intermission #4

The human eye scans images from left to right, picking out significant visual cues along the way before deciding what to focus on. This photograph, taken about 2 years ago somewhere in the rice bowl of Central Luzon, will allow your eye to rest a bit, as it has been composed to keep most of the visual detail within 40% of the central image area. Feel free to take your time and browse through the detail of the farmers and their animals as they make the journey back home, at the end of just another ordinary day for them.

This never-before publicly displayed photograph was originally taken on black & white, and then digitally tinted to appear identical to hand-tinting techniques made famous by Bien S. Bautista, one of the 5 people whose visual influence is strongest on the kind of images i make.

Priorato

One of the most difficult to find in Asia, wines from the Priorato region are hoarded for sale mostly in North America.

These wines are one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Spanish vino connoisseur, being among the most consistently rated (92 on wine spectator) internationally. Their charm is also enhanced by the fact that Priorato is traditionally a low-yielding geographic area.

Pictured up close is a 2002 product, which is from the lowest-yielding year of the past ten. We intend to drink this by year-end, hopefully pairing it with pan-seared foie gras.

My 12 Students

They are about to finish the 12-week "Paul Yan Experience" photography course, and I have yet to fulfill my promise to publish their names on one of the publications I write for.. Here are the early mental notes of a dyslexic professor.. Miles. First guy I met in class. Took the trouble of setting up the computer for me on day one. Found out he is a varsity player for baseball. also an avid hobbyist. this early, Miles has shown his own style of portraiture which i want to eventually develop. Miles also knows how to jazz up his presentations to make them more exciting. Also has a good sense of humor. Avi. A person of contrasts. Loves fast cars, but submits a turtle photo for his first plate.. Promised to take him along when I do a Ferrari shoot. Avi loves to present a carefree image but he actually is one of the most astute, showing an excellent attention to details. He is one of the four people in charge of mounting the class exhibit. Avi has a favorite pose that he asks all his models to do. And I haven't the faintest idea why... I think Ill ask him this thursday. Xavier. Music lover. Varsity player. Sees the hand of God in the beauty of the world. Somewhat philosophical even in his music, as he plays instrumental accoustic guitar with a band I helped choose the name for. Acoutistic. cant seem to get the spelling right though.. and yeah, life will suck every now and then. sometimes life also is great and everything just works out. But knowing which one to focus on is the key to being happy and contented. I have always seen myself as a lead guitarist, but I have often gone onstage as a bassist. Turns out Im better on bass. I just never stopped to listen to myself. Wilson. The second hobbyist. he displays excellent traditional compositional techniques. i think wilson will eventually also take a more serious look at photography. I will be spending more time on him. And by the way, I misspelled his name. it should be Wilsonne, after his parents Wilson and Anne. Siebii. The bass player. That is how i remember him. I have seen pictures of his bass guitar, but have never heard him play yet. I would love to hear something, before the class ends. Turns out the bass player isn't Siebii, but Fajah! oh boy! the description was correct though. and he was kind enough to share his special Fajah Techno bass line. and it blew the class away! go ask him for permission to check out his multiply site. Even Ceferino will surely be proud. Teng. The future corps commander. he has a strong aura around him. ive talked to him about leadership and told him my experiences when i was a corps commander. Luck plays a very significant part about what happens to us. And for most of the events in my life, I was lucky to be at the right place and at the right time. Preparation makes sure that when things start going your direction, you are ready for the challenge! Paulo. seems to have excellent potential with technology. understands what a light meter is supposed to do. he is pretty deliberate about doing things. If you notice, i spelled his name the way I spelled my name. Turns out I misspelt it too. Paolo, the cool one. Luis. Takes the time to compose his images. each element is there for a reason. Luis has the ability to copy an artwork even if it was facing a different direction. To him it was just an ordinary skill. To me, it shows his cognitive abilities; about being able to see things for what they are and not for what they seem. And that is a gift. Harveen. loves graphic design. I think ill look at what he does. He hasn't the faintest idea about my graphic design background. maybe ill surprise him. I actually was one-half of an advertising agency a decade ago. hahaha. all my life i had been in art, advertising, animation, music, and design. Harveen seems to have a more than passing interest in the arts and it shows with the craftsmanship he puts into his works. Jasper. Has a grandfather who lives in Amorsolo; the place where my entire professional life revolved around. Even Jasper wasn't spared from my mixup. hahaha. It is siebii who lives in Amorsolo. Siebii, before you were born, there used to be an open creek where the Amorsolo bypass road now is. That's why the area used to be known as "Creekside". Each time it rained, the area would flood up to the knees. and during storms, the water would rise up to waist level! Yeah! And now about Jasper. He also has a gifted hand, and he shows his artistic side every now and then. He prefers to be the quiet one, letting his other groupmates bask in the light. But I know he is the guy that is in charge. And he also thinks fast. and acts fast. Andres. Enrolled because he wanted to experience the fun side of photography. today, he appears to be the most serious about learning the craft. a dramatic but very positive turnaround from the man who was the reason for my very well-received presentation about "all the wrong reasons to go into photography". And if you what to know what was in that presentation, well you better talk to anyone of my 12 students. Andres doesn't know it yet, but I am preparing a final presentation about "All the right reasons to go into photography". I have just finished compiling all the images. I hope i can do a video for them by thursday next week. wait. xavier, avi, miles, luis, paulo, harveen, wilson, andres, teng, jasper, siebii. that only makes eleven students. oh boy.................. who did i forget????? FAJAH, PAOLO, JASPER, SIEBII, I owe you guys a fine art print. I think the person I forgot will be getting a custom printed photograph from me next week.

life's simple pleasures

One of the many things I am thankful for is the strong influence the French Culinary Institute has had on my wife. Her take on gastronomy has decidedly veered towards Old-World flavour and presentation since coming back from culinary education abroad. This is what we had for dinner at home yesterday. Leg of lamb encrusted with a parsley accented rub of breadcrumb & mediterranean sea salt, served with seasonal green salad with seedless grapes, blue cheese, and walnuts over a lemon tarragon dressing. The wine of choice for the dinner was a new world cabernet sauvignon. being a relatively young wine, the tannins competed quite well with the gamey flavour of the lamb. Dessert was a single 10-gram block of Nama dark chocolate infused with Henessy, which was hand-carried by the people of Royce from Japan. No, we were not celebrating any special occasion. It was just a regular Sunday dinner at home. My wife often says "who else among your friends regularly have fine-dine dinners at home?" And to this I now reply, "who among your friends have their husbands import Nama chocolate by Royce?" oh, life's simple pleasures... again.

Music From the Summer Palace

Music has always had a refreshing and beneficial quality to it.

Especially for a medium such as the internet, which is multi-media enabled, music is becoming an essential partner for more and more browsing activities.

so, just to challenge the mind, let's see if a good photograph can actually get you to think of a song...

incidentally, the image is from my series "unseen details in a once-forbidden city".

My finger-lickin' moments...

If there is anything I really live for, it is food. Good food. Exceptional flavours. Exotic ingredients. Blissful aromas. Funny when you realize that some of the best meals I have had were the ones I had at home. Funny, because one of the reasons why my wife and I travel is to sample regional cuisine in their own exotic locale. Funny also, because our home-cooked meals have often been gourmet delights in their own little way, but which just goes unnoticed mainly because for us it is just another private meal. And if i were to list some of the most memorable ones, this would probably land in the top ten. In terms of breakfasts, one of the best I have ever had was a home-cooked one with a couple of seriously exotic (and expensive) food items. I remember it was some time in december, about a week after i was invited by Avida Land to give a speech on the beauty of Manila, during a commemoration of their topping off activity at the San Lazaro towers, when i woke up to a blissful aroma of fried meat... Following the hugely inviting smell, I walked into the kitchen where my wife was just about to flash-sear foie gras as topping to a wagyu beef salisbury steak! So, how else do you ever top that for breakfast? (well, you top it with lots of fragrant steamed rice! hahaha)

The Impertinence of Youth

Yes, we all went through it. Yes, we were once young. And yes, I never, never remember ever behaving that way. No sense of courtesy. They don't even bother to return your messages or calls. even emails. No sense of time, other than their own. No sense of responsibility. They just ignore you. Filipinos have a colloquial term for this behavior. They call it "DeadMa". Who raised you to be that way anyway? I hope it comes back at you when you are at your weakest. Let's see how you grasp at straws. To hell with you.

December moonrise, San Juan.

Another Intermission.

Feel free to scroll through the details of this photograph i took in December 2007.

One of the chief causes of eye fatigue is a reduction in the number of blinks we take once we are on the computer.

Although I am sure you will be trying to figure out which buildings are featured, please try to count to five, and then blink once. then count again and blink. To help you out, the buildings are Tiffany, Jafer, LPL Goldland, Eisenhower, and Swire Elan. now, blink again.

CD-R King, the hardware version of the internet

CD-R King is the hardware version of what the internet is, to the internet believers..

In relation to an earlier post about people treating the internet as a treasure-trove of all that is factual, I have met people who will actually swear by the invention or non-invention of something depending on whether they have actually seen the product in the shelves of CD-R King. actually, even I have occasionally fallen into that mold. a recent case in point. Somebody told me that there already is a 16G flash drive now. Scanning my head for my last CD-R King visit, I validated his statement. "Pero di pa tinitinda sa Pilipinas" because it still wasn't on their store shelves. hahaha.

People, myself included, may fall into this maxim. "if we do not see it being sold in CD-R King, then it has not yet been manufactured!" hahaha. personal benchmarking. a very significant pitfall from a consumer marketing point of view.

But now that we are in the thick of discussions on CD-R King, let me just say for the record that I have found most of my cheap and useless electronic clutter from that store. You know, the USB Lans, USB cellphone data cables, USB bluetooth dongles, USB soda drink coolers (yes!!!), USB coffee mug warmers, PCI this and PCI that, as well as a host of USEFULL and (dirt)CHEAP stuff I normally would not have been able to buy at the god-awful prices of those other electronics consumables stores. Let me run them by you. a Kingston 1G USB flash drive then selling at P500 just 6 months after I got mine for P4,350. (now, a 1G kingston sells for P250!) USB wifi dongles at P580 versus P1,880 at another store. LAN WIFI Routers at P1,400. Philips Litescribe DVD-R discs at P25. cellphone LCD protectors at P60. laptop LCD protectors at P250.

Oh, one other thing. Bluetooth stereo receiver headphones integrated into a pair of sunglasses for just over a thousand bucks... but then the sunglasses resemble a style I call "the Terminator Look..."

and they have finally put the 16G Compact Flash drive on their shelves for a ridiculously low price of P3,380. you wouldn't believe that we paid over 15k for our very first 1G CF microdrive...

if it's not on the internet...

Ever bump into one of those shmucks who won't believe that something is for real unless they read in on the internet?? Ever since grade school my favorite pastime was reading about the biggest this, the fattest that, and the longest freaks of the animal world. way back then, the only resource I could tap for such materials was the school library. I would read all the different publications that I could get my hands on. And there was one particular book that was the ultimate authority, on print, on such subjects: the guinness book of world records. of course, I knew about it's ommissions as well, printing only what people have taken the time to report to them that they have personally verified; but I am already digressing outside my chosen topic. so, while going through it's pages, I learned about pythons, anacondas and some other monstrosities found in the deep recesses of jungles. The capybara, an 80lb. cousin of the rat, is one of the bigger meals of anacondas while pythons, who choose to live mostly at the fringes of human settlements, more often prefer chickens and the occasional dog. With the fast-diminishing rain forest, encounters between snakes and humans in the wild, although not an everyday occurence, still happen. And if it were a single human and a single large snake in the snake's territory, the snake usually will be the winning party. Now fasttrack into the internet age. I received a link sometime ago regarding a picture of a python with a huge bulge in it's body; when it was captured, the python was split open and it revealed a newly ingested human. now, the post had another link to a message board of a european car club in the Philippines, and that was what blew me away. they were arguing on how unbelievable the photographs were, and in such a rabid manner that you knew they weren't rocket scientists! among the arguments they raised was that no snake could open it's mouth big enough to swallow a human, while several very strongly insisted that they already did an internet search on it and COULDN'T FIND ANYTHING, about it; therefore it had to be FALSE. No snake could possibly do that. Nothing on the internet said so. the sad thing about it was that these were the priviledged people speaking. you would really wonder whether these guys: 1) dropped out of school earlier than their older cousins, 2) never read anything other than their eurocar manuals, 3) never understood the concept of critical thinking.

But when i discussed it one time with my fraternity brother from the University of the Philippines, Ron Taccad, he said he had already noticed that it was beginning to be a characteristic of the youth; to refer to the internet as the only credible authority. He summed up the situation like this. "People today will believe something, so long as they read it on the internet. But what is scarier, is that they will NOT believe something if they cannot find it on the internet."

His statement reminded me about something Tony Te said to me about 5 years ago. he said "the sad thing about kids today is that despite having easy access to information, they have no idea about what to do with it." he adds, "today, they have all the knowledge at their fingertips, all the intelligence, BUT NONE OF THE WISDOM."

And that is so so sad.

Contemplations in Blue, 2008

Intermission. Eye fatigue is a very real problem especially in this age of the desk jockey. The normal non-stop viewing time for computer users is 120minutes before they take their eyes away from the monitor and wander somewhere else.

Here is a photograph I took as part of a series in China. Being a cool color, blue should help your eyes relax.

And if you are among the priviledged few who use an LCD monitor, then please enjoy the moment.

Eat shit for lunch. Then pizza later.

Ever felt that work was all shitty stuff? And the guys dishing it out are all higher up than you? Yeah yeah.. everyone who has had a paycheck probably felt that way some time or another. But fresh out of school, fresh out of the best school your family could afford, you certainly couldn't quite get it. You know, how those incompetent shmucks ever got to where they are right now. And you, with your freshly minted and gold-stamped diploma, can't seem to get any recognition for the three reports they asked you to type. You know the feeling. You, with all your school debating experience, and the occasional high school quiz bee appearances televised over national TV... surely you're not cut out for this clerical shit. why doesn't anyone realize that? Your boss hands over the 4th report for you to retype. If you aren't cut out for it, then quit. but I guess the best advice is this. Eat shit in the morning. Then hopefully by nightfall, you would have made enough for you to go buy yourself a pizza.

Life's a Bitch. But then you realize you still have to swim in it..

Of course, eventually everyone realizes that life is a series of curve balls. No beef with that. My beef lies when the curve balls hit you in quick succession, which is how it happens in real life.

Early on in my professional life, I had a freak accident which almost cost me my life. I hit a parked 10 wheeler truck in a dark spot towards the end of Coastal Road in Cavite. The collision totalled my car. The actual damage line was from the left front fender, the entire engine block, the windshield, and three-fourths of the entire right side. I was lucky to have hit the truck's rear wheels, which actually saved my life. If I collided a split second earlier my car would have gone underneath it, perhaps decapitating me. A split second later and those steel bars being transported would have impaled me at my chest cavity. And both types of death weren't exactly the way anybody would want to go...

I cleared my head trying to rationalize why it happened. A night later, trying to patch up a lesson from it, I decided on this maxim: "What does not kill me, makes me strong". As if the steel bars that were just three feet away from my chest would provide some sort of headstrong tonic of invincibility..

You would think that it was already good enough for a first and last curve ball. I thought so too. However, while driving up to Davao from Bukidnon three weeks later, a huge chunk of mountain fell on the road I was driving on. It was a huge landslide, easily over a hundred and fifty meters long. And i was just two cars back... we were rescued at 2am the following day..

So, what do you do when you get more than your share of life's curve balls? You call up your insurance agent and book as much life insurance as you can afford. Which was what I did, TWICE. the second one was actually more than double the value of the first. As a sad footnote, I ended up outliving my insurance agent. She took her life 3 years later due to depression. Life really is a bitch.