Foundation Making

For better or for worse, my siblings and I are growing up and staying Stateside these days. In light of their autonomy and the structural damage to our rental house, Mom and Dad are building a new, smaller house on the studio property.

Mar and Joseph visited the construction site on their walk.

A motorcycle ride

Any sort of transpiration is an adventure over there.

Web-winged Mammals

Did you know that bats are the only mammals capable of true flight? Everything else simply glides, but bats can sustain themselves in the air. When you live in a tropical country plagued by disease-vectoring mosquitoes, you learn to appreciate these creatures. When my sister, Rachel, was little, she named every bat she saw Timothy and shouted encouragement to them in their hunt.

The bats in the above video stream out of a cave in the bluffs every night. We took a banka along the Pinacanauan River in the Cagayan Valley to our favorite swimming spot, then waited for the bats to make their appearance at dusk.

Skydiver Profile

I am interrupting my Philippines trip postings to share this video, which I have just finished editing together. I met Marian Sparks at the local drop zone in Corpus Christi. She intrigued me because she's obviously not the young-male-adrenaline-junkie stereotype that many would expect to be in the sport. She and several friends had come down from the Houston area for a "boogie," or a large gathering of skydivers. Marian was gracious enough to allow me to shadow her for the weekend, and this video was the result.

I had hoped to integrate video into this project, but I experienced several technical difficulties with the video camera that I rented. The battery died without warning after recording for 10 minutes, and the auto focus had a difficult time keeping up with the fast moving skydivers (understandably so). My efforts at video were further sabotaged when my time with my subject was unexpectedly cut short. As luck would have it, the plane broke down on the second day of the boogie. All this to say, the video I captured was sub-par. This experience motivated me to finally make a purchase I have long considered - a Canon 5D Mark II. The next time I work with a subject so fitting for video, I will be adequately prepared.

Marian, thank you for sharing your story with me.

Seed structures and some protein

Rattan Fruit: Nature's Warheads - They are also the fruit of the rattan tree/vine that gives us rattan furniture.

The pink stuff is called Dragon Fruit. It grows well in the tropics, especially the comparatively dry areas. It has the consistency of a kiwi, but its taste is much more bland.



Aaaand the meat. Currently, the exchange rate stands at about 43 Filipino pesos to the dollar, in case you were wondering. (and a kilo is 2.2 lbs)

At home, with a pet

We had another missionary family over for dinner one night. They usually work in a distant village, but they come back to Tuguegarao City every so often to re-charge and stock up on supplies. The kids had a fun time with the monkey.

Adaw (which means monkey in Agta) is my parent's newest addition to the household. My siblings and I developed a distaste for monkeys when we were harassed by baboons in Central Africa. Adaw, however, is more spoiled that frightening.

Apparently this is what "sit beside your house" means to Zane.

Diving and Driving

Puerto Galera has some incredible dive spots. Dive Training, a monthly publication for scuba divers, says that "...the Philippines has one of the longest coastlines of any country in the world at 21,773 miles, which is nearly double that of the United States. Even better, the Philippines has 13,128 square miles of coral reefs." All that from a country with a land area roughly equivalent to Arizona. Yowza.

I bought a cheap underwater camera for the occasion, but as those have yet to be developed, all I have to post are a few topside pictures.

Photo by Ronalyn Stevens

Photo by Ronalyn Stevens

Puerto Galera Beach

During our first few days in the Philippines, we had the opportunity to visit a dive resort. These images are from that stay at the beach.

Ferry Ride - Batangas to Sabang, Philippines

This is the first set of many images that I will post from my recent visit to the Philippines. After more than five years in the US, I had the opportunity to revisit the country that I grew up in. The landscape has changed. Buildings have sprung up and my family's house now suffers structural damage from earthquakes.

Ultimately though, I was relieved to see how much has stayed the same. The smells of exhaust in the city and carabao in the province welcomed me home. But those posts will come later, since I am working chronologically. First comes our ferry ride to the dive resort we visited in Sabang, Mindoro, a large island in the Visays just south of Luzon.

Mom was none too pleased with the system they had worked out for us to exit the banka. It was steep.

Beginning again

I am going to start blogging again.

I only ever started as a necessity for school, but I have decided to post something new on a regular basis now. I have struggled to embrace blogging. The whole process is tedious and time-consuming, but it is useful for those same reasons. Editing, uploading and embedding might be frustrating, but they keep me in touch with my work and with the variety of ways available to share that work.

I've determined that my hesitation to make time for blogging has something to do with my personality and my upbringing. In the Philippines, we rarely had reliable electricity, much less internet. Typhoons and brown outs reduced us to candles, flashlights, and kerosene lamps. When we did have working electricity and a functional internet connection, I spent my time writing emails to friends and family overseas. Personal, direct communication was (and continues to be) my arena. Public speaking terrifies me, but I love small gatherings and serious conversations. I want to gauge people's reactions. I want to see how what I do or say affects people. That is difficult to accomplish with social media.

So why become a photojournalist? Isn't it their job to inform the masses? Their images and their words are of course, published, not private. This brings us back to my upbringing again. Comfort zones are meant to be challenged. Period. If I really hope to help people learn from one another, shouldn't I do everything within my power to make that communication happen? If that means opening my work and my opinions up to misunderstandings or criticism that I cannot directly address, so be it.

Night Football: Wild Cats vs Tigers

I covered another high school football game for the Caller-Times. Unfortunately sunset came much earlier than the last (first) time I had photographed football. I sorely missed that light.