Sunday, October 21, 2012

The Proposal

Mike and Arlene 2012

by: Mike Co
      Sydney, Australia 2012 

One of the popular trends nowadays for peopled aged between 21 and 50 is the marriage proposal. This is no exception for guys who already made their final decision to move on from being single. For guys like me, it means a lot, as we will be submitting ourselves to the woman who will become our partner forever. Well it’s the same case with women. But this time, I will give more credit to the brave guys as we need to carefully plan what sort of proposal we should do, and that includes when, where, who are the people involved, and how.

Having said that, I would like to share my personal experience, and especially the plan I used when I proposed to my fiancé. Hopefully this will help other guys who are also planning on proposing to their girlfriends.

Before the BIG DAY, below are things that I considered before executing my marriage proposal:
1. When?
    - Since my favorite number is 7, I said to myself, “I will definitely execute this plan on the 7th day of the month no matter what happens”. And yes, I did it on the 7th day of the month.

2. Where?
    - This question was the hardest for me as I wanted to propose on one of the romantic places in the world, like Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, just to name a few. But when I look up at my bank account, “Oh dang!!” I always ended up questioning myself “Am I sure I want to propose on those places?” Because of this, my proposal had been postponed for months, and even a year. Luckily, because of God’s grace and blessings, Sydney became our new home and this is when I moved to the next question.

3. Who are the people involved?
    - Most of the time, it will automatically come to your mind that you need to invite your friends, her friends, or your common friends, but not in our case. I decided to use the people around the area, but this one failed, as when we were already on the spot where I will kneel down, there was NO CROWD!! It’s because the wind outside the Sydney Opera House was very strong at the time, so most of the people were hiding inside the restaurants within the vicinity instead. Ok, if there’s no crowd, I will do it by myself.

4. How?
    - Before the proposal, I did a couple of research on the internet, especially Youtube.com to get some tips and ideas on how to propose and to make myself more confident as well, but in the end I didn’t copy any of those ideas because I wanted to be unique. So the final question is “How did it go?” Well, the first thing I did is ask her out to have a fancy lunch near the Sydney opera house to distract her and keep her unsuspicious regarding my plan. Then I asked her if we could take a picture in front of the opera house. And when we reached the place, I prepared my DSLR and placed it in a tripod and set the timer on, but what I really did is put the camera to video mode. Unknown to her, instead of taking a picture, I was recording the proposal hehehehe. So when we were having our couple shot, she kept on asking me why the camera was not beeping, and that’s it!! I already started saying the magic words and she started freaking out. What the heck!!!! Thank God she calmed down when I took out the beautiful expensive ring that made my wallet skinny. And she finally said YES!!!


Special thanks to:
  • Carlo and Joan for helping me find the perfect ring.
  • Eliska and Aaron for taking good care of the ring before the proposal.


There you go folks! Hope you enjoyed reading this post as I did writing it. Please feel free to comment, or subscribe to be updated on my future posts. Thanks!!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Smooth and Silky

Wahkeena Falls

by: Mike Co
     Oregon, USA 2012

Hi fellow Ants, if you are a shutter speed enthusiast, you may want to try this technique during the day. But this kind of technique may scratch some bucks from your wallet, as you will need a "Neutral Density" filter. You've heard it! My advice is, don't try other kind of filter e.g. CPL (Circular Polarizing Filter), etc. as you may not be able to attain the smoothness of the object (e.g. water) you want to focus.
 
Having said that, to apply the technique, all you need to do are the following:
1. Find a flowing stream of water.
2. Make sure there's enough brightness around the area.
3. Make the composition. If you still don't know how to compose images or if you're new in composition check this out: Link 1 or Link 2
4. Place your camera in a sturdy tripod.
5. Half press the shutter button of your camera to focus on the image, but make sure the focus points are focused in the stream of water.
6. Remove the “autofocus” feature of your lens.
7. Insert the ND Filter to your lens and hit the shutter button.
8. Wait till your camera had processed your image. If the captured image is too bright try to increase the aperture and decrease the shutter speed or if it is too dark try to decrease the aperture and increase the shutter speed.

Below are the equipment and settings I used:
Camera Body: Canon 7D
Camera Lens: Tamron 17-50 VC F2.8 (Wide angle lens)
Filter: HOYA ND 400
ISO: 200
Aperture: F10
Exposure: 0
Shutter Speed: 30 Sec (Note: This may vary, depending on the brightness of the day)
Focal Length: 17mm
Camera Shot Delay: 2 Sec
Remote Triggered: Yes (Wired Remote)

There you go folks. Please comment if you would like to add more information or relevant tips for this post.