This is the main reason I got into photography. I wanted to shoot animals and landscapes. So our little photo group were so stoked to finally take our landscape lessons with Richard Larrios. We left early morning that Saturday and went straight to Laguna to learn the basics of landscape photography. Our first stop was at the twin falls. There was a small pool next to the small falls, but it was destroyed by typhoon Frank. But good thing there was enough falls for us to shoot. It took us quite a while before we got our shots right since we were plagued by bad composition, pale colors, and clumsily getting to know new equipment.

Personally, that was the first ever time I used my tripod, so I was as clumsy as an elephant seal on land when it came to my tripod. It was also the first ever time I used filters of any sort. Here’s what I came up with.

The smaller falls:

The bigger falls:

Then for our second stop, we went to the Japanese garden, which didn’t look like much, since it was basically lots of grass, a bridge, and a decrepit, rust-eaten playground. But surprisingly, from behind the camera, and with a little imagination, there’s a lot of images to be extracted.

This was also the start of my love affair with the infrared filter, or I.R. I’ve heard about it, but we never really learned how to use it in our basic photography lessons. Plus, it’s a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing with photographers. Many consider it a fad, many stay away from it, but many are enthralled. Being a newbie, consider me as one of those who oooh and aaah every time I see an I.R. picture. Here’s a couple of shots I took using the I.R. filter for the very first time. I.R. shots usually end up bluish, but mine turned out on the golden side.  No complaints though, I kinda like it.  Not much fancy post-prod here, this is pretty close to how it really looks, straight from the camera:

What’s essential though when taking I.R. pics, is a lot of sunlight. Unfortunately for us, the sun went out earlier than expected because it started raining, and that means party’s over as far as photo shoots are concerned. So we weren’t able to visit our final stop which was the lighthouse in Caliraya. It really broke our hearts not to shoot there because we’ve seen so many nice pics of that place.

Good thing we took lots of regular, filter-less shots as well in the Japanese gardens. At least we got pics out of a rained-out weekend. Here are some of the stuff I came up:

We were disappointed missing out on the final stop, but we were happy with the new skills we picked up. We were beyond excited about the following weekend, where we were scheduled to visit Zambales this time, but we were also dreading the onset of the typhoon season, which usually peaks in July. That…is another story altogether.

(Thank you to Lennie Reyes for the group pic!)