Ferdz Decena

Art Valdez and the Balangay, Diwata ng Lahit now at sea I’ve been following the developments of the “ Voyage of the Balangay ” since last I wrote about it. Last June 27 2009 was another momentous date as the Balangay (Balanghai) was eased forth to the sea  months after its creation. Morning at 10am Saturday, more than 400 people at the CCP grounds witnessed how Art Valdez cut the rope to let loose the Balangay to sea. I wasn’t at the event that afternoon since I have a Photo Lecture at that time but Carina, one of the Everest team showed us snippets of the video when we dropped by in the afternoon.

DPP 3rd Anniversary Poster Digital Photographer Philippines , the premiere photography magazine in the country will be celebrating it’s 3rd anniversary this June 27 2009 at Fully Booked High Street It will be a whole day event starting from 10am to 12 midnight. There will be free workshops on several topics throughout the day. I will be conducting a 1 hour lecture on Improving Your Travel Photography at the venue. Other lecturers would be Jo Avila, Ben Chan, Nick Tuason, Pilar Tuason, Nino Carandang, jay Jallorina, jay Tablante to name a few. Check out below for details.

The pocketable Olympus E-P1 Now the waiting is over! Olympus has finally revived it’s famous PEN camera line with a Digital PEN known as Olympus E-P1 . I’m not much surprised with the final release specs and look since a few days before, there had been image and specs leaks. A large part of those leaks are true but there are some surprise features as well and getting official word shuts all other speculations down. So here it is. It’s not a DSLR. It’s not a compact camera. We can simply say, it’s a PEN.

Seair Inflight June-July 2009 Inside TOC I have to say big thank you to the guys at Seair Inflight Magazine (Mons, Jocas, Marge and Gisselle) for giving me the opportunity to shoot the cover and cover story feature for this issue. I wasn’t really confident that I’d pull this off because of the many circumstances that happened during the assignment days. Even the cover theme is bugging me a lot but we do have some pegs as a guide so what the hey. Here’s the rundown of days on assignment.

Art Valdez at the front of the Balangay I have always wondered what it’s like for our ancestors to travel through open waters. The ancient Filipinos are originally seafaring people and proof of this is the discovery of an age old Balangay sea vessel excavated in Butuan dating as far back as 320 AD. And when I heard that someone rebuilt a Balangay in Manila, crafted by the Bajaus of Sibutu and Sitangkay of Tawt-tawi using methods originally done during the 14th century, I just had to see this.

Got some breathtaking shots of some less familiar but stunning locale in the Philippines? SEAIR InFlight Magazine is looking for those photos and if you’ve got something to share, do send them in and get a chance to have it published. Seair Inflight Magazine is personally one of the best designed with solid content magazine done locally. So it’s a nice platform to expose your work. Check out the details:

PAL Mabuhay Inflight June 2009 Now on board Philippine Airlines flights is the June 2009 issue of Mabuhay magazine , PAL’s Inflight Magazine. It was a pleasant surprise when I got a copy of the issue as the cover story entitled “Secrets of Mindoro” was my photography and writing assignment work for them on one of their destinations, San Jose, Mindoro . Too bad I didn’t get the cover for this one (cover by Jerome Bonto) but I’m still glad it got the main feature on this issue as I was expecting only to be one of the inside features. Also in this issue I got two more photos for Kota Kinabalu with writer John Oates. Checkout the editorial note and contributor’s feature to know more about the issue.