In 2005, I conducted a study on m-commerce for microfinance as part of my action consultancy at the Asian Institute of Management.

In my meetings with microfinance members, I brought along a … 1.5Megapixel Kodak camera to take snapshots of our activities.

I’m glad to hear from my friend John that there is a Microfinance Photography Contest by CGAP.

2008 CGAP Microfinance Photo Contest: Innovators and entrepreneurs

2008 CGAP Microfinance Photo Contest: Innovators and entrepreneurs

CGAP invites photographers of all levels of expertise to enter the CGAP Microfinance Photo Contest.

Microfinance around the world is a varied and rapidly developing field, and this year’s theme, innovators and entrepreneurs, speaks to the creativity of our industry. By sharing your striking images of financial services reaching poor people today with us, you’ll reach countless others with the message of microfinance. We know from past results that you’ll be inventive in capturing the diversity, dynamism, and impact of our work.

This year, we’ve added some special categories to reflect our overall theme of innovation. We’d like to see images of entrepreneurial activities at work. How are people using finance in nontraditional ways? What innovations are financial service providers using to serve people who would not otherwise be reached, including those living in rural and remote areas? We hope you’ll use your imagination in thinking about the clients of microfinance and those who deliver the innovations to help meet their financial needs.

There are some very beautiful photos in the past years’ contest.

• 2006 Microfinance Photo Contest Slideshow
• 2007 Microfinance Photo Contest Slideshow

This year, there’s a special category for photos that depict the use of technology. We have a lot of these examples in the use of G-Cash for microfinance. I want to capture photos of those transactions.

New this year: At the judges’ discretion, a special award for $250 in photography equipment will be awarded for up to two photographs that depict issues around the use of technology (cards, information systems, mobile phones) and policy and regulatory issues relating to microfinance (e.g., issues around interest rates, transparency, AML/CFT regulations).

WHEN: All entries, whether submitted electronically or mailed or shipped, must be received by CGAP before noon EST September 15, 2008.

I will join the contest. Anybody want to join me when I go on my photography gig?

Visit the CGAP website to get the Photography Contest Entry Form.

ka edong
snapshooting

Last night, it took me almost an hour to search for an easy way to put watermarks on my tons of photos at http://photos.edongskey.com .

In particular, I was looking for an easy way to do a Bulk Watermark for photos.  There are many softwares that can do this. But as usual, I was looking for the one that was free and did not have any nags. I didn’t want trial versions that had additional un-wanted watermarks of the software name. I didn’t want trial versions that had limited functionality. I didn’t want free software that could possibly have some trojans in them.

And I found FastStone Image Viewer! It works perfectly for my purposes. I am able to add watermarks on hundreds of photos.

Here’s how I add watermarks for photos that are *already* uploaded on my webserver.

a.) Download the photos from webserver unto my hard drive using my FTP client. I use FileZilla because of the same criteria I used for Faststone (Free, not trial nags, no trojans, full functionality).

b.) Add watermark using FastStone. Select Photos > F3 (Bulk Convert) >  Advanced Options > Text … (then set your watermark).

c.) Save the watermarked images on my hard drive.

d.) Upload watermarked images to my webserver using FTP

I chose to un-check “rename” when I Bulk Convert. This is so that the exact names of the photos are used when I upload the watermarked photos — this preserves all links to the old photos.

Also, I un-check the “Keep original Date / Time attributes”. Thus, after watermarking, the image’s date modified is changed to today. This helps me keep track of which of the 1 thousand photos on my server are already watermarked (Answer: the ones with dates modified lately).

Hope that’s useful.

ka edong
holding water

She’s been helping me make videos for sometime. But only now have I decided to publish our videos on YouTube.

So here’s a debut, our first movie publicly shown via YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1F525s9iwk

I use Photostory to build a movie. I gather some photos, add music, edit the transitions a bit (we don’t want to be obssessive compulsive here).

I use Kupradia, my IBM T43, to create movies from photos. She has more movies in her, some too senti to publish.  And more movies to come in the future … maybe …

This is a big step for me. I’m not a YouTube fanatic like my brother.

I know how it works, I understand its power, I know how it’s taking the world of community media to the next level. But to actually use it to publish my movies, this is something new to me.

Now I’m no longer a YouTube Virgin

direk ka edong

Went to the World Pyro Olympics with a veteran: Anton. He has gone to the event soooo many times since last year so he has so many tips for the audience. Here’s a compilation of tips for those who’ll watch the World Pyro Olympics at Roxas Blvd.

• Go there early (be at venue by 7pm or earlier)
• Don’t park near venue if you want to get home early. Park at Blue wave at Macapagal Hi-way then walk to venue.
• Bring water
• Relieve your bladder before going to venue. You don’t want to use the public portalets.
• Bring something to sit on while you wait for the show
• When show is done, pack-up quickly and leave. Don’t get caught in the people traffic.
• Enjoy the show! Feel free to ooooh and ahhhh and clap when you see the awesome fireworks

And some basic photography tips for point-and-shoot photographers like me

• use night mode
• use a tripod
• don’t turn on the flash (unless you have a nice foreground you want highlighted in the photo)
• shoot and shoot and shoot (delete later) — you’ll strike gold after hundreds of shots
• have enough memory space and battery juice
• enjoy the moment. don’t miss the awesome experience by hiding behind the lens

have fun!

ka edong
fired works

Starting my blogging year with a blast!

Met up with fellow bloggers and photography enthusiasts Anton, Abe and Jayvee (and others who’s names will be published on Anton’s blog). It’s funny because I came with an ordinary point-and-shoot Kodak EasyShare CX7220 2 Megapixel Camera. While everybody else had their DSLRs and tripods and huge lenses.

But take a look at what I can do with my point-and-shoot camera. See some World Pyro Olympics Photos at my photo blog.

Happy New Year!

Update Jan 13:  

• Jayvee’s Tips and photos
• On Anton’s blog: Best photos from the Photography enthusiast’s meet-up
• Still on Anton’s Blog: EB photos, Pyro photos;
• Check out Anton’s Ghost shot of Edong at Mall of Asia (Awesome shot, Anton, appreciate it much!)
• And of course, the face-off of the “almost instamatic” point-and-shoot camera vs. the DSLR. Who won the face-off?
• Yuga’s Pyro Photos

ka edong
point & shoot

I’ve become such a shutterbug, I’m afraid I’d run out of space to keep soooo many photos.

So I’m simplifying and reducing my photos to low resolution. Afterall, I just want to enshrine my photos on the web, keep them there for posterity. No plans for any one-man shows that will require high resolution.

So here’s the tip, for photobloggers who don’t need high-resolution photos for their blogs.

1.) Set digital camera to low-resolution. Take low-resolution photos right from the start. That way, you won’t need to reduce high-resolution photos for your web upload.
2.) Reduce to low-resolution in just a few clicks. Windows XP has a built-in function you can use to reduce dozens of photos to low-resolution in just a few clicks.
a. Select the high-resolution photos > Right click > Send to > Mail Recipient
b. Select “Make all my pictures smaller” (Windows will attach low-resolution photos (40Kb-90Kb) in an email)
c. Drag-and-drop the low-resolution photos to your windows folder (note: Be careful, you might accidentally over-write your high-res photos)

There. Take away all the excess KiloBytes. Leave just enough to spark those memories.

Afterall, the memories that matter most are in my head, not in my hard disk.
ka edong
i remember

I was in China for a recent business trip.
I uploaded photos of Pudong Shanghai and Chengdu, China.

Check them out …

ka edong
Shanghai moon

It’s a year delayed. So this is a commemoration. Of a trip to Singapore…

Touring Singapore on National Day 

Maya and I were at Singapore during their 40th Foundation Day (2005). It was a fun trip. We visited Sentosa, Suntec City, Clark Quay, tried the reverse bungee called G-Max, did the Hop on Hop off Hippo city tours, went to little India and China town, Orchard Road, Esplanade ….

Saya! Mauulit pa ba?

And a some photography tips on pinoy.tech.blog.
Here’s my Mirror Project Singapore Series.

ka edong
lost at home

I’m an amateur better-than-average photographer. I’m a make-do-with-what’s-available photographer. I’m a trial-and-error photographer. I’m an experimental photographer.

And sometimes, I come up with some pictures that look quite nice.

I started experimenting with portraits after seeing Markku’s portraits. He used a flash-diffuser that looked like a white plastic cup, pointed to the ceiling and not to the subject. This softens the light from the flash and brings out a light, “sunny” look to the photo. He also zooms in for a tight face or half-face shot. Nice huh?After appreciating Markku’s portraits, I tried capturing some portraits myself, but with whatever point-and-shoot camera I had.

I tried it first using a Sony Powershot. I tried using night-light without a flash for softer colors from the overhead restaurant lights. It didn’t work for me, the subject was too dim. Worse, my zoom wasn’t powerful enough to fill my frame with the face.

This week, I used a Mavica with a writable mini-CD for storage. And I was pleased with my “experiments”. Here are my tips:

Fill-up the frame
More of the face, less of everything else makes for striking portraits.

Tilt the frame
I don’t know why, but I like the way portraits come out in a diagonal shot.
And there’s a bonus: when tilted photos are downloaded unto a computer, it usually doesn’t need any more switching from horizontal to portrait layout because they can work both ways.

Block the distracting background
Hide the distracting backgrounds by blocking them with the subject. There were other people behind my subject. I didn’t want them in the photo so I brought the camera lower and took an upwards shot so that the people in the background were hidden behind my subject.

Use the zoom
Sometimes, a photo is washed-out in the brightness of a flash especially when the photographer is too close to the subject.

One trick is to back-away from the subject and then just zoom-in using the camera’s zoom. I observed that when a subject is 5 to 8 feet away, the flash doesn’t wash out the photo as much as when the subject is 3 feet away.

Another plus: The subject is less conscious about the photo because the camera isn’t in the subject’s face.

Use sepia
Ah, my favorite newly-discovered trick: sepia-plus-flash. The flash lights up the photo but the sepia softens the colors.

Last tip: experiment experiment experiment
We’re in the digital age and it doesn’t cost much to just keep on shooting and shooting and shooting. I change the way the photo is framed, I experiment with the flash, with the settings, with the zoom, with the effects and everything else I can get my hands on.

When I don’t like the shot, I just delete it. Simple.
But when I DO like it, it’s like striking gold!

Keep on shooting, bebe!

ka edong
portrait of a lone mage

I used to be such a mirroproject fan. I would take photos and upload regularly. But now, I haven’t been uploading much.

Although I do have a couple of interesting mirror projects in my hard drive. Tinatamad lang mag-upload.

Here are the latest three mirror projects I uploaded (old, really).
Here’s the entire batch of ka edong’s mirror projects.