Five Images



This and all photos in this entry are from Jay Santos





Another close friend, visiting from California was in the farm yesterday and I thought of sharing his photographs to lend new perspectives and fresh perceptions apart from my typical visuals. It's always a pleasure to see our place from somebody's eyes, especially if it is artistically and technically well done.

Jay is on a very brief, one-week visit and it flatters me no end that he made precious time to come visit us in Lipa. We have been friends since our teens and I guess we're wired similarly and have congruous long-term plans; so much that he wanted to see for himself what I've done so far.

The Life Outdoors

We are featured on this month's issue of Metro Home & Entertaining; the sub-headline on the cover "A garden to live in" refers to us. It's fellow blogger Patrick Gozon, accomplished architect, professor and local tree advocate, who expertly wrote us up, the plants, and the garden design.

It's available in local book and magazine stores now at only P200.00 (around US$4.75).

Details

One of the things I enjoy with the farm is meeting new people who are tagged along by friends or family who come and visit. Most of them wouldn't know what to expect and are even the ones who leave our place with a more memorable time. My nephew Francis did just that recently; he tagged along some friends some weeks back and I struck a lengthy and interesting conversation with one of his friends, Garvin Yao.


He's a budding photographer, and his photos here display an emphatic sensitivity especially to detail, most of which we hardly even have time to take note of.

I remember him saying he does commercial work for magazines, yet his photos come across to me in a personal and intimate way; unstructured, spontaneous, and fresh. I hope you enjoyed his images as much as I did.

Imagery

Photo by Joaquin Zamora

No time is more exciting than a day a photographer comes to visit. It's an absolute thrill to see how others view things differently from us, and even more if they lead us to see things we sometimes do not even realize in the first place.

Photo by Joaquin Zamora

And if they even portray such ordinary, taken-for-granted things with such evocative imagery, it makes us sit back and take stock what else we could be missing in our busy and hurried lives. A lot of times, what gives us immense pleasure are not monumental, mystical, and unreachable but instead, everyday and mundane stuff: a flower, a relaxing afternoon, the way the light streams in.

Photo by Joaquin Zamora

Photo by Joaquin Zamora

It takes sensitivity and
introspection to capture and convey not just objects and views but such abstractions as mood, ambience, and feeling


And to be able to accomplish it, and very well at that, with technical precision and impeccable timing is undoubtedly an art.




Joaquin Zamora captures the essence of 1784 so poetically in his images, shown here. His photographs can speak far, far more than any material I can come up with in this blog for months! For more of his photos, click the link to his tabblo page and be awed by so much else we're missing.