2005.09.29-30 San Fernando La Union, Philippines.
2004.08.21 Taguig City, Metro Manila, Philippines
So I, CJ David, and me went on an introductory birding trip with Mike Lu, the President of the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines along with my sister at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, in Global City, Taguig, Metro Manila.
I saw a number of birds I never thought existed and can be observed here in Manila.
In this photo is a Pied Triller (Lalage Nigra) a resident of the Philippines, 165mm in length, common in trees and open country, gardens in towns, and open scrub, singly or in pairs, in the lowlands.
2005.04.21 La Carlota City, Negros Occidental, Philippines
CJ David spotted this Blue-tailed Bee-eater (Merops philippinus) along the higway while driving.
Photograph was taken using a Canon EOS 300D with 80-400mm lens.
This bird, about 290mm in length is a resident of the Philippines fairly common in open country usually associated with water along rivers, marshes and ricefields.
It has a cousin - the Blue-throated Bee-eater which I also encountered in Subic, Zambales and have observed catching an insect on the fly! Wow!
2004.05.31 Mt. Batulao, Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines
CJ David went on a mountaineering trip to Mt. Batulao. This mountain was an easy trek with interesting rock formations at the peak looking like the ones you would see in a fantasy movie (more about this in another post).
The amazing cloud-free pitch-black sky with all the stars so visible was a huge bonus. I couldn't help but see the patch of the majestic Milky Way filled with colorful stars in the constellation Scorpius and Sagittarius. I shivered at the cold temperature but more because of its beauty.
"I have got to capture this spectacular sight", I thought. And so I grabbed my point-and-shoot digital camera and used its maximum time-exposure setting.
Tada! I was in awe. This was my second heavenly-object photograph which was far much better than the Orion Nebula shot.
I was amazed by this picture of the Milky Way that I thought I had to be in it. Well, here it is:
Boolaga!!!
2004.07.03 Mariveles, Bataan, Philippines
CJ David here making sure that this planted tree is holding up along the misty trail to Tarak Ridge in Mt. Mariveles .
Trek done with siblings Doc Francis and Farah, Perla and Jules of UP Manila Remontados, and Gideon of UP Med School.
2005.03.18 Cadiz City, Negros Occidental, Philippines
CJ David was in the island of Negros doing some documentary work. It was 5-6 AM when I noticed this plump silhouette of a pigeon-looking bird perched on a power cable along a residential area. It was a pigeon indeed as I trained my binoculars to it while slowly changing my orientation to face west to see this bird clearly with the sun behind me.
I grabbed my Canon EOS 300D camera and fixed my Canon 80-400 mm telephoto lens and clicked. Wow! A male Pink-necked Green Pigeon (Treron vernans). Uncommon in forest and forest patches from lowlands to at least 1000m according to my Bird Guidebook. It was my lucky day.
2003.02.01 Noveleta, Cavite, Philippines
Yes, this is the Orion Nebula (or the M42 or NGC 1976) in the constellation Orion.
This was CJ David's first deep-sky object photograph. I was surprised to see this photo when I claimed the pictures from the photolab. This was just a test shot. I even forgot about it. I wasn't really expecting anything good or anything visible to come out of it.
Telescope night-sky photography, especially when shooting deep-sky objects, normally requires: higher ISO to capture light better; a camera-to-telescope adapter/mount and an altitude-azimuth mount so that the telescope and the camera stay focused on the object during long time exposures as heavenly bodies move across the sky due to the Earth's rotation.
How did I do it? With my Minolta 35mm SLR camera, I peeped through the eyepiece of, most probably Engr. Milo Dacanay's new reflecting Newtonian-Dobsonian telescope. I held the camera steady for about 10 to 25 seconds, with its shutter speed set to B, then clicked it.
This shot was taken using only an ISO-400 Kodak S-Gold film with f/3.5 and a 10 to 25-second exposure. The speed of the film and the time exposure wasn't enough to show sharp details of the object but I was relatively astronomically pleased by the result.
This happened during one of the Out-Of-Town Observation Session (OOTOS) of the Philippine Astronomical SocietyHeld in Coastal Bay City, Noveleta, Cavite last February 1st 2003.
