I recently discovered a free and easy-to-use photo editor that would be great to share with the readers. This is PhotoScape from www.photoscape.org. Aside from the usual viewer and editor, the program also has a batch editor, a photo splitter, a RAW converter, screen capture, a feature to combine multiple images into one picture, a page layout function, a Gif animator, a photo layout and printer function, a paper printer with existing templates, and a color picker. Those who like to experiment with various creative effects on their images will enjoy the many filters available on the photo editor. (I’m having a lot of fun with it!) Download size is about 16 mb.

And now to our reader-contributors.

PLDT financial analyst Caroline Umali shares one of her favorite pictures taken in Boracay. Caroline started shooting in 1999. She is currently a member of the PLDT LENS photo club. She writes: “I love photography because it makes you see things around you differently, everything is beautiful, even garbage can be a subject and still look good on exhibits.”

Bank officer Ed Diaz says that he’s been working in a bank with the daily same routine for 10 years now. “Only my camera gives me wings to fly,” he shares. Ed describes himself as a hobbyist who’s becoming a “little more serious” after seeing the awesome pictures in National Geographic magazines.

John Leo P. Vina, a BSci major in Industrial Design from DLSU-CSB and currently residing and working in Bridgestone, Japan writes: “Photography became my serious hobby last Febuary 2009 when I first bought my own Digital – SLR.” Leo sent in images taken in Subic last August 2009.

Communication Specialist Macoy Palacios writes that he got interested in photography when his dad gave him a film camera in high school. Later in college, he was introduced to darkroom work. Macoy says that he got into digital photography when he had to take hundreds of photos of shoes and garments as an artist in a fashion retail company.

“Currently, photography has become one of my passions as it became a venue for me to unwind on weekends,” Macoy shares. “I have also developed that deep interest in updating myself on the photography industry. Photography for me mirrors everything the world has; it influences and it moves people. ‘There may be thousands of pictures, but only one may be considered a photograph,’ a good friend once told me.”

Willy Coronado, a retired employee and photo hobbyist writes: “My wife is also a photo hobbyist and we usually shoot whatever interests us, whenever we travel locally. (I am mainly interested in landscapes while my wife is more into travel photography).” According to Willy, both of them have been photographing the old Catholic churches in Laguna, in the hope of completing their file of all the old churches soon.

Also featured on these pages are images from some regular contributors. Young photographer Katrina Lim documented an outreach and medical mission program in Arayat after the typhoons. Erwin Capalla produced eerie photographs from a funeral parlor. Ralph Almaras (ralphalmaras.multiply.com) covered the Undas while Lorecel Celzo-Benitez took a treasured photo of her daughter.

Today’s column ends with a congratulatory message to father-and-son nature photographers Jake and Jay Paredes of Florida, U.S.A. They joined the 2009 Refuge Photo Contest of the National Wildlife Refuge Association (www.refugeassociation.org) and made it to the semifinals. The competition considered more than 2000 photos submitted from 44 states. Their entries (posted at http://nwra.zenfolio.com/2009-winners), Pileated Woodpecker and Snail Kite Eating a Snail by Jake and White Waterlily by Jay, are published here.