Some people save up for “beer money” or to go to clubs, parties, smoke or whatever vice out there that floats their egoistic boat. But me, i save up for travel money, money I can use to go places,  see different things and take pictures of the place. I also save it up to go inside places, food places specifically so I can write about it here. And this is something I haven’t done at all ever since my last blogpost.

Ang Makulit na Bata

Since this summer started, a new girl has come to my life everyday that takes up so much of my time and my patience that I don’t get to go out and actually use the money I save up for trips. And it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to get away from this girl. She’s Mavi, it’s her nick for Maria Victoria. A really cute, cuddly, chubby and smart girl. She comes to our house everyday after lunch, exactly before I decide to go out. And she’s all over the place when she’s here, that’s why I really can’t go out and only our grandparents are watching her, so I take it to myself to lessen their burden of 3 hyper kids.

She and her parents are on a 9-day cruise around the Philippines (at the time of writing) which I was also supposed to be on only if it hadn’t involved taking care of her while we were there. So instead, I was proxied by my quiet cousin who is now taking all the burden. But I do envy them because it’ s an opportunity to take pictures of vistas. And it’s all free.

So enough of that, and on to the real story. Last holy week I could bet that a lot of us were out of town. And for those who weren’t were quietly humbled in their homes even in the really hot conditions in Manila. And I pity those who stayed at home because the weather in Tagaytay that week was absolutely brilliant.

We didn’t go straight through SLEX to go to Tagaytay, we went through Aguinaldo Highway to hit churches in the Cavite area. We went to almost every large church in Cavite except for Barasoain. The first one you see here is the first church we went to, I forgot the name, but it’s a good church. And on the photo, you’ll notice that the church seems dark. That’s because it was early morning and the sun was really behind the church so I only exposed enough to get a good sky. This church, if you look closely above the main door and below the cross above it, between them is a glass tomb. Yes, it’s really an exposed tomb of a person. I forgot who, but it looks really creepy when you see it. I can’t show any picture of that because(stupid me) I only brought the wide angle lens.

We went to a lot of other churches that I can’t mention anymore because we were there for just a short amount of time that I couldn’t even get long exposures. You can look at the photos maybe below or on my multiply. But what I found interesting was the people, not the places. I only prayed for a short amount of time because there’s still just one thing I’m praying for, so I always look around the church to take pictures. What I was really astonished with was the very real and genuine smile of these people. The only problem was I had to delete a lot of those photos because I ran out of memory (forgot to bring the HP Mini). But I think I did save one.

Kids at the church

You can’t really see the “boy” (he was gay) right there but his smile was good. The people I’ve seen in these churches had a really good aura. Especially the ones who sold those “steamed nuts”  or that mani with the shell, they were really cool even if I took pictures of them, they weren’t like other people who’d stare at you from behind after you’ve taken a photo of them. This, I think, is what captures most travel photographers to not stop in their field. You feel really comfy and cozy even if you’re in a place you’ve only been in once.

We visited a total of 8 churches before we got to Tagaytay. Once we were up there, we ate at Gourmet’s, really good place but I have really bad memories of the place(if you know, good for you) that’s why I didn’t take any pictures at all from the place. Then, we checked in to the very beautiful Taal Vista Lodge, owned by none other than Henry Sy himself, but operated by Fuego Hotels.

Taal Vista Lodge

You can see here the view of the place from behind in the viewing deck. There are other places to stay in Tagaytay like The Botique, but the place is quite expensive for a family and too swanky as I’ve seen. The place we stayed in was one proper hotel, just like in Manila. And it has a really good view. The best place to stay in Tagaytay if you ask me. I actually wanted to stay here when I have a partner because a single room for one night just cost 2500. But The World really has it hard on me right now.

Sunset at the deck

We rested for a while and I waited for the sun to set. It wasn’t really good because the sun wasn’t facing us at all, but I got really good photos of my parents right here. Exposed for the background and just lit them with flash. Same technique as I use in other sunset photos I’ve done. I think it’s basic for a photog to at least know how to take this kind of photo, but if you’re still in P mode with your camera, that only means POSER.

After the sun set, we had dinner at one of my favorite places, Sizzling Pepper Steak! And what was really good is that we just found it going on the road because it was in a new mall, which wasn’t there at all 4 months ago. And the mall even has a Robinsons Supermarket branch and a Starbucks.

Only Mall in Tagaytay

I got a really good exposure right there even with my cheap-o sigma lens without any Image Stabilization. The Sizzling Pepper Steak is in the corner there if you zoom in. They also have a  branch at Trinoma and at the Greenhills Promenade, try it, i absolutely urge you to. Order the beef pepper steak or the chicken or anything! If you’re a fan of good food with good taste, they won’t dissapoint. After eating, the usual and already vomit-inducing Starbucks. Really, I’m not at all against it, but it isn’t really cool buying coffee here.  Starbucks has just become another cliche, that “macchiato” thing, it really isn’t amusing to me. Its personal preference, but it isn’t cool, I’m in one almost twice a week, I’ve seen them all. NOT COOL. I’d rather spend coffee money on an L lens.

After that, we were already heading towards the Pink Sisters church, but the place had a really ABSURD number of people, cars filled up even the highway due to lack of parking. And the place was so full to the brim that we didn’t even bother going there, adding to the fact that it had already closed when we got there. That’s why we just went to the retreat place just beside it, Angels Hills. It had a really good church, but I thought it was pretty small for a really large retreat place. But I did like where they put the statue of Mama Mary, i didn’t get a snap because it was too dark, so I just got the inside instead.

Inside church (Angels Hills)

Statue

After that, it was back to the hotel to sleep. I was supposed to wake up real early for the sunrise because after calculations and consulting the Blackberry where it would set, it was supposed to appear right beside Taal Volcano. But to no avail, I was not able to wake up from the really fluffy bed I was in. I woke up just before check out time, took a good bath and we went out. We had lunch at Buon Giorno, it’s one of the fine dining restos in the vicinity, really good place. We ate there because other places in Tagaytay are too Filipino (not that I hate it), but it’s the usual Dencios and that other place style, lots o’ drunk, stupid people.

Chapel on The Hill

After eating, we headead towards Batangas, to Caleruega. For people who don’t know, you actually enter Caleruega via a golf and country club place with Don Bosco in it. There, and I had to blow up the image above so that you can see it well. That is Chapel on The Hill. I actually didn’t think the name was proper for the place because we were already on a mountain, so it was on a really small hill, it was just like going up the grand stair in the main building. But it was a really good place, and what’s really good, if you ask me was “The Labyrinth”.

Inside Chapel on The Hill

The Labyrinth is a maze inside the chapel, as you can see, the chapel is circular, and the maze is in the center. You actually walk through the maze while praying. It’s said to increase one’s concentration on prayer, and when you get to the end of the maze which is in the center of the chapel, you get closer to God. You can search for details on it while you’re on the interweb. And another thing that’s cool about this place is the confessionary, it’s open. Not really a place you’d want to say your secrets in though, but it was unique. You really see people crying as they confess. I wanted to have a go too, but not here.

"Open Confession"

After that, we headed straight to Caleruega and just like Pink Sisters, it was absurdly full of people. And I’m not kidding when I say that something is absurd. It was really hard going from parking to praying because of the heat. And what’s bad about caleruega was the memories. They were good memories, but it’s not something you want to remember when you’re in a stage that you want to really EXPLODE.

Mess Hall

The mess hall was a place I could remember a lot of things in, really funny things. I was here once for our high school retreat and it’s something I really didn’t want to think of or say here, but hey, it’s a story. This place was full of new things for me. For one, I met new people, classmates of my *ehexem* because I didn’t attend my own class’ retreat for *cough* her *cough*.

....

And the photo you see to the right there is the entrance going to *eherem* room at that time with her two classmates. The boys stayed in the bunk room while the ladies stayed at hotel-style rooms, really lucky as they were really good rooms. Good beds too, real nice.  But as they say, cest la vie, you can’t have everything.

If you go to Caleruega these days and have been there before, you will notice the big change in climate. In the past, afternoons were hot, but not THIS hot. It was scorching and I think it’s because of global warming. In the past, afternoons were bearable(we were there for 3 days), but now, you really won’t survive without a superabsorbent hanky. A lot has changed.

Caleruega

And as I headed up the church more memories and more problems arose. My card was full, it was darn hot and a lot of memories came crashing. NOT good. But I still got a shot, the one you see above. It was already JPEG format (I shoot RAW) that’s why it looks bland, I couldn’t edit it enough. The church, if you don’t know, is really small. Weddings here are for just really small groups that’s why people with money like it here, and the view is amazing. This is one place I’d like to be married in(IF I do get married).

To wrap this up, since this is the longest I’ve done yet, I’d like to thank you, whoever you are if you’ve read this all the way here. Thank you so much. You actually help me in my road to recovery by reading this. And I know who you may be because I have a stat tracker on the site. Thank you, really. And I hope you support the photography, if not the site. I don’t want to sit around here with my cheap lens this year. I’d really like to do group shots to improve my shooting and I’d also like to do couples(already have one in mind). So, that’s it. If you like my style, invite me, refer me or whatever. Drop a comment below(PLEASE!) or on my multiply page(PLEASE! PLEASE!) whatever it may be. SHOW THE LOVE!

I hope you read my last blog post! And I also hope you keep following this photo blog thing for the rest of the summer! There’ll be lots more in store in the coming weeks in my photo trips, so be sure to keep reading and looking at the photos. You can also bookmark this page and my multiply page so you can follow me better, and also in my twitter.

So much for that, this post is about the Condura Run 09, held last March 22, 2009 around the Bonifacio Global Grounds in Taguig. The official name of this run is actually Condura Run: Run for the Whale Sharks. It was held, i think, to get money to support the whale sharks or more commonly known to us as the “butanding” in and aroung the Philippines.

You can see in the photo above the starting line, and if you look closely there are a lot of photographers wearing a jacket with CANON on their backs. This is because Club EOS Philippines was the sanctioned photo group for the event. When we reached the place in about 5 in the morning for registration, you’ll really see those 70-200 2.8L lenses even in the darkness, it was really REALLLY cool. There were 70 official photographers for the event and there were others who just brought a lot of L lenses. I even saw one of them have a 200mm prime, a really big one and a really expensive one. If you ask me, those who carried Nikon cameras, it really didn’t have a whoah effect even if one of them had a 70-200. No wow factor at all and you’ll see their images in the PiPho forum, really different.

5k Runner with baby in a stroller

I bet you’re going to wonder if I ran in the event, I didn’t. But what I can tell you was that there were a lot of oddities in the run. One of them is if you’ll look at my photos in multiply. I photographed the start of the 10k run, the one my brother participated in. You’ll see that there is movement blur, but I shot that at a speed of 1/250 of a second, that’s an action freezing speed, yes, but why didn’t it freeze them at all? They ran really fast right of the bat. It was really funny because those who really run these kind of marathons will always start off a little slow to save some energy. Right there you’ll see that a lot of these people participated really just for the whale sharks.

Another odd thing was, like in the photo to the left, a lot of people brought babies. One of them was this one, another brought twins in a double stroller and another woman was pregnant. Truly odd was that they were running really fast for a 5k and 3k run! Specially the one that ran with twins, he ran really fast to the finish. Really, if I brought my baby along, I’d really worry.

But the best thing here really are the celebrities: Rovilson Fernandez (amazing race asia), Phoemela Baranda? (not sure about the spelling), Carlene Aguilar (linked with Dennis Trillo), Jake Cuenca (Dave #2 in Tayong Dalawa series) and that really thin girl in Betty La Fea (don’t know her name).

Rovilson was really big and bald, I got really close to him, maybe too close because I was too shy to take a photo. I think he finished below the 20th place, in that region. He was a really cheerful guy in person, a real joker and he didn’t smell like sweat at all. Really, it’s true. Phem and that thin girl though were just there for photo ops, they were in full running gear but didn’t run at all. And also, Phem wasn’t that sexy in person but she was darn pretty. And as for Carlene, she wasn’t pretty in person, I think it’s because she’s really thin right now. Her face is really chiseled unlike in the past when she won Binibining Pilipinas, she was chubby then. But boy, she’s sexy in person, just like you see in that last FHM.

High Street

I didn’t take too many pictures that day as I was too busy drooling over the other photogs there. If you’re there, you’re really going to just stare at them because of those lenses. I really envy them. But I assure you, I’ll be at that point in the very near future, Club EOS…But I think I got one good shot, the one on the right, it’s low quality here in wordpress and in multiply because of the resizer, I found that my resizer program reduces sharpness by30%. But in my computer, it looks really good. All photos are SOOC by the way or Straight Out Of Camera, no editing whatsoever, just converted them from RAW to JPEG through DPP.

This one’s a really short story, but I’ll be posting another one on Sunday because I’m going somewhere this Saturday to take photos and I’ll be sharing that trip with you. I hope you’ll keep on reading my photoblog and I pray that this goes well!

I’ll be trying to keep things short next time, more substantial, more funny and have more appealing photos. Until the next blog post then! ENJOY! =)

ALL PHOTOS OF EVENT ON MY MULTIPLY: sergey07.multiply.com

Condura Run official website: www.condurarun.com

*You can also support my photography by letting me photograph your event. I can also provide a pre-event photo shoot with a slideshow and a photo montage you can view on your event. Birthday, debut or just your school event, you can have me for completely no charge(but you have to feed me though! *sinister laugh*) and I can do quality photos unlike Red Images, promise.*

This day was a HELL of a lot of fun! our class went to Gitna ng Nayon Resort right after our final exam that Thursday.  I think this was planned ahead of that day because I think 1 month before the event, Cherry was already inviting all of us that day. Planning for funding, food and transportation was done by other people, me thinks.

A lot of people actually didn’t make it for some reason. I think some of them went to some other place? But seriously, how could you miss out on something like this?

We went there in batches, those who didn’t hitch with anyone paid for their transportation (2 vans). As for me, I hitched with my friend Wil, who brought his Swift. No, not the hotdog, the car.  We went through to NLEX to get to the resort and shot through marilao exit. We did get lost a long way, but with patience(i think), we got back the right track with step 5 of our sketched map: MAGTANONG.

Our group in the swift ("SWIFT SIDE")

That was actually the last step in the sketch given to us by Cherry, MAGTANONG. And that we did too late, that’s why we got lost. But still, we got there after a backtrack and a little trouble with the rough road. The swift, with it’s really low ride height and low profile tires was nicked on the side below the skirt (based on impact sound). This ofcourse will make any driver berserk, but thankfully, because Sam was there, there wasn’t really much Wil could do. Another odd thing was, we already saw their van stopped at one of the waypoints, but went ahead, they even called us up to meet up. But I think that’s part of the excitement and we did reach the place and even got the good room.
That night, nobody swam first, everyone was just waiting….for the food. And well, it was worth the wait! There was a lot of  food, really worth the 250 for me, because I got to eat a lot of food. I really didn’t expect so much really, I thought it was going to be light because we were on a budget, but when you think of  it, multiply 250 to 40 and you get at least 10,000?? Really worth it, I even got to eat the hidden stash of roasted chicken!

Well there isn’t really much to say about the swimming we did, because we swam, all of us had a heck of a lot of fun in the pool. Games, racing, jumping and sliding! A whole lot of it! If you ask me, it was really different seeing my classmates wet in the pool. No, I’m no pervert, there was just really something different seeing your seatmates dressed a different way. It was like you were all home. It was a really good feeling, especially when you’re eating hotdogs in the pool while you’re talking. What’s sad is that I didn’t take photos of those really good moments because I was also in the pool and just can’t risk getting the camera wet or even damp. But I did get a lot of photos of after the swimming.

Playing cards after swimming

It was about 1 in the morning and everyone vowed not to go to sleep, that’s why we played cards in our room. Well, they did, I was busy taking a bath that I even left my briefs in the sink after (sorry! =]). Other rooms were also playing cards, others, still drinking, some still singing and for Marlon, he watched a movie with the others(he was sick).

The movie was “The Number 23″ with Jim Carrey, it was “The Shutter” at first, but it didn’t have any subtitles. As for those singing, I think a lot of them had their own concerts! A lot were just glorified back-up singers and the others, just eating.

For our room, it was cards and channel 2!

As they say, promises ARE made to be broken, that’s why all of us WENT TO SLEEP! hehe! You really can’t fight the dizziness after all that. Our bed was filled by Sam, Carl and Glenn (Yes, they did fit). And for us 3 (Me, Wil and Ralph), we slept on the floor, well, I slept under the bed because it was as so darn cold. But then, Mia was there, begging us not to sleep, doing all sorts of things to keep us alive. But to no avail….

The morning was a bit slow, but you’ll really be amazed at some, still singing! Then, breakfast, then eat, eat, eat! So much food was brought there that morning! I was really astonished and really full! I ate so much that day, as much food as I would eat in 3 days! Good thing I didn’t have retainers that day!

After the food, I sang as BACKUP along with Raine, Nenuel and Irvine. Really crazy song selections! Really accurate 2nd voices! haha! We swam again, almost all of us. For me, I was always just singing 2nd voice. Why? As you may know, I do not have the best of voices, my singing voice is one only for the papers.

I did swim too, but it was so hot, the sun was so high, so early. I might look darker than a real african if I swam longer than I did.

But then, everything must come to an end, which did come when the first batch to go out went home early at about 10 in the morning (3 was our deadline to go). But then, Jap went into the pool when they were trying to throw Terrence in. I think that delayed them a bit. After that, it was still food and nothing but food for me while the others were having fun in the pool playing some game. I also forgot to mention that one thing they did in the pool at night where they held each other and spun around like crazy to float. I didn’t get to try it with them, but it was fun just watching them.

The great thinker

Before we left off, we still had time to see some of the others catching up on some sleep, especially Nenuel, a real highlight if you were there. You’ll see really how smart he is by seeing how he sleeps, still thinking! I really hope I was like that!
We left at about 2 in the afternoon after taking turns in the shower. the shower by the way was great, it had an electronic heater and 6 way shower thingy! It was really fun. Really classy, hotel style, even the rooms. I recommend Cherry’s resort to anyone who gets a whole lot for their money. Really, I do, that’s why I recommended it for an office outing and I’m going back there this April 5!

The road back was a real tough one for us in the swift because all of us along with Glenn fit in the car. it was a really bumpy and exciting one. Every pothole was full of excitement, waiting whether the car’s undercarriage would hit or what.

All in all, it was the best 24 hours I’ve had with everyone in 2H. Although some were missing, it was still fun. The food, the videoke and the pool. A lot of fun. Well, for me it would have been more fun I think if everyone was there, but it was fun the way it already was. This is something I really won’t forget.

ALL PHOTOS ARE ON MY MULTIPLY SITE: sergey07.multiply.com

PLEASE COMMENT!

Yes, I will be making this my own photoblog! It’s already summer and I have a lot of plans to tour not just manila, but other places as well. Maybe anywhere my feet, my wallet and my camera would take me. I’m also going to tackle what YOU can see in the places I go and give you some insights.
I’m going to get serious with this and I think publicityis just one thing to get my photos out there. By this week, my goal is to complete registration and putting up of the sites I’m to use: multiply, facebook, friendster, flickr, twitter and this site here, wordpress. It’s gonna be a tough journey to get my photography noticed, but I think it’s going to be very well worth it. And just when I thought I was going to be sad this summer….
Well, I hope to see you on my next post and get things started! ENJOY! =)