about dxb chronicles

The saga of Jeff living in the City of Gold. Presently living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, unravel his journey throughout the city with memoirs and everyday life stories.

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

portraits - iv

while busy with the finishing touches of the new layout, these are the featured portraits that i did this month.

jill for the 2nd time (kitchen scene)


photographer turned model, julie


the abra boys, draganized style


another photographer turned model, ariane


next, rebirth.
discoursed by jeff @ 4:46 PM  |  3 comment(s)  |  permalink

Monday, July 23, 2007

tdc ver4.0 - rebirth



coming very soon to your internet browsers near you. :P
discoursed by jeff @ 2:52 PM  |  1 comment(s)  |  permalink

Sunday, July 22, 2007

world's tallest skyscraper



declared yesterday, burj dubai become the world's tallest building. currently having 141 storeys and the height of 512.1metres, the construction is ahead of schedule and hope to be complete on 2008.
discoursed by jeff @ 7:58 AM  |  2 comment(s)  |  permalink

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

and another week after...

i've been too busy since last week. here's the recap:

inside emirates towers. after a few years staying here in dubai, i finally got a chance to get inside the hotel side of the emirates towers. not only the top floor (vu's bar), i got to see the club executive and one of summit suites. whooopeee.

another round of drinks @ vu's bar

courtesy of benet's canon powershot s70

(dirty) window view of sheikh zayed road

courtesy of benet's canon powershot s70

teppanyaki. after a round of drinks, we finally went down to the mall area and dine at tokyo @ the towers. i usually eat raw foods such as sushi and sashimi and tried shabu-shabu feast but i never been to see a "teppanyaki show" in a jap resto. going for a big bang to the first-timers like me, they prepared the complete menu...



and the cook ignited the hot plate


and finally did his stuffs preparing the fried rice


it was a fascinating dinner (matched with red wine) that i had to puff a ciggie once again after six months of stopping. later on we went up to the room and did a little candid shoot.

benet, at night :)


and the dubai nightscape


more of the weekend escapades...
discoursed by jeff @ 9:06 PM  |  1 comment(s)  |  permalink

Thursday, July 12, 2007

simple pleasures


large version

this was taken during the night out with my friends and their son at burjuman. i called it "simple pleasures" because it views both the photographer and the subjects in their happy moments out of ordinary things. to them, spending a night out in a mall seeing their kid enjoying while the photographer doesn't mind much about the technicalities of the camera.

these are actual slides that i resized and put into sequence.

after a week of waiting and spending dhs45 for just developing it, i got what i wanted. my first roll of film made by olga gave me mixed reactions. i got pissed when i forgot to change the frames which caused the overlapping but it made me smile as well for the grungy feel. the bw tones made an impression compared to digital output.

overall, i am happy what olga does. :P
discoursed by jeff @ 8:06 AM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

a week ago

birthdays. i attended two birthdays, one was a dinner celebration of a wife of my friend...



...another, my friend and officemate's daughter picnic party at zabeel park.


we did a little workshop/experiment using creative lighting system (cls) and long exposure shoot since it was dark and held outdoors. you can see the rest of the party pics here.

monkeying around.


i was invited by a colleague that there was an urban art exhibit opening held at five green. they are composed of multi-talented filipinos, also known as brownmonkeys, showed their artworks from t-shirt designs, paintings, illustrations, doll and shoe artworks, motion graphics and more.

the exhibit is still on... up to august i think :)

a day with benet.


after a week of getting to know with each other, we finally met. together with her cousin and friend who haven't seen them for a long time, we had breakfast at madinat jumeirah.

although i've been to madinat a couple of times (the last one was when i had the madinat encounter) but i've never visited the place in the morning.



she took me to the places i've never been before and finally got a spectacular view of madinat with unobstructed view of burj al arab (like in the photo). plus, she toured us around. after a bottle of corona, we decided to watch a movie.

transformers.

photo courtesy of transformersmovie.com

as a fan myself, the effects and sounds are amazing to the fact we can easily digitized and manipulate animations. although the story is quite far from the cartoon series, the main characters and rivalries between good and evil was still there.

the cons of the movie were that the action scenes is quite dizzying and storyline is somewhat shallow. although this was really meant for kids, child-minded adults might enjoy this as well. also, bumblebee's getup is way hotter than before.

finally, after the movie, we had our farewell drinks at fibber magees. :)

120mm exposed film. up to now, i haven't received the film i sent to the studio. it is almost a week already and they can't even produce twelve shots that i took. the excitement turned to disappointment.
discoursed by jeff @ 9:20 AM  |  6 comment(s)  |  permalink

Thursday, July 05, 2007

silver bullets


f5, 1/100sec, 50mm, iso200, -0.3ev

i was able to scout and find few rolls of ilford delta 400 black and white film when i visited wafi city. 12 rolls cost around dhs18 each and able to get a discount. later that night, my roomies and i went for dinner and malling at burjuman. i finished my first roll there.



feeling in the mood before going to bed, i decided to setup the films on a reflective table and setup the external flash to wireless. instead of firing it directly, i used my slipper as reflector. the rest is history. :)

now i have to wait for few days to get it developed. ah, the excitement of film photography...hehe.
discoursed by jeff @ 11:54 AM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

t h e . p r i z e


f8, 20secs, 50mm, auto wb, -.3ev

finally, i got my reward from the last photo challenge with fellow shutterbugs. my winning "bottle.drop" entry were able to acquire a holga 120n medium format film camera.

i just installed the black fabric, mounted the camera on a tripod set to bulb setting (20secs exposure) due to low-light conditions (flourescent lighting was the only available light). later on, i used a hand mirror to bounce the light to the subject via light painting (similar to painting with brush but using flashlight or mirrors instead). resized, sig.

this will be my first time using medium format and i'm starting to search for 120mm films around town. i can't wait to try and share the pics. :)
discoursed by jeff @ 8:22 AM  |  6 comment(s)  |  permalink

Sunday, July 01, 2007

jap and jill


f2.8, 1/80sec, 50mm, iso200, auto wb

another portraiture shoots has gone in the past week. first of was jill, which is an impromptu courtesy of harassing me to make it work by my fellow photographer friends. it was her first to pose and model for everyone in front of many cameras. i'd say she did it good, first time around.

see more of her here.

fight.night

f5, 1/80sec, 50mm, iso200, cloudy wb

another lazy weekender that turned out wacko. inspired from one of the treklens member's avatar/mugshot, jap and i decided to make a photo session in a boxing scene. i used black linen as backdrop and wireless flash mounted on a tripod, bounced it to the white wall as a diffuser.

check out the recap of the fight.
discoursed by jeff @ 8:45 AM  |  0 comment(s)  |  permalink