The Big Squeeze The Big Squeeze The Big Squeeze The Big Squeeze The Big Squeeze The Big Squeeze: The Author

Note: this is written along time ago, August 8, 2008 to be exact, long before the creation of this blog. This is a post titled 'photo emblem' published on my now laid-to-rest travel blog. I thought this would best narrate how i got into photography and of my being a moment chaser since then.

I’m bitten by a bug that's constantly itching and can’t help but scratch. Every scratch gives insatiable satisfaction that consuming me for weeks. If it is turning me into a zombie, I won’t mind (George Romero could be prouder). There’s no prescribed cure but to run havoc and infect other mortal denizens.

Its insanity… an addiction. I won’t really mind. My officemates, if I failed to go to work readily suspect me somewhere testing my addiction. I know this because when I returned to work rumors has it that I’m at Bankerohan public market or San Pedro Cathedral taking snapshots of almost anything under the sun. My colleague Cris, on his usual in-your-face frankness, cannot contain and questioned me if I don’t even get a speck of shame. I just answered a beaming smile thinking “they don’t just understand, if only they had the itch”.

The malady is yes, photography. I really don’t know how this started. When I was little I just have fascination to old monochrome photos my parents kept. For the longest time, photos did’t appeal to me as an art but as tangible retrospective reminders of the distant past. When presented with old photo of me, I’d tried to recollect if I still remember that very day it was taken. It’s not really clear to me how old I am on the flash backs I have in my head. That is why I sometimes caught my self asking people how young they were when they gain consciousness of the cosmos.

In high school I remember joining a photo contest capturing an event of the day. Those that have more editorial value bags the prize. I didn’t win; I’m in it for the experience anyway. But honestly, what I remember was that I so badly wanted to win that time (well sorry for me).

With the nature of my previous work, I travel a lot. There were times before that I pulled over just for a moment, watch and marvel on the greatness and at the same time peculiarity of nature and its inhabitants. Its harmony and at the same time its struggles from each other.

Now that I’m commuting daily traveling from Tagum to Panabo and vice versa, on its unadulterated form scenery seemed screaming for a photo shoot. They seemed ordinary to new and frequent commuters but it didn’t fail to amaze me. So I decided to procure a very powerful DSLR camera which cost me a limb and a year of starvation.

I used to be a point-and-shoot user, but my recent travel to Iligan, made me wished and craved for a really fast and longer / wider ranged camera and lenses. DSLR addressed it all as it is superb in detailed photography, because Photoshop could only do little on an already average–quality photo of a point-and-shoot.

I’ m still on my infancy in photography. I dream of having a wide angle lens and filters for stunning landscape shots. I am also scouring the net for post processing tutorials (I am still using the dated CS and so looking forward to CS3).

Now I found out that taking good picture goes beyond the latest gadgets that you can get in the market, you should have the heart and soul, first and foremost, in capturing moments in time freeze in a snapshot.

If I will live enough and continue to be a moment chaser, time freezer and essence squeezer of photographs, then maybe, I could end up just like them.