Green by Ahmad Musahari

I was looking at past issues of this column recently and I realized that last month marked the beginning of my sixth year in Picture Perfect. I started writing for Through a Lens, Clearly in November of 2004. It was in 2006 when this column started featuring the photography of the readers. From a handful of contributors that year, several hundred readers have appeared on these pages in the last three years. Thank you all for your continuing support to Picture Perfect.

Leading today’s list of new featured readers is Ahmad Musahari, a Tausug from Sulu who is currently taking up BS Zoology in Mindanao State University, Marawi City. “I started ‘discovering’ the wonders of photography when I was fifteen,” he shares. “It was when we had a fieldtrip and my mother lent me a camera (film). It was then that I had my first experience shooting pictures.” Later that year, Ahmad says he finally got his own personal digital camera. “Since then, I found myself indulged in this ‘new talent’ I have,” he says. “I even end up dreaming of becoming a professional photo journalist someday!”

Roberto B. Barbosa, a nurse by profession and working as a health information tchnician at the Medical Records Department of the Manila Doctors Hospital writes that he began shooting two years ago. “It’s fortunate that I won a digital camera at a Christmas party,” he shares. Although it “was not a high-tech digicam,” it started him on a hobby. He says his preferred subjects are nature and still life but shoots “basta may makitang kakaiba.” He hopes to enroll in a basic photography class soon.

TJ Cafuir from Noveleta, Cavite writes: “I’ve had a camera since 2005 but it saw little use until around two years ago when I found out that a couple of my friends were also into photography. Now I had some friends to shoot with, so that made me enjoy the hobby even more.” He says that he mostly shot landscapes when he started since he only took along his camera on out-of-town trips. “But now, I tend to bring my camera with me more often so I pretty much try to shoot anything around that I find interesting, although, I’m still a landscape guy by heart,” says TJ. (His friends, Jeg Vallido and Edrie Alvarez, were featured in this column earlier this month.)

Entrepreneur Elvie Caparas-Zamora had planned on taking up fashion design at the Fashion Institute of the Philippines (FIP) but ended up enrolling in fashion photography instead. “I decided that was the one for me since I just bought a DSLR and I wanted to make use of it so it would not go to waste and at the same time pursue my hobby,” she says. “I see myself as just a ‘newbee’ in photography and there is still a lot to learn, technical stuff to be familiar with and to master,” Elvie shares. “I find immense pleasure in the process of imagining scenes in my mind and devising ways to realize my visions through my photographs. For me, making my own view of the world visible to people, through my photos, is the best and perhaps only significant reward of being a photographer.” Elvie was assigned Kitsch photography for her finals in photography class and she came up with New Moon-inspired photos.

Reader Tona Cristina Gumban Mercado e-mailed a photo of her parents (Lorna Terunes Majaducon and Nenito Gomez Gumban) as her greeting for their 46th wedding anniversary last Nov.3. The picture was taken during the College Intramurals of West Negros College-Bacolod in 1963 where Lorna was crowned Miss West Negros. The couple were both 18 years old then. Tona also sent in a photo of her son Jan Michael who passed away last June 8 at 23 years of age after undergoing open-heart operation due to rheumatic heart disease. He had just graduated in March 2009 with a degree in Bachelor of Arts, major in Psychology at the Colegio de San Agustin-Bacolod. She shares: “I don’t have any idea why God took him that early but whatever His reasons and plans are, I know it’s for the best. I praise God and thank Him for giving me a loving and a good son for 23 years.”

For readers who want a different kind of calendar for the coming year, the Grade School Class 1956/High School Class 1960 of San Beda College has come out with Birds of the Everglades by alumnus Jake Paredes. The 15” by 20” calendar contains 15 colored photographs including award-winning images that my Florida-based brother took in the state’s wetlands and nature reserves. The calendars are available at Ayala Museum, Filipinas Heritage Library, Yuchengco Museum, and Silverlens Gallery on Pasong Tamo Ext., as well as at the SBC Alumni Association Office at our Mendiola campus (call Wilma Abellanosa at 735-5995) at P 300 each.