MMS 173 Assignment 1:
Knowing Where I'm At (Part 1)

Palengke Stall 

I was running errands at around noon with my mom, one of which included buying some vegetables at the nearby palengke. Standing there waiting for our change as my mom checked her phone (she's just barely cut off on the left edge of the picture), I felt compelled to sneak a picture of the space, and despite its incredibly mundane look it is one of my favorite pictures in my four-thousand-something picture phone camera roll.

I'm drawn to urban, maximalist spaces. I love grimy concrete walls plastered with flyers and graffiti; I love convenience store and grocery store aisles with their rainbows of boxes and bottles; I love crowded train stations and bus terminals. They have color and character that resonate with me more than an equally vibrant nature scene. I deeply love the work of illustrators who incorporate these in their art along with interesting focal point characters, such as Ramon Nunez and Aeonix.

I think it's amusing to see something in real life - a palengke stall, for instance - and think "this looks like something some of my favorite artists would draw!", then snap a picture to commemorate that thought, but that was my exact thought process.

The problem with loving such busy environments for pictures, for me, is they're as important an element as the subject of the picture. The "focal point" would never be as strong as if they were in an emptier space. I like that the entire stall - the vegetables, the hanging baggies of condiments, the scale, the boxes in the back and the bright outside - is in the picture and, if I were to improve this shot and bring a little more focus to a person (my mom, for instance, or the lady counting out our change) I would not want to crop any of the stall out lest its charm gets lost. I would not want to shoot it without people, either. The fun of urban spaces is that they're filled with people. I might, then, change the aspect ratio to something wider - I default to 3:4 for no other reason than I don't really like how wide (or long) 16:9 looks outside of film most of the time - and experiment with shooting lower or higher. (I'm partial to a lower angle because I think it makes for more interesting visual storytelling, even though it would obscure some of the displayed vegetables. It evokes the perspective of a child, or a stray animal.) At the very least, I should've nudged my phone camera to take my mom on the left and the person on the right (whose shoulder just slightly obscures the foreground) completely out of or into the shot.

Peering at Datu

After saying so many words about my love of vibrant, busy pictures, here is a relatively simple portrait of my cat, Datu Puti.

One wall of our dining room consists of French doors, obscured by vertical blinds; when we don't have guests over, the dining chairs - covered in cream chair skirts - are arranged in a row against the doors (instead of around the round dining table). This leaves a narrow space behind chairs and blinds where one can often find Datu and her sister Zack peering out the lowest windows, entertaining themselves with the sight of our neighbors, birds, or visiting stray cats on the other side of the glass.

I had climbed up on the chair one morning and was, I believe, intending to take a quiet picture from above of her looking out the window, but she looked up directly at me at the last moment. I think this makes the entire picture. I like how the picture consists of mostly neutral colors - dark wood, stony garage ground, marbled grey floor, cream blinds and chair, patchy white fur - so you're immediately drawn to the blue of her eyes and the pink of her collar, especially with the light hitting her just so. I like how the chair, blinds, and windows form leading lines to draw the eye even more to Datu in the center. I also like how she's not completely dead center, and not all the leading lines (for example, the door behind her) point directly at her , as both might feel too artificial.

That being said, it's not an astounding or meticulously-arranged photo. I think it's merely okay - a cute little portrait framed much more interestingly than the hundreds of casual pictures I've taken of Datu from above or at eye level, sprawled asleep, sitting, grooming - but I don't have a lot of ideas to substantially improve it. The haphazard arrangement of the blinds and chair skirts muddle the composition but also help it feel casual. I think the picture would be a little more striking rotated to landscape orientation, but then it'd take away from the vibe of having peered over a chair to stare at each other (which was what I'd actually done prior to taking the picture). Editing a bit more contrast might help but it'd make the shadow mass to Datu's left too dark compared to the rest of the picture. 

The best I think I could do would consist of maybe making the color temperature a touch warmer, adding a vignette effect around the edges to draw the eye even more to the center, and experimenting with rotating and cropping it so the window's top edges are parallel with the top of the picture.

Sleeping in the Streets

Finally, having shown both a busy little urban snapshot and a simple, spontaneous cat portrait, my personal favorite shot in my picture collection is this one that I took of a sleeping stray cat.

I was commuting home from a meetup with friends one evening from Makati, and my route meant walking through Ayala Center to the bus terminal at OneAyala. On the way there, I chanced upon two cute cats on the steps and impulsively decided to take pictures of them. I'd knelt to take a picture of the first cat, a tuxedo, and then grew embarrassed at what I must look like to passersby, taking pictures of mere strays who weren't even all that noteworthy, and I took this one without much thought - in fact, I think the picture is unintentionally at an angle because I was standing from my earlier kneeling position; it didn't occur to me to rotate my phone to landscape orientation, and I simply snapped the picture as soon as it looked like the calico cat was entirely in frame. But these make a picture that is so interesting for me to look at, precisely because it looks quite "off."

The cat was sleeping by the ledge of some concrete steps, against a big tiled column. Pictured at an angle, though, it's a momentarily confusing composition: the peaceful cat feels like it's on a steep tilted surface and could slip off, the grout lines of the column might have the viewer wonder if it was in fact a tiled floor and the cat was somehow clinging to a concrete column, were it not for Glorietta 5 and the road in the background orienting the viewer. The leading lines zigzag, forming triangles of background, concrete, and tile, putting in a lot more energy, contrasting with the unconscious subject. Additionally, while the picture is filled with mostly cool, nighttime grays, the mall sign, traffic cones, and little patch on the cat provide little bright pops of red and orange. Everything I like about this picture was in it accidentally, as all I wanted to do was commemorate having seen a sleeping cat on my way home. I hope you wouldn't mind the addition of a fourth picture just to emphasize something that I really hope to achieve more through this course.

I want to take more interesting pictures. I want pictures that make the viewers pause, even when (or actually, especially if) it's to go "huh?" because there's something a bit unexpected in the frame. Hopefully unexpected in a good way. Each of the main three pictures above were spontaneous, and though that spontaneity resulted in little things I'd want to tweak to emphasize the picture's "point" - here's a vegetable stall! Here's my cat! - the last one I just completely like, accidental off-kilter framing and all, at least with my current rookie eye for detail. I hope to better capture more fun, odd accidents.