delayed post no. 4: behind a (pretending-to-be) backup photographer’s lens

what is a backup photographer?

backup photographers, as the name implies, back up the main photographer. they shoot the essentials at unusual angles and shoot the often overlooked (the candids, the guests… etc) aspects of an event. with a plethora of emotions, reactions and activities in a wedding, the main photographer will most probably miss a number of shots hence, backup photographers are starting to become in vogue in the wedding industry.

yammy is a close friend of mine at work. eventhough we’re from different departments, we’ve worked together most especially because of training. a person full of energy, yammy and sim finally decided to tie the knot after ten years of being in a relationship… and we’re privileged to be one of the select few who were invited. 🙂

during sim and yammy’s wedding, charles (my departmentmate) and i took the liberty of pretending to be backup photographers just for the sake of experience and stretching out the capabilities of our dslr’s. 🙂 funny nga kasi napagkamalan pa akong official photographer noong wedding coordinator. 😆 one thing we learned through the experience is that in low-light situations (like in most wedding receptions), we need either a faster lens and/or an external flash. ang hirap pag low light, most of our photos came out blurred. 😦 we’ll just chalk that up to experience. 🙂

here’s how my backup photographer experiment came out:


charles with his brand new canon 450d and the rest of yammy’s “star wars” barkada… in lomo.


my wife anticipating the start of the ceremony… while the others were busy doing somethine else. 😀


familiar faces took up majority of the entourage and i had to make sure i took a photo of them. kung meron lang kaming portable photo printer i would’ve charged them 50 pesos each. 😆


the anticipation and emotion of the bridal march.




a few photojournalistic shots of the ceremony.


i wasn’t the only one snapping away photos. selle brought our trusty point-and-shoot and got off lovely shots as well. time to buy another dslr? 😉



reception venue shots… before and during the reception.


it’s rare that we get a photo of us or even myself during weddings. so thanks to charles (left photo) and my wife, selle, (right photo) for great shots above. 🙂

as a gift, i made yammy a photo-slideshow that shown during the reception.



i hate to admit it pero uminit ulo ko while the avp was being shown kasi ba naman the male emcee decided to do a running commentary habang pinapalabas yung avp. duh? that kinda ruined the first part of the avp. grrrr…

here’s sim and yammy’s photoslideshow… minus the unwanted commentary.



to sim and yammy, welcome to the wonderful world of married life. make sure to relish each moment… there’ll be plenty each day. 🙂

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delayed post no. 3: martin & bernadette wedding

bernadette or simply, dette, is one of selle’s closest friend way back in their college days in mapua. eventhough they took different courses (selle: ChE, dette: ECE), meaning they were classmates only for the first two years, their bond was strong and deep enough that remained closed. maybe because they’re, in their own words, “good girls”… or maybe because they’re both brainy and chose the library as their “tambayan.” whatever the case, their closeness cannot be disputed because eventhough they have seen each other only once since graduation (that’s 9+ years ago), dette still made sure to invite selle for her wedding day. now that’s friendship. 🙂

to honor the invitation and reciprocate that act of friendship, selle (and i) took a leave of absence from work just to attend martin and dette’s wedding. since martin is from a family of doctors here in laguna, the couple decided to be wed here in the south (much to our delight since it was near 😀). their church and reception venue are both familiar to us as we have been here before. we blogged about it and dette found that particular post useful and she even assigned persons to ensure that the church doors open at the right time. 😉

like all weddings, this one was beautiful and full of romance… and i made sure i captured some of it with our d40. 🙂 this was actually the first time i used a dslr in taking pictures of an event and early on i noticed considerable advantages of using a dslr over a point-and-shoot. most striking amongst them was the almost non-existent shutter lag of a dslr, perfect for capturing those unguarded moments. 😉

it was amusing because as i was playing backup photographer during the wedding, there were about 3-4 more guests doing the same with their own dslr’s. martin and dette must be truly blessed with such friends. 😉

enough talk. here’s a few images from martin and dette’s wedding. 🙂


the bridal car. gandang-ganda kami ni selle sa civic.


notice the guy on the background? that’s dette’s boss shooting away all throughout the wedding. 🙂



a couple of establishing shots. one from the loft and one from the pews… both in lomo.




a few shots of the ceremonies wherein i was elbow to elbow with the photographers and videographers. 🙂


the newlyweds. don’t they just look so happy? 😀




my take on their post-ceremony pictorials.



photojournalism, anyone? 😉


gotta have wedding details. this shot actually has 10 versions. 🙂


my wife with the newlyweds.


my wife strutting a pose. ain’t she just gorgeous? 😉

to our fellow laguna couple, martin and dette, congratulations! bisita kami minsan sa maganda nyong bahay ha. sagot na namin ang fruit salad. 🙂

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delayed post no. 2: our first paid project

i’ve been doing digital projects for quite some time now. mostly to add to our personal digital art collection while some as wedding gifts to our friends (yet another delayed blog post topic 😛). a month ago, wengi, our dear friend, approached us asking if i could make an avp which she and her officemates would in turn give as a birthday gift. knowing that it ain’t that easy to make one, wengi offered to pay for the project (yes! 😀). yun nga lang, she didn’t know how much… neither did we. 😆

anyway, we delayed the how-much-for-the-project part decision to a later time (which later on she just decided on a certain rate by herself 😛) and instead just gave wengi a deadline on when to submit the materials needed (video + photo files). i also gave wengi some tips on how to do interviews and what questions to ask (although she didn’t follow some of those tips. 😛)

not only did the materials arrived late (tsk tsk tsk 😆), it came at a time i was rushing to finish the new corporate avp project. when i finally had time to check out the materials, there were only a few set of photos plus they didn’t match any of the stories the interviewees were talking about. wengi naman… 😛

anyway, i had to make to do with what was given… tutal eh bayad eto. 😆 since the video interviews were not that serious, i decided to give the avp a light & bubbly feel to it. here’s how it turned out (the first part was omitted to fit the 10-minute youtube limit):



what do you think?

wengi loved it… both the avp and the dvd label design. her roommate loved it too. unfortunately, i have no feedback yet if the celebrant loved it also. sayang kasi dahil they were not able to organize a viewing party of some sort. that would’ve been the most ideal way to give this avp as a gift.

just this week, i shared this avp with our friend/videographer, bob nicolas, to ask kung magkano ba dapat singil for this kind of a project. i knew that i was “lugi” with the payment i was getting but i didn’t expect i was sobrang “lugi” when bob told us how much we should’ve been paid. at least now, we know better. 😉

wengi, you owe us big time. 😛

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delayed post no. 1: the pgma experience

a couple of weeks ago, the philippine president paid our company a visit. you read that right, that’s president gloria macapagal-arroyo. and like all notable visitors that we have had, samsung was ready to give her the vip treatment. the problem was, we only had a few weeks to pull it off.

as expected, i was tasked to make a brand new corporate avp to present to pgma. i was really hesitant to agree because:
1) we had an upcoming machine management audit from hq to attend to
2) i would be editing the avp at home hence, i would practically be working both at the office and at home

but how could i resist if our company president himself insisted in me making the avp? 😕

since i had limited time, i didn’t make an all-new-footages avp. a third of the new avp was extracted from an hq-made avp (redubbed, re-arranged and replaced soundtrack). another third was from an avp i recently made for all managers’ workshop we just had. the final third was all new. this way, i saved time in completing the project.

buti na lang at ganun ginawa ko kasi muntik ko ng hindi matapos yung project on time (at buti na lang na-postpone ng ilang days ang pagpunta ni pgma due to the typhoon frank incident). but i was able to finish it and our president viewed it and he was impressed. 😀

but my pgma visit role did not end there. i was tasked to be the techie support at the meeting/presentation with pgma. ewan ko nga bat ako pinili eh because we have IT guys assigned for that. anyway, since ganun na nga, it meant i would be at the same room with her excellency during her visit. la lang… 😉

the morning of the visit, it was raining but members of the psg were all over our company. grabe, ang dami nila. i was actually both impressed and amused by their security measures. the stuff we see in movies are actually true. ganun sila ka-strict… and understandably so. for us who will be at the conference room with pgma, we were given small stickers by the psg to identify that we’re the only ones allowed inside the room.



the department of energy advance party arrived. then doe undersecretary angelo reyes. then peza director de lima. then finally pgma herself. yes, she is small. 🙂

after a brief company and product introduction just outside of the conference room, we soon entered the room and the meeting/presentation began. everything went smoothly without a glitch and the meeting ended in less than 30 minutes. unfortunately, pgma skipped the line tour (although she really wanted to… and so did the employees who were anxiously awaiting for her) because she was running late for another appointment. blame the peza director for being late that’s why we did not start on time. tsk tsk.

anyway, an hour or so after pgma left, apparently, she called and asked for a copy of our corporate avp. apparently, she liked it. 🙂



unfortunately, i could not share that avp here. i guess you’re just gonna have to visit our plant to see it. 😉

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3 weeks and counting

it’s been that long since our last blog post and it will continue on for a while since we’re just too busy lately. 😦 but do expect a sudden barrage of posts in the coming weeks though 😀 since we have three posts in our drafts page talking about:

• pgma’s visit to our company
• our first paid digital project
• selle’s college friend’s wedding

in addition to those, we expect to blog about at least 3-4 more things in the next couple of weeks.

as you can see, this blog is just taking a nap for now. it will be up and running again soon… 😉

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