Steve Murphy Photography

Nasugbu - Natipuan Cove                         Our next journey took us to the west to Nasugbu, which is also a part of Batangas province. I had already droned over the Baywalk in Balayan, which is on the southern coast. When we arrived in town, power was out everywhere. Power outages are a fact of life here in the P.I. - you just live with them. Other than buy a generator, there is nothing to do about it. The infrastructure is not keeping up with the population. We stopped at an eatery - Kainan sa  Dalampasigan. All stills taken with my Nikon 1 J5. The rough translation is: Beach dining room. One of the many things I have learned since being here is that there are many words in the Tagalog (Filipino) language that have no direct English counterparts. And vice versa, many times as well. Sit in on an extended conversation among the people and listen carefully, you will hear English words sprinkled in. ...

Tagaytay/Lake Taal Flyover Click above for the drone video. Click here for the image gallery. Our first drone trip last January was cut short due to the Phantom 4 drone malfunctioning in Coron, Palawan. Words cannot express my disappointment but the silver lining is that we now have a reason to return! For this trip, we traveled north to Tagaytay to the first restaurant we dined at in February of 2016, the Taalena : Good food, ambiance, open air. We like to sit at the outside tables. This is one of the few places in the Philippines where you can get really cool breezes. That dish above is called  Sinigang_na_hipon . A soup made with hipon (shrimp), tamarind, tomato, okra, string bean, kangkong (swamp cabbage). I passed this time but will try it next time, in the spirit of Anthony Bourdain and learning new culture. For now, I had the pork & chicken adobo with garlic rice. Joelet got permission from the management to fly the drone out back, in the are...

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Filipina Beauty

With a camera, of course! We like watching the birds at the feeder from our kitchen window, it's one of the reasons we got it.  After months of thinking "I've got to get pictures of these guys", I finally acted on it. First we break out the D2X, the old workhorse and put it on my studio tripod with the Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead: This bad boy got me through my first few years of sports shooting. Unfortunately, it was terrible with low light situations, such as night games and indoor without flash.  Very bad digital noise.  At the time, Nikon had no alternative and all the top sports shooters used Canons, who handled low light very well.  Nikon has since caught up, beginning with the D3 and the D700.  Attach the usb cable: Zoom, get focus on the feeder, as close to the prong on which they stand. Be careful not to let the distant background throw it off.  Set focus to Manual, turn off VR.  Set shutter and aperture.  I used 1/200 ...

Click Here I am hearing the Sigma Artisan version is sharper.  And cheaper.  I would probably use this more than the 50mm I currently have. More Nikon stuff, including new releases of NX2 and Capture: Nikon Rumors

Glossary: Histogram: Digital Photography Review A good rule of thumb is to get the image as correct as possible in the camera and not so much post-processing (Photoshop, Lightroom, etc.). If your camera has a histogram display, this is a good overview, check it out!