This tabblo is also very personal for me because it contains some of my very first shots with my point-and-shoot camera, a Canon Powershot A610. These are taken some time October-December 2006. I had just moved to this condo unit after a very painful breakup with an ex--but that's another story. :)

Here are the first few pictures of my room. I live alone here in Metro Manila, about an hour and a half away from where my folks live. (Have I said that I am the black sheep of the family? Haha!)

Many of the stuff here tell a lot about me. Lots of books and DVDs. Some large jigsaw puzzles, which are personally framed by my mom. And my Apple laptop named Macbeth. And my plant, Bonbon.

Thank you for reading what I have shared today. Here's to more beautiful tabblos and photography and friendships! :)

- SirNicolay

Hi everyone! I've been here in this site for less than a week, and I can honestly say that I love being here and posting some of my photos. Receiving comments and raves has been tremendously flattering yet humbling me--although I have shared my pictures in other websites, there is something about my Tabblos here that makes me prouder of what I do. And for that, many thanks to all of you who bother to see some of my work. I hope I don't come across as very arrogant or stubborn for posting so many Tabblos in a day--last Saturday I posted seven! I hope that nobody's pissed or put off by whatever I upload here.

Having said that, I also want to share something more than just work in this site. Right now, I am still enjoying my vacation since here in the Philippines, regular classes are from June to March. I am a high school English teacher--that's the reason for the 'Sir' in my username. And since it's vacation time for students, it's also vacation for us, teachers. It's summer here in the Philippines right now, and I have nothing better to do than make Tabblos. LOL.

Actually, one of the few reasons why I post many of my pictures here is because I'm trying to rebuild my photo collections. I'm currently using Aperture 2.1 with my Macbook Pro, and I thought I had to free up some space since I have a few remaining amount of space in my 100G hard drive. About a fifth of that is used for my photos, and I thought if only I could clean some space, I could upload more photos soon.

I am not really a professional photographer. As I said, by profession, I am a teacher. However, for more than a year now, I have developed passion and intense love for photography ever since I rediscovered it when I had had my first DSLR camera--a Nikon D40. You see, I came from a family of photographers. My parents are pro photographers, and so are my siblings and relatives. For many years, I had been the black sheep since I did not share the same zeal for photography. I am more into education and the arts, particularly literature, music and films... But fortunately, the blood (or genes) of photography slowly crept back to me. I rediscovered photography just last March 2007. I had owned a point-and-shoot camera before, a Canon Powershot A610, but I was not very conscious yet that I wanted to take beautiful pictures for the rest of my life. And then, it just happened--like being in love for the first time--I saw the world differently in photography. It was one of the turning points in my life. Photography is beautiful.

As I mentioned, my family are professional photographers in our province, but they are more into glamour photography. Being a real black sheep, I found my niche in what I personally call Trivial Photography. I shoot almost anything casual--as long as there is nothing very artificial in them. I was not fond of the idea of buying very, very expensive photography equipment, makeup, etc to fabricate or overpaint reality.

Seeing that I loved photography, my mom replaced my Nikon D40 with the better Nikon D80 around April 2007. I loved that camera. I took it in so many different places. Majority of my photo collection are taken with that camera. Unfortunately, in a Christmas party with friends last December, the camera was ultimately lost--I was robbed not only of my camera but of the potential future I had with photography. It was partly my fault because I drank a lot that night. Lesson learned: don't drink and take pictures. I mourned for that camera for so many weeks. I started my 2008 feeling so depressed with its loss.

A few weeks ago, my mother and I had some serious conversation. I told her how I regretted having lost my camera. I told her that in the past few months, I learned to love photography more than ever. I lost my camera. I missed it so much. What can I say--as that brilliant Brit novelist Jeanette Winterson asks: why is the measure of love loss?

She gave me a second chance. She lent me one of her cameras, a Nikon D70. I was not very happy with the downgrade of gadget (from Nikon D80), but I accepted the camera wholeheartedly. Seeing that I became happy with my newly adopted camera, she rewarded me one day when she gave me one of her best cameras, a Nikon D200. Currently, I've been very happy with it--and I have learned a lot when I even downloaded guides and technique notes on how to fully exhaust the features of this camera.

So that's how my story goes so far. Quite a long introduction, but if you read it until this far, thank you so much!