JC Barbadillo: Kalyegrapiya

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Photostream 002

Water Bender
© Julian Carlo Barbadillo || Kalyegrapiya || 2013

Monday, October 14, 2013

Monday, December 31, 2012

That was quite a dry spell. :))

It's been a month since I last updated this blog, and honestly I haven't had the chance to shoot SP since. Perhaps because of that very special and surprising "incident" regarding my Electronics career which happened late October that kinda distracted me from the streets. Nagpaka-studious muna tuloy ako. haha

Despite the seemingly endless dry spell which I've befallen into, I've also been trying hard to get over it but time constraints just kept winning. And as the Christmas break have dawned, I have tried to shoot in the streets again - but to my utmost dismay, it felt like I'm starting all over again. That familiar feeling of uneasiness of having a camera pressed against my nose in the public resurfaced. I went home empty-handed with just around 10 worthless images on my card. Awkward ulit ampotek.

After a day of trying, I decided to take it slow. Instead, I focused temporarily on a side project. My Smoke Photography Series. I had it running for almost a week in a make-shift studio set-up that I made on our kitchen table. It was a very calming and refreshing and addictive experience (perhaps because of the incense smoke. haha). After finishing the series (which garnered 6 final images), I decided that I'll be re-learning and conquering the streets again.

*The ff. are some preparatory (or should I say, "mood-setting") steps which I did for re-familiarization of the SP experience:

1) Visited the archives of the Magnum photographers for inspiration.
2) Performed the Zen meditation technique which Sir Luis Liwanag taught me.
3) Ran through my favorite SP shots.
4) Finally went out to shoot. Tugs tugs.

Aaand I have finally re-experienced that Zen feeling of being one with the chaos, that is the streets. I honestly missed that. No more awkward eye-contact with strangers, no more sweaty hands, and such. I'm hoping that this would continue all year out!

I'm back on the streets, Baby! (reiterating just because. haha) \m/

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Sem-break Photos

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Camera settings, workflow, and a bunch of SP technicalities [Part 1]

A friend took the time to ask what my usual settings-slash-procedures-slash-technical techniques (?) on SP are, and I thought I'd just answer her through a blogpost. Para sosyal. JK.

*Shoutout: Eileen, oks na ba 'to? haha :))

Camera Settings

(1) Shooting Mode:

90% of the time, I shoot in Aperture Priority mode. That is Av on the mode dial in Canon, and A in Nikon, I believe. (Forgive me Nikon fanboys, I've yet to learn your language. :P) My choice of aperture value mainly depends on the weather and/or relative lighting (under shades/indoors or out in the opens). The following are my simple rule-of-thumbs (which I have just adapted from other streettogs):

Sunny to partly cloudy days - f/16

Cloudy days - f/11

Rainy days - f/8

Indoors and under shades - f/11 or f/8 (it depends~)

©Julian Carlo Barbadillo, Kalyegrapiya 2012

I rarely go under f/8 as I easily get bothered by the thinning of the Depth of Field (DoF) as the aperture gets wider and I worry more on getting shots out of focus.

*Refresher note:

Higher f-values mean that the aperture is opened less. (Analogy. Do the chinky-asian-eyes. That correlates to a high f-value. Do the tarsier-eyes-look. That's a lower f-value. ).

Higher f-values also correlate to a "deeper" Depth of Field. That is, a greater amount of planar space gets in focus, as contrasted to low f-values where you get the creamy goodness of bokeh. Remember that in Street Photography, we need a coherent subject and background, thus, usually we make use of higher f-values to preserve the relationship of the foreground and the background.

©Julian Carlo Barbadillo, Kalyegrapiya 2012

(2) Metering Mode:

80% of the time, I use Evaluative metering. (that's the Canon term, I'm not sure about the Nikon Equivalent). The other 20% of my shooting instances, I use Spot Metering.

Almost always, I underexpose my shots by 2/3 fstop. Especially on sunny days when highlights are more likely to blow up. By underexposing, I get to retain highlight details, and also get an allowance for faster shutter speeds. (I prefer recovering details in shadows than in highlights. Even if noise is more likely to be amplified during shadow detail recoveries. I don't really mind the noise. I kinda like it, to be honest. Gritty.)

(3) Focusing Mode:

Manual focus is my way. Well, except in rainy days when I have to hold an umbrella on the other hand; those are the only days when I rely on autofocus.

I do zone focusing. It is a focusing technique which uses the principle of hyperfocal distance and relative sharpness. I'd better pass the explaining to Eric Kim, one of the most famous Streetogs of our time. Click his name for the video explanation of zone focusing. :D

(4) Focal length:

Since I have a crop sensor camera (entry-level), I shoot in 24mm exclusively. 24mm in crop sensors rounds up to an equivalent full frame focal length of around 35mm. Being the cheapo that I am, I used to tape my kit lens (18-55mm) to the 24mm mark. But after a while of shooting with the tape on, I decided to rip it of and clean the lens. Well, to my surprise, my zoom ring started to fail to roll smoothly and snaps on the 24 and 35mm mark. Which i was quite unsure if it was a bad thing or not. But since I can now shoot without the tape on as I can easily locate the 24mm mark even without me looking, I'd like to think of it as a perk. :))

(5) ISO

Given that my camera is set on high f-values, I normally bump my ISO to compensate for the shutter speed. My ISO settings in all of my shots range between 800-6400 (depending as well on the weather and/or relative lighting). Note that even on sunny days, I use a minimum of 800 ISO (I rarely go below that). A very unconventional setting to dive into. As I've said earlier, I really don't mind the grain and the noise. In fact, they add texture to my images in a subtle yet beautiful way (well according to my sense of aesthetics, that is. :P)

*PS: Thanks to sir Rico for asking about my ISO setting. I honestly forgot to write about it. :))

*workflow and other techie stuff would follow in the next post! keep updated! :)

Sunday, August 19, 2012

A break from solo shooting: New photobuddies

I might haven't said before that 90% of my street time, I shoot solo. Call me forever alone, but I don't really care. :P

Shooting street alone is my regular dose of Zen. It leaves me tied to my thoughts and passions at the same time, thus giving me a very special sense of satisfaction afterwards. (More like the feeling of giving out that long burp after downing a bottle of Coke, or vinegar perhaps if that makes you happy.)

But then, it is undeniable that there would always be this urge to spice and jumble things up once in a while. So I decided to have an open invitation through Facebook for a street photowalk here in Baguio. And luckily, there were some who responded.

From left: Cyril, Daniel, and Gevenlie, that face-implanted column, and random strangers pretending to text so as to keep things less awkward. Too bad Darla wasn't able to come.

Cyril is a fellow engineering student. Daniel, a fellow photojournalist in the school paper. Gevenlie, Daniel's friend, a Legal Studies student. (Yee. Haha. Intriga. Sorreh. XD)

The walk was pretty much fun. We started around 7 with a short introduction to street photography by me. I was pretty excited to share my thoughts and stuff I've learned in SP from months-worth of readings and forum experiences. But nonetheless, I don't see myself as a so-called-"mentor", just so you know. SP is an endless learning process - we're always students. :)

Unwavered by rainshowers, we scoured the streets of downtown Baguio in search of photo-worthy scenarios. But as Alex Webb has said, "Street Photography is 99.9% failure", It seems that I have indeed got my mere .1% out of the 4-hour photowalk. I have gotten only one image which I like very much.

Copyright: Julian Carlo Barbadillo

So yea. It turned out that shooting with buddies is really quite a different experience. At least you get:

1.) BRAVER - with buddies, you can gather enough courage to explore places you might be too afraid/intimidated to go to when alone.

2.) More confident - you really don't have to worry about what others say when you're with a buddy/ buddies shooting. You know what I mean, those voices of strangers seeing you shoot streets that you imagine in your head. (or maybe it's just me)

So yea. I'm looking forward to shooting with them again. And with new photobuddies too. Perhaps, you. ;)

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