au.was.here.

my first time to win a photo contest! sabi ni Nanay, sya daw ang buenas...hehehe... this was my entry to Bookoto.com's Tis the Season Challenge and it won me a year's worth of issues of Life Images magazines which i have been wanting to get myself but a short budget gets in the way. can't wait to get my grubby hands on those issues! :-D thanks Sheryl, Julie and Ms Staci Dumoski of Life Images for the pick! below is the winning photo and the required journaling and camera settings that went with it.


Journaling :
This is one of my favorite shots among those I have captured this season. It may not be the most technically perfect photo but most genuinely meaningful, fleeting moments are hard to capture as such. This is a photo of my Nanay (mother) in a moment of loneliness even midst a happy gathering. We had just finished watching her apos' (grandchildren) Xmas presentation at the PETA Theater and were simply awaiting for the crowd to thin out before we went down to the lobby.

Children eagerly anticipate the merriment of the Christmas season but perhaps it does not always hold the same ebullient happiness for the elderly. I am not sure what Nanay might be thinking at this moment. I can only guess. It could be worry for what the future holds, longing for the physical freedom she used to have before her hip surgery, or simply that she
misses a brother she had lost to cancer a just few weeks earlier.

Whatever is on her mind, I and the rest of her family can only try to pacify her by staying close to give her the emotional support she craves. However, I often wonder if it is ever going to be enough. Hopefully, the gleeful gatherings of the season gives her enough respite from the ravages of loneliness that often plague most of the elderly.

Camera Used: Nikon D300
Lens: Nikkor 18-200 f3.5-5.6
Settings: ISO 640 and aperture at 6.3 (where I had left it at a prior shot), shutter speed at 1/4 sec which was about the only setting I had time to adjust because I was afraid Nanay would move already. It was as slow as I could go--considering I was handholding the camera and not using flash-- to get a decent exposure of both foreground and the bright background.

Post processing : Adobe Photoshop CS3 for contrast, brightness and sharpness adjustments