MMS 173: Another Ending

As I wrap up the second offering of Multimedia Studies 173, I can't help but ponder on a number of things.

Just the other day, Chancellor Alfonso made me watch an MMS 175 (Videography in Multimedia) project she had just received. She was raving about how she dug the student's style. I watched and true enough, the framing -- the composition of the video shots were well done. I was like... for what it's worth, this IS pretty good. Then I looked at the title and saw the name of a former MMS 173 student I was close with. I smiled and proudly declared... Ma'am, dun niya natutunan yung pag compose niyan sa klase ko! Of course, I'll never be sure if she bought that, as she just smiled and nodded. But she did go on about my other former students incorporating their photography work in their MMS 175 projects. That felt good to hear, especially at a time like this.

The class this year had a different feel to it. Establishing the connection I wanted proved to be a lot more difficult than it had been before. At times, it felt a little frustrating. Maybe it was because I had already built a good rapport with many from the pioneer batch during our Biomodd days. For the most part, I didn't have that this year. And just when I finally found myself on my way to achieving that connection, the class was over. At least I can take solace to the fact that the class was not without its share of exceptional students, most of whom I got to know personally at the end. There were even a few whose progress well exceeded my expectations. I'm confident the Chancellor will be raving about them as well when they take MMS 175 next year.

Now, with the final grades pretty much done, where does this course leave me?

For starters, I don't want to handle this course again during summer. Ruining vacation plans is one thing, but real sacrifices were made on top of that. And despite that, compromises still had to be made as far as the course went. These were additional causes of my frustration. Second semesters are more appropriate -- a four month timetable under generally good varying weather. Hopefully, FICS will listen.

Second, I have already declared to FICS my intention to develop an intermediate level Photography in Multimedia course to pick up where MMS 173 ends. This is going to be a course that can devote more time and resources for the popular genres. The downside is that requirements are going to be a lot steeper. I can definitely write it, but this time around, contracting expert resource persons might be in order. It's going to be interesting.

Lastly, I want that multi-purpose multimedia studio I've always dreamed about. If UPOU won't provide us one, I'm slowly accumulating the equipment I need to set one up on my own.

I'm going to miss quite a few people from this class. But I have a strong feeling I will be crossing paths with them again. Hopefully, that'll happen before I take my eventual hiatus from UPOU. And of course, as what has become my policy, they will be welcome to sit in with the next class any time they like.

During the first classroom session last weekend, I suggested holding a photo op at the Makiling Botanic Garden as an alternative to La Mesa Eco Park, where I had a successful session last year. However, it took a while before I realized that I myself hadn't been inside the garden since 2009! After being ravaged by Ondoy, I suppose it was a good idea for UP Los Baños to close it down for renovation. I'm glad they found some funding for it. But they sure took their sweet time rebuilding.

Still, I'm not one to assume everything is better than it has been for 30 years. I'm not going to push to go there blindly with the chance of being embarrassed in front of my class to see a whole park in disrepair. And so, I set out again to take a look for myself before I go about recommending the place again. Even if things look bad, at least it was a chance to flex my knees and shoulders a bit more.

At least now, everyone else can enter.

 

I immediately noticed two things as I approached the gate. First, there was now this big building at the front with a pink roof. Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb. Second, it seems that the garden can now better accommodate events, like the birthday party being held at a pavilion where an old mini-museum used to stand. And then, although it wasn't as disappointing as I first thought, the swimming pool wasn't part of the renovation.

This is new... to me, at least.

 

The trail.

 

It's still all good, though. Those things weren't part of my routine when I go there, anyway. So, off I went down the path towards Molawin Creek. I didn't know what to feel early on. Things looked pretty much the same the last time I was there. On one hand, I was half expecting the landscape to be a bit more fixed up. But aside from being a bit cleaner than usual... nothing. But then again, maybe that IS a good thing.

Reaching this viewpoint would have been really difficult before...

... and this...

... and this.

 

True enough, as I continued to walk upstream along the pathway, I began to feel a bit more appreciative of a place I have taken for granted since I was a kid. The thick, almost untamed vegetation is a refreshing contrast to the more heavily landscaped parks and resorts. After a bit more exploring, I realized that a few old paths were cleaned up as well, allowing access to one or two spots even I have never been to.

Broken trail to a broken building

I haven't forgotten the time when I invited my colleague, Diego Maranan, to check out the place. Being the polite dude that he is, he went along even though he wasn't keen on it. It was amusing for me to witness his surprise when he got in. He was, like... but you said it was a garden! It never occurred to me until then, but he had a point. It was an edge of a real forest reserve, not some little spot with landscaped flowering plants, which most people would associate with a garden.

A bit of sunlight through the canopy

The only thing I miss there is the bird sanctuary, which is now labeled as an area for dipterocarps (slow growing hardwood trees). I'll probably go up there just to see how it looks like next time. But other than that, I honestly think that this would be a pretty good place to do a bit of photography.

MMS 173 Warm up: New guitar day

I hadn't done any serious photography for several months. I bought a camera more than a month ago and hasn't left my bag since. So, with the start of the new MMS 173 class getting closer and closer, I thought it was a good idea to see how far down my skills had gone. It was also high time that I start getting used to operating the Nikon D7000 in an actual photo op as opposed to gawking over it at home.

I also had the perfect subject. I had been planning to shoot my new guitar - Spirit 3 (or Green Al, as my girlfriend calls it). The typical guitar-on-the-bed pictures where some people notice the bedsheets first aren't going to cut it this time. So, I went out on location on Black Saturday lugging 30 pounds of gear with me.

It was too bad the Makiling Botanic Garden was closed that day. I then drove to my second choice and was glad to find an open Pook ni Mariang Makiling that still had a good spot along the stream which I could have for myself.

After wrapping things up at Pook, I didn't feel like I was done, so I switched venues and headed to UPOU Headquarters, by the beloved Oblation under a glaring afternoon sun. It was surprisingly not that hot, though. In fact, I haven't felt that nice under direct sunlight since my last day in Australia just before winter. That enabled me to last a pretty long time.

Coming from a Nikon D80, the D7000 does make a number of things easier. And image quality is noticeably superior. But at the same time, I still have to get used to actually using the new camera system.

This was also a good time to practice a few Photoshop tricks. Admittedly, I wasn't a huge fan of doing anything beyond a few minor edits on pictures until last year. I'm hoping to know a bit more about it later.

While my eyes are pretty much the same as it has been before, my execution is a bit rusty (fumbling with the new controls didn't help, either). But all in all, it was a pretty good warm up for things to come -- more music and more photography!

It's strange. This is probably the most productive two consecutive days I've had all year as far as paperwork goes. And I did it with yet another bad case of the colds (and swollen tonsils).

Saturday was a busy one for my students... rushing their assignments to meet the 8AM deadline, and then take their exam online 12 hours later. Meanwhile, I was doing my own rushing with the LVM 202 course manual, and later on checking the MMS 173 assignments. I was so unusually psyched that I was still rearing to go past midnight, so I went ahead and checked their exam papers right away. I finished at around 5AM Sunday.

I wasn't gonna sleep long, though... there was still Game 3 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals to watch in less than four hours. The throat still hurt and I could barely get up, but it was worth it. I got up early enough to witness the dissection of the Magic by the Celtics.

After that, it was back to business and I went back to the exam papers. Good thing I did, as I was able to catch a few checking errors of mine. And one of the students wanted feedback, so I fixed that for everyone, too.


All that's left to wait for now are their final projects. Heck, I can probably give their grades on the spot on our last F2F session if I wanted to. I wonder how many times the BAMS students have experienced receiving their grades as expeditiously. I've never been as prepared to conclude a course as I am right now with MMS 173 and I feel good about it -- swollen tonsils notwithstanding.


In the meantime, all I can do now is keep the discussions going even if it no longer has a huge bearing on their grades. Perhaps it will still help them in their projects. It's better than me twiddling my thumbs while waiting for someone to ask for help.

I hope everything goes well this Saturday. It'll be a nice way to cap off this rough summer.

In the meantime, I've earned myself a day to not worry about anything...

I showed the MMS 173 the basic things they should know about image editing -- levels, color balance, cropping... that stuff. This was easy enough. Lately, I took it one step further by showing them a few of my favorite techniques complete with my own sample takes.

By the chapel at Corregidor

Orton Effect for a flower

Fake HDR - Ferris Wheel (Brisbane, QLD, Australia)

Well, that was fun...

As for their own tries, there doesn't seem to be much of a problem in following the tutorials I referred them to. However, this exercise has shown that the real challenge is for the students to develop a better sense of knowing when and where to apply these techniques. I'm afraid that will only come with enough practice. And at this rate, it's going to take much more than what remains in this summer class.

MMS 173: "Forcing" my students to blog

This was something I had planned since the beginning of the class. Ironically, I forgot to personally tell my students about it. Twice.

The "deadline" for their first course related blog entry is almost upon them as I write this. I'm glad to say that more than 3/4 of them complied. Then again, after I said that it's graded, it's not like they had much of a choice.

Of course, their thoughts on the course is important and will influence how MMS 173 will be handled in the future. But something else about these blogs are of greater interest to me at the moment.

Just by their first blogs, I have learned quite a number of things about these students of mine. The most obvious things would be the ones they wrote about. But the real interesting bits were how they wrote their entries -- the things they chose to emphasize, the things they left out, their choice of words, their overall tone... More on this later. Ah, BAMS students, you really are a very interesting lot.

Anyway, I had originally planned on giving a "perfect score" for just posting a blog. But now, seeing how some students worked harder than others, I realize that it wouldn't be fair. So, now I score in private...

MMS 173: April 24, 2010 Session

This is undoubtedly the most challenging face to face session I’ve handled to date. One or two hours is difficult enough. Three hours, even more difficult. But 12 hours?

While planning for this, I had thought that this could be overkill. I mean, what can I possibly do to keep the students occupied for that long?

I made it to Diliman at around 7:30AM. Unfortunately, we started much later than I had hoped for at La Mesa Eco Park. Luckily, the weather was relatively cooperative, despite the heat. More importantly, we were presented a lot of shooting opportunities. It’s not exactly the Makiling Botanic Garden, but the amount of people moving about was definitely a subject worth exploring.

We were done there by 11:30AM and there was barely enough time to drive back to Diliman, have some lunch and rest before I started the afternoon session…

Product photography was another good topic to tackle. I managed to let the class do a little hands on with little more than a bag of regular household items. It was a good exercise illustrating the importance of good lighting when shooting indoors. The class enjoyed this one… good.

Next on my list was a post processing demo — too little time to spare. I just did a quick unrehearsed demo of what I typically do with Photoshop or GIMP. It’s a good thing some of the students already have experience on this, so they can spearhead the post processing activity in their respective groups. This went well, too.

Group project discussions… all of them will be covering interesting topics… Gotta give props to the smallest group in the class — they had the balls to attempt to build three different multimedia projects. I’m impressed, but I had to make them choose their top priority. Damn the other two products if time won’t allow for their completion.

That afternoon session took nearly four hours. At this stage, it was clear that I had underestimated the time needed to adequately hold these activities

After an hour and a half of rest, off we go to the UP Diliman Oblation for some night photography. Only a small fraction of the class remained at this point. But even they were visibly tired. I had planned on a walkabout, but in the end, we never left the vicinity of the Oblation until we packed up and went our separate ways past 8PM. It’ll take a lot of time and practice for them to get the hang of taking pictures in the dark, but hopefully, I’ve helped nudge them towards a good direction.

Overall, there are parts I could’ve done differently and more effectively, which I will do next time. But receiving thanks from many of my students for means I did something right. This day will be a highlight for me as a UPOU faculty member for a long time.