The Onshore Pictorial

I was at the memorial shrine along Wacker drive one Friday morning. I had my tripod with me and my 2 cameras – one with the wide angle and the other with the zoom lens. I wasn’t sure I’d even touch the zoom lens since it wasn’t the right one for this photo shoot but I brought it along just ib case.

A few days ago, John, the Chicago site lead contacted me and asked me to hold a photo shoot for all onshore people. Since the picture will be used in a postcard memo which will be sent to all Manila personnel, he wanted this to look good and so he contacted me. With that I think he meant he wanted this to look good but they probably can’t afford a professional photographer and so they used the cheapest alternative. :P

I was at the location early to scope and frame the place. John arrived and we discussed the shots they needed and what I had in mind while waiting for our “models” to arrive. The weather was great in terms of lighting as it was a bright and sunny day (Thanks to my honey who prayed for a beautiful day :D). In terms of temperature, well, it was freezing and so everyone was bundled up and given that the location was directly beside the Chicago River, the winds didn’t help at all. No wonder out of the 150+ people invited, only 15 showed up (mainly because they lived nearby and they didn’t have much work to do).

Like what I do with studio shoots, I took some pretty basic classroom type photos first just to warm everyone up. After the first two poses, my hand was starting to freeze since I couldn’t operate the camera with my thick gloves on. We took the usual classroom shot, a happy shot, a serious shot, a jumping shot and a wacky shot while moving the group here and there to get different angles and different backgrounds.

This one’s my favorite:

I love holding pictorials like these. Hey, they get their pictures, I gain experience and believe me, I learn a lot more through hour long shoots like these than by reading books all day.

The Chicago Skyline

One of the weirdest days in Chicago (in terms of weather) turned out to be the day I shoot my first landscape photo for the year.

It was 66F outside and so I decided to head out to the Adler Planetarium to take a picture of the Chicago Skyline. I was already there some time ago with Gea and Pat but it was too cold for me and basically I chickened out. I brought my trust tripod with me and set it up just beside a busted up lamp post. No lamp post light = better skyline picture.

Somehow I ended up with this. Not bad right? There's a bigger version of the picture here



Of course, the Filipino that I am, I decided to shoot one with me in it :P It was blurry though since I was basically focusing this blindly. :P Arrrgghhh! My haaaaiiirrrrr!!!

Thanksgiving 2007

The US holiday to give thanks for the things one has at the end of the harvest season. My family celebrates this back home mostly as a reason to cook stuffed chicken (it used to be turkey but well… budget cuts…)

Today will be the second time I’ll celebrate Thanksgiving in the US and the first away from my Jaye. For this year, my friends and I decided to prepare the food. It’s one thing to have a thanksgiving dinner, it’s another to prepare for one. I was amazed by the level of trust they gave me to prepare the spread. I volunteered to help out in the turkey as well as make my mom’s famous stuffing. They obviously haven’t browsed through my “Cooking with Arn” series. We had…



Bread crumbs stuffing. Prepared by TA. The second fastest dish we were able to whip up.

Macaroni and cheese. Prepared by Lui and Gea. Rich and creamy! Nothing else we would have wanted for the Thanksgiving pasta dish.

Cranberry Sauce. Prepared by TA. It was better than that gravy in a jar we bought. The fastest dish we were able to whip up. TA opened the can and I threw it into the garbage can. See? Team effort.

Meat stuffing. Classic Filipino – stuff meat with more meat. This one was mom’s special recipe and I feared I’d screw this up. I was already 4/5 along the recipe and it was nothing like the stuffing mom made which was supposed to be color red, sweet, tasty and tender. I was staring down a big bowl of white pork meat with no flavor and no color. I wanted to abort the whole thing and just settle with probably torta or something.

Trust mom. They know best. So I did.

I placed a can of tomato sauce and cranked up the heat. Nothing else I can do but hope for the best. A few minutes later, the tomato sauce evaporated and colored up the dish. It also sweetened the dish and it now tasted so good.

Thanks mom! Never doubted.

Turkey. It took a team effort to nail this dish. I cleaned the turkey and Lui, Lei and Gea prepared the marinade. Gea and I prepared the foil tent. TA and I came up with the ingenious way of lowering the turkey into the oven without burning ourselves (a series of inclined planes to slide the tray). Lui basted and determined the cooking time. TA took care of the turkey’s presentation.

This is the first time I handled turkey and I’m not familiar with its structure. While cleaning the turkey, there was a paper bag inside labeled “giblets” which I had no idea what to do with. Inside the belly of the turkey I pulled out something long. I had a confused look and just thought that this was probably a male turkey, a very male turkey. Lei tapped me on my shoulder…

“That’s the neck.”

The turkey cooked for 5 hours under its foil tent and Lui’s marinade recipe. The end product was just awesome. The turkey was so moist and flavorful. Everyone agreed and it really was delicious. No gravy needed. They made me carve the turkey since I “cooked” the turkey.





No I didn’t. We all did. Eating dinner and enjoying with friends were as happy as preparing everything and spending time with them. Isn’t that the thing that makes Thanksgiving so special?