' video newsletter's title cards. Instead of your typical printed, corporate newsletter Gilbert proposed the dynamic "music television-newsletter" concept to PM and the rest, as they say, is history. The title cards serve as headlines before an article is presented by sexy female video disk jockeys (VJs). I thank Gilbert for the artistic diversion from my typical shooting schedule.

Wet Wet Shoots in Zambales

The St. Benilde college students of AB Photography had an on-location shoot in Zambales. With moi (below, director of lighting) and fine art photographer in Ross Capili (not shown) as the faculty helm we both demonstrated how to manage a fashion swimwear shoot outside the comforts of a controlled photo studio environment. And uncomfy it became as the weather became boring, uncooperative with drizzle and the sun hid behind clouds. The pax learned important lessons regarding wardrobe, lighting, posing, makeup and equipment, safety and security. Many thanks to models Kino and Jojet for bearing with all of us! Ey is that a tatoo of the Philippine islands on Kino's forearm? Student Richard Chua did all the great shots you see here-well done 'Chard!