pHOTOGRAPHY cULTURE & THE aRTS

I'm a writer, editor and photographer. These are the things I do best and enjoy the most. I'm also a businessman—sort of—who sells fine art photography (mine, basically) for extra cash.
    Last night , I met  Kaka  (See the blog Ode to Water), her boyfriend from Cebu, Ace, and a childhood friend of hers, Mary Rose. Ace and Kaka met me at Kitchen restaurant in Greenbelt 3 where we had dinner. Afterwards we walked to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and met Mary Rose.
    Basically, I had to meet Kaka because she's also a framer and I asked her to fix one of my pictures, entitled Spin. Spin is a black and white picture of the lotus flower— styled in avant-garde fashion—that mysteriously got some sort of fungus behind the frame glass. The image is 24" x 36", plus 10" on all sides for the frame and matte for 34" x 46" in total dimensions— framed and mounted.
    She was basically making a delivery.
    [I gave her the picture on Thursday the 13th in Bonifacio Global City, where we later hooked up with my friends and AIM classmates in MAP 10 (Managing the Arts Program, batch 10), Jeremy Domingo and Ku Aquino, for a couple of beers and a big bowl of tahong (mussels) at Italiannis on High Street. See blog vISIONS IN THE lIGHT/hanging out with Jeremy & Ku.]
    During dinner at Kitchen, our talk drifted toward producing bands, music albums and stage plays. I'm thinking of producing a band, or bands for that matter, and joining other friends in producing Shakespeare plays for schools.
    In both areas, Ace had direct experience. He produced, not one,but many bands in Cebu and was in fact a popular impresario in Cebu City. He managed bands and produced—sponsored is the word he used—gigs and albums. He said he left the business because the influx of money was inconsistent. Last night, though, he uttered that maybe it was time for him to get back into the music scene.
    Ace said he also produced El Filibusterismo for schools. It was a one-shot deal of 1000 tickets at P750  each.
    I'm doing research because I want to learn and eliminate as much risk as possible into the  business that I would like to get into one day.
    (About a week ago, I met my friend, Jovy, on Yahoo chat. She's a true  businesswoman, with a couple of dozen RTW stores all over Metro Manila between her and a partner. We delved into the taxi business that I also looked into sometime last year. After doing the math with a potential partner, it turned out the car company would be making money out of our sweat and tears for the first three years. No way!
    (Jovy said the difference between us is that she acts on impulse and intuition. I'm not surprised because she is more than a fan to Rhonda Byrne's The Secret—the best selling feel good, get rich, get everything you want in life DVD. One of its main tenets is to act when the universal nudge and creative impulse are there urging you on.
    (She was online in connection with her passion—related to The Secret, of course—as head coach to the Leadership Excellence Achievement Program, or LEAP, run by the Organizational Change Consultants International Inc., or OCCI. She said she was doing a fund raising in connection with her group but, because of a confidentiality clause, wouldn't tell me more than that.
     (I offered one of my pictures, Mayon & Country Lights, that she could sell it and get the money for her group. We didn't really talk about the details. Last year, in connection with another LEAP group, I asked a PR person from San Miguel Corp. if they'd care to donate juices and snacks for charity work. They did.
    (The picture is a black and white 26" x 40" image of Mayon volcano at dusk—printed on
Epson smooth fine art paper, using K3 inks—serving as a backdrop to the city of Legaspi as it evolves from daytime into night. I told Jovy it is a study in light and shadow, and serves as an allegory for the transitory nature of life.)
    So, in TCB&TL after the Kitchen, we met Mary Rose. She's an attractive  woman in her early 30s, vibrant, quick and witty. Mary Rose is taking a masteral program in Japan and is a scholar of the Japanese government.
    Before you know it, it was nearly 1:00 a.m. We didn't really notice. Our conversation was totally animated, and the place was full and loud; although the store was noticeably dimming  the lights as a signal that it was way past bedtime.
    The four of us walked back to Greenbelt 2, where we were parked on the 3rd level. Kaka and Ace took Spin out of their van and, for the benefit of Mary Rose (and  unintentionally the mall security and the girl behind the turnstile for the parking ticket), took the bubble wrap off my picture. It was like an impromptu, mini exhibit.
    The cleaning of the glass was professionally done. Kaka also had the boys in her shop to replace the plywood backing with acid-free foam board.   
    Kaka said the picture turns her on. She doesn't know why.
    Ace said it's sexual.
    Mary Rose did not comment.
    For me, Spin is an image I first saw through the eyepiece of my Nikon D100, and through the macro lens I was using then in Bangkok, Thailand—where I shot Spin four years ago on a tabletop in my home studio. I remember the image gave me more than a rush and got me quite excited.
    Mary Rose? With the bright smile on her face, I think she liked Spin.
    We said goodbye and goodnight and parted ways.
    If you're wondering about the title and what's it got to do with this blog, here it is. It's been a while since I've paid attention to my Multiply. Since January, in fact. I was holding a copy of Personal Fortune, and cross checking my article against the blog I was uploading—tHE eASY lIFE. Afterwards, I read about an article in the magazine on how to make money from blogs.
    Three things I remember from the article. 1) You must be consistent in blogging, as in doing it daily in order to gain a following; 2) but you can't write just about anything—meaning you have to be a specialist in a particular subject, or topic, so that people get to identify you with your blog; and 3) you make money basically by registering with Google AdSense and choosing advertising related to your blog; that means the number of hits on the ad on your blog translates into revenue.
    The question on my mind was this: Can I be considered "specialist" enough that people can brand me with the kinds of posts on my Multiply?  Or am I too general in the sense that  my topics and subject matter are too diverse, too distended in the sense that they relfect  more of a jACK o oL tRADES, mASTER o nONE kind of blogger than a specialist?
    Sigh...
    But then again... All I know is that I enjoy Multiplying.
    To me, that is the litmus test.

(Dear All, this article came out in the March 2008 edition of pERSONAL fORTUNE—the monthly magazine of Business Mirror—entitled For the easy life: Sony takes aim at the single-lens reflex market. vICsOL)

LIFE is indeed easier for the photographer. Gone are the days when even the amateur must calculate and fine tune focusing distance, lens opening and shutter speed in relation to ambient light and ISO rating in order to take a picture that is considered passable. Automation took care of all that and more.
    The digital camera even knocked off the most dreaded equation in photography: darkroom work. No more developers, fixers; no more wash and bleach. The MacBook Pro and Photoshop took care of those messy and dangerous chemicals.
    The latest contender in the realm of digital single lens reflex camera is entertainment and gadget conglomerate Sony Corp. Its Alpha series has become the company’s flagship and the A700 has come head-to-head with Canon’s 40D and Nikon’s D300. This article though will not go into the nitty-gritty of comparisons and distinctions, as well as the technical differences in digital artifacts in images shot at ISO 400 and above among the three cameras.
    The A700 gives the photographer the option of using Compact Flash memory card after the A100. It would have been fine, except that the default seems to favor the memory stick, and photographers who’ve encountered this situation interpreted it as a proprietary issue skewed toward Sony products.
    It’s a bit annoying, although the photographer can easily override the default by going to the menu and choosing Compact Flash under the Memory Card setting. Hopefully, Sony’s technicians will have remedied this annoyance in the A800.
Because the A700 is basically aimed at the advanced amateur—so are the 40D and D300—the novice may be inundated by the array of buttons and dials on the top and back of the camera. Only after a bit of extensive use changing the ISO, white balance and drive settings in the heat of a shoot would their significance come to light.
    Sony has designed the Alpha series, particularly the A100 and its advanced brother, the A200—sold in Thailand since January; available by March in the Philippines—to wean Cyber-shot users from point-and-shoot to single lens reflex photography.
    A note of comparison and a to backtrack a bit, the Alpha architecture is based on the Konica Minolta Maxxum D series. Sony has acquired the entire camera division of Konica Minolta in 2004. The A700 uses a CMOS sensor, the A100 the CCD or charged coupled device. Sony explains in documents available to the public that a CMOS sensor is faster and produces less digital artifact, or noise. It also has a Bionz image processor—Sony’s latest image computing device that it claims is optimized for the sensor to take up to 5 frames per second and process up to 18 raw12.2-megapixel files.
    Despite the digital camera, photography remains a tool-based preoccupation. Thus, considerations like exposure—the amount of light that should reach the film, or light sensor in digital terms, to capture a scene—remain the photographer’s call. This is what make’s photography as exciting as when the birth of the medium was officially proclaimed in August 1839 at the Institut de France and, at the same time, Louise-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was honored as its inventor. The power of the photographer remains in making a decision on exposure and getting it right.
    Today’s cameras have seen a transition from instruments of limited capabilities during the first half of the 20th Century, compared to the slew of automatic SLRs that came out in the 1970s, to sophisticated digital gadgets that give the photographer options based on level of know-how. For example, by turning the dial on the top left of the A700 to auto, the camera becomes a virtual point-and-shoot. All a photographer needs to do is aim and press the shutter release button. The computer, or processor that is at heart of today’s gadgets, does the rest, from calculating focusing distance, lens opening and shutter speed to white balance and ISO sensitivity. The difference being the A700’s hefty size and weight compared to the real point-and-shoots, like the Canon’s G9, or Nikon’s Cool Pix P60 or Sony’s Cyber-shot DSC-W200.
    Today’s advanced amateur uses the camera to take what is known as street photography—taking pictures while strolling in the city or the forest—portraits, landscapes and still life. For this article, the A700 went through the rigors of travel—Bangkok, Thailand, and Singapore. Thus, a number of photos that border on a theme of travel accompany this article.
    What is noticeable about the A700 is its responsiveness to its settings, like a brand new car that drives well. For example, in Bangkok on the Chao Phrya river, I bracketed for three consecutive frames at one-third exposure levels apart. Despite, the difficulty of the ambient light—the scene perpendicular to a bright mid-afternoon sun—the camera was able to capture images that are correctly exposed. (By the way, all the images here apart from having been resized are unedited. Meaning, they weren’t corrected for brightness, contrast, sharpness and tonal values in Photoshop.)
    The same holds true for pictures I took along Singapore’s Promenade by the harbor. The camera was able to read the light correctly—an essential element in taking good pictures.
    In restaurants in Makati, Bangkok and Singapore’s Dempsey district, using the macro mode with flash on programmed automatic, the A700—hand-held—delivered more than passable images that would likely whet the appetite of foodies and stylists alike. This is because of the anti-shake technology that is built into the camera body—a legacy of the Konica Minolta design—and compares with the vibration reduction technology of Nikon and the image stabilizer function of Canon. Unlike Sony’s though, Nikon’s and Canon’s are built into the lens.
        Even in indoor low light conditions with high ISO settings, the camera produced images with passable tonal transitions even to those with a discerning eye.
    Despite being the new kid on the block, compared to Canon and Nikon—leaders in the field of digital single lens reflex camera—Sony has come up with a fine instrument in the A700. This camera is definitely a tool in the box that makes life easier for the photographer.
 

By Vic Sollorano

Rock and roll is full of surprises, and more than sheer talent and artistry and musicality, musicians need luck—lots of it—to turn their dream into reality.

Punk rock band Top Junk has been pulling surprises in the two years of its existence, first and foremost with its musicality and artistry and originality, but its members know they’ve still got a long way to go and being at the top of the heap remains the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

Vocalist Marizel Sarangelo, a.k.a. Tuesday Vargas the television comedian-actress, views that whole dreamboat idealism of fame and fortune in the sober tones of someone grounded on reality. (In contrast, their songs give fans a high that certainly give the alcohol—and whatever else is—in their blood a boost.)

Her life revolves on the world of entertainment and domestic realm she has created and whose significant persons are son Kaya and bandmate and partner Jerico Placido. “Top Junk’s main intention from day one was just to create a venue for release,” says Marizel. “If fame is showered upon us, then that is the kind of incentive that is welcome.”

The band is mainly focused on making music “that will satisfy us more than anybody else, because we are its main critics,” Marizel adds.

There is also this tacit universal truth that making it in the music scene is quite difficult and, says Marizel, “troublesome.”

Despite this, the band plows through their daily existence knowing another gig, another chance to hangout and enjoy each other’s company and imbibe the tipsy scene are certainly on the way.

Placido, who plays bass in the band and is the guitarist for the other rock group Session Road, looks at the whole rock and roll scene from a cosmic standpoint. “Making music is our attempt basically to postpone mortality. Playing with the band is gainful for our sanity, or perhaps it’s the other way around. We are but repositories for this vibrant truth that dwell in everyone else and we’re just simply devoting what’s left of our tipsy lives to coming up with something worthwhile and enjoyable. I personally think the energy’s coming from our bellies.”

He writes most of the Top Junk songs and finds inspiration in all things good and bad. “You have to be keen with the details of this world, because almost everything that exists is, in some way, inspirational.

Guitarist Tim Panganiban, who is also a call center agent, was heavily into rock since he was 11 and began to learn the guitar at 14 after listening to a song of the late legend Jimi Hendrix blew him away.

Panganiban co-wrties some of the Top Junk songs with Placido. He draws inspiration from other people, his emotions, his personal experience, especially those that “just tap your heart and head to come up with something musical. “It’s a reaction to those sources mentioned,” says Panganiban.


Top Junk, despite it’s mere two years of being a band, has shown a kind of dedication to its sound that reflects what Panganiban describes as “love for the music that they create.” He says with love and dedication “everything will fall into place sooner or late.”

Tenten Abella, Top Junk’s booking manager, knows that these are ingredients necessary for the band to succeed. Herself the vocalist for the pop rock band Puny Earthlings, Abella says “Alam nating lahat ang sikat ngayon ‘yung putok sa masa. I’m talking here financially. Lahat naman ng band nag-struggle yan.”

Apart from managing Top Junk’s gigs—it can be at the Freedom Bar in Quezon City, or Saguijo in Makati, or Club Dred in Libis, or Bar 45 in Kammuning—and managing her own band, Abella also divides her time with a day job as layout artist for the Rotary Club of Makati.

She knows the taste and feel of survival. “Subjective talaga ang survival. Survival for me if kung gaano ka na katagal sa industria (and at the same time being able to satisfy yourself), ang band mo, and at the same time (you able to share) sa mga tao ‘yung music mo.”

With a five-song demo CD, Top Junk is selling its music to the world. Sa Isip Mo, engineered by Mark Escueta and recorded and mixed at the Birdhouse, has become an anthem for the band, its opening song during gigs. Raunchy, bouncy and catchy, Sa Isip Mo is a marriage of what Placido describes as words and melodies. As long as you have these two, “there will always be a cake to enjoy.”

Sarangelo sees the plight of Top Junk as that bittersweet—definitely not yellow brick—road to an elusive dream. “I believe none of us actually hope we could be millionaires because of this endeavor. I’m actually poorer now that I’m involved with Top Junk.”

That’s why each Top Junkie has another job to make ends meet. Drummer Dennis Leung, who wasn’t able to join the interview with personal fortune, is a product manager for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

“Hey! Money isn’t everything. Right?” quips Sarangelo. “Still it’s a big something. So a little green is actually nice. For now, let’s dance to this disco punk inferno. Cue the dream sequence…"



(This article appears in slightly different form in the January 2008 edition of Maxim magazine—vICsOL)

Some things were conspiring that Tuesday night the 27th of November in this part of the world. It was raining--not a real downpour and not a drizzle either, just a steady kind of November rain.

It was nature imitating art.

The exhibit was Ode to Water by Karina "Kaka" Baluyot, hosted by Jack Teotico in his Galerie Raphael on the second floor of the Serendra in Global City.

Family, friends and patrons were there to support the artist in her 3d one woman show.

What struck me about her works on display were the maturity of her brush strokes--controlled, yet playful; authoritative, yet really unassuming. These attributes actually made her paintings--characterized by thick dubs of oil paint sculpted to bear form and texture--heavy on the mental side, yet fresh and accessible.

Also, there is a raw kind of sensuality that lingers tucked somewhere beneath the totality of her individual paintings, like the scent of Channel No. 5 long after Carmen had left the dim-lit room.

Definitely, passion murmurs through this collection of still life and landscapes, like a fitting harmony to the sensuality of her composition. I could only imagine fulfilled desires and times when longing seems so unbearable through the night.

I could imagine the impact of the late American Georgia O'keefe's representational abstractions, except that flowing through Baluyot's veins are the subtlety of an Asian steeped in the trappings of Western thought, philosophy and socio-economic lifestyle.

A doctor who holds clinic at St. Lukes Medical Center in Quezon City blurted out as he emerged from the gallery to the buffet table: "I know that Karina paints, but I didnt' know that she's this good."

Another guest told me, almost as if whispering to my ear: Alam mo ang maganda dito, supportado siya ni Jack. I mean, let's face it, ilan ang katulad niya?

We may be witnessing here Baluyot's first three steps toward edification though the march is obviously long.

It's a different feeling to write about someone you know to a certain extent than writing about someone you haven't really shared space and time with other than the yield of research.This is how I'm writing about Karina Baluyot, one of the most dynamic and vibrant young artists in the Philippines today. We are like--come to think of it now--soulmates. Once in a while we hang out together, and--wala lang--talk about life in general and as it pertains to her art and my photography. I am comfortable sharing a meal or coffee with her in a in a coffee shop or restaurant in a mall or somewhere else.

I'm writing about Kaka--her nickname--because tonight is her third one woman show at Galarie Raphael on the 2d floor of Serendra in Global City. Called Ode to Water, the exhibit consists of 33 paintings on different media. She describes them as "...paintings on canvas, board and handmade paper. Depicting shells, the rain, waves, the sea and other elements inspired by water."

In the tradition of theater and the performing arts, you don't wish cast and crew good luck but the ominous break a leg.

Pray tell: What do you say to a painter on the opening night of her exhibit?

The writer, editor--an artist in her own right--Carla Casanova shall read poetry on Friday 5 Oct 07 at 5 pm to celebrate the opening of vISIONS IN THE lIGHT at the Ayala Museum ArtistSpace.

See you there...

Saturday 22 Sept 2007 I got this SMS from Ross Capili as I was wrapping up a product shoot:

Pare, im inviting tonyt at 630pm, we hve an opening exhibit at oneworkshop gallery, u

Going there as a detour to my appointment with the owners of a small cosmetics factory was one of the best things that ever happened to me last weekend.

I met the artist Jill Arwen Posadas; her signature works adorned the walls of OWG Creative Center. Her exhibit--ROMP--basically reflects the lightness of her personality. She is so approachable, so unassuming, so... Wala s'yang excess baggage whatsoever.

Her works exude the playfulness of a child. Her mastery of color and technique dances with a full imagination, unlike the works of an elder veteran who painted toys referenced on a photograph whose exhibit I saw last year at SM Mega Mall.

Posadas will likely go down in the history of Philippine art as the artist whose works matured so much in a charming manner despite her biological, and therefore unconscious, drive to remain a child in the seat of her artistic talent and creativity.

The young photographer Noel Salazar will shoot the opening cocktails of vISIONS IN THE lIGHT. It would be great to see him do his stuff in the spirit of photography by photographers for photgraphers.

Managing the Arts Program batch 10, or MAP 10. That was our two week stint in April 2005 at the Asian Institute of Management. We were the last batch before the program was moved to the CCP. Now the same program is running under the acronym META at the Peta Theater building in Quezon City.

Two MAP 10 guys who turned out to be my pals are theater actors Jeremy Domingo and Ku Aquino. Their Word of Mouth productions staged Aqua Barkada at the RCBC Theater. I took the pictures.

Last night we kind of hang out at bang coffee on T Morato. Ku and Jeremy came from Peta with Miguel, also a theater actor. Ku and Miguel were in the Peta play Romulus da Great! and Jeremy was in the audience.

(I came from the office-Yes. Journalists work on Sundays. On the way I took our editorial writer Dave Llorito to Glorietta where he was supposed to pick up the book We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and the Reshaping of of the Law int eh Internet Age. (Yes. Journalists like us read such stuff.) Dave sent me an sms last night as I was driving along Ortigas Avenue that he ordered the book for me too and that I could pick it up anytime at Bibliarch.)

Well, we didn't really just kind of hang out. Jeremy and I were supposed have a quiete dinner at Little Asia across the street from bang and talk about vISIONS IN THE lIGHT, as I asked him to host the opening program on Friday 5 October 2007 at 5 pm at the Ayala Museum Artist Space. But the place was full.

They were there earlier and I arrived around 7:30. Before you know it it was close to midnight.

It was great hanging out with Ku and Jeremy. (Miguel left earlier.) The way they talk transported me to another space and time. It was about theater, about journalism, about photography, life--how it sucks and how its really great.

Well, I'm lookin' forward to 5 October 2007, Jeremy hosting vISIONS IN THE lIGHT.

Poster #6 for vISIONS IN THE LIGHT from the Ayala Museum

Poster #5 for vISIONS IN THE LIGHT from the Ayala Museum

Poster #4 for vISIONS IN THE lIGHT from the Ayala Museum

Poster #3 for vISIONS IN THE lIGHT from the Ayala Museum