The Street Photographer and Shyness

Street photography. Interesting right?

Get out, walk around, get to know people.

Take portraits. Take photos of scenes.  Easy peasy.

Right?

No.

Yesterday my better half, forced my hand on a project I have been mulling for sometime now. I love coffee and I love coffee shops. Topping the list is that American Giant, Starbucks. I was thinking the project would be of women who love having coffee, perhaps starting at Starbucks and then progressing to all coffee houses and opportunities to have coffee.

Sounds easy enough. 

I'm on day two, and I'm sitting here frozen to death. I am stuck to my chair it's actually laughable. Why is it so hard, to try and break the ice and approach people? It might be rejection I think. That I know that makes it all the more embarrassing since I can't take any action despite knowing what my actual issue is.

Hey, if you're mostly mistaken for someone who will mug people - then you may think twice about approaching people too. 

So now. I'm stuck with this. A loser photo, of the Frappuccino I will be taking home for when she wakes up. She'll be saddened by my reticence of course. And I'm going to be a little sadder for both my inability, and that I made her sad.

Who knew learning photography would be so difficult? Le sigh.

Teaser Review: Nabulao Beach and Dive Resort

Sunset @ Nabulao Beach

Nabulao Beach and Dive Resort

Hinoba-an, Negros Occidental

I'll complete the write up over the weekend. I hope.

Just couldn't leave it alone like this. It's a four our drive from Bacolod or a three hour drive from Dumaguete or a 25 minute trip from Sipalay via a charter plane from Cebu courtesy of Air Juan.

The surrounding area is lush, and the drive although long, does not take you through bang-your-head-on-the-glass kind of traffic. We had the needle mainly fixed at sixty most of the time.

The resort was such a pleasant surprise. Great people, excellent food, wonderful amenities. The service was so good we forgot we were on our first visit. 

Photos here, which I will also update over the weekend.

Revisiting The Alarm’s “Rescue Me”

The first time I heard "Rescue Me" was, well just over three decades ago. I was in that difficult stage in life that is the transition from childhood to adolescence. 

My mother left the country in search of a re-start for her life, and eventually as she hoped, our lives. My father was, well what were fathers like in those days? They were distant and rarely seen figures who would just grunt, nod or shake their heads.

If you had one that talked to you, then you were golden. Usually those were Dads of the rich kids, the ones who didn’t need to toil too much. 

Lost and unsure, the world was such a hostile and lonely place. In such loneliness, sadness can easily form into anger. A huge ball of anger that does not have direction, and for the one carrying it, has enough juice to burn the world.

Rescue Me was a song from The Alarm’s third studio album, Eye of the Hurricane, released in 1987, In the pre-internet age, the chance that we here in the Philippines could have found that song was minimal. But true to the ironies of life, some such things do happen.

“Rescue Me” did not touch on what I was my problem was. What it did was grab what I was feeling, that which was so big, it felt like it spanned the breadth of the universe and made me (unknowingly) channel it into singing along at the top of my voice, with my fists clenched and tears running down my face. Fast forward to now, remembering it so strongly that I ended up going to iTunes and purchased it from "The Best of The Alarm" album.

It started my love for the British bands of that age, singing about the general inequality of life, and our human condition. It was one of the things that allowed me to step off the ledge, and reach this age, where I now write, and most oftentimes discuss about my passions. Although frankly speaking, I should try and keep a recorder, because what I’m writing about now is just a shell of the discussion I had earlier that brought this up.

Ah, but we can’t all be rockstars or poets. But we can still bask in their glory. If you feel lost right now and wander here, I am an example that there is tomorrow, if you decide not to cut your life short.

Friday Evening With A Ten Year Old Mental Block

Valero Street, Makati City

So I’m back. Still lost. Still trying to recapture that fire that made me write like a procreating rabbit all those years ago. Sadly, it’s like slamming over and over again into a brick wall.

So, I said I’ll write and dragged Heidi to the corner Starbucks to go and do that.

Thirty minutes into this and all we’ve done is smoke and throw bull at each other. Ah such is life sometimes, and I still wonder what to write. And why the muse has turned her back on me.

I know there’s a story inside me. Stories rather. But I am not sure what I need to write before I can get what I want out there. It’s like there’s a block. 

The story I want to birth into the world is ephemeral. It is here in bits and pieces, but the glue, the strand to hold it together floats around like smoke.

I’m not sure how to go about it, I’ve tried all the roads I know, and they all are dead ends.

Robert Smith is slow dancing in my head under gloomy lights and fog from a smoke machine. He’s actually singing Pictures of You, streaming straight from iTunes into the wireless Marshall Major II headset I have on.

It’s gloomy and I’m sort of happy. And with all the wanting to write, all I ended up with is brand whoring.

Sigh. End frame, exit stage right and slip on a banana peel.