Handy Matt: Stranded by Typhoon Maring and introducing Photobook!

I'm not really stranded, per se. I just happen to be at work today at 7am, and the office just announced that work is suspended. The same thing happened yesterday.

So I'm here, waiting for my wife, +maria cessna galecio to get reprieve from her work as well so we can head home together.

Anyway, after months of procrastination, I've finally managed to work on the photo book for Thirdy's first birthday party. I've been at it for almost 3 weeks but I've managed to finish it last Sunday (8/18/2013). It's not as impressive as my first try (using our wedding pictures. I'll post about it on another time), as I was on a deadline. The last (of 2) voucher i bought from Photobook via Metrodeal is expiring today.

Unlike the photobook for our wedding, I've had problems for this, namely due to the pictures (or lack thereof).

First of all, I only managed to take a few shots. I got a few ones in Lancaster Suites, which is a good thing, because our hired photographers were late. The next few shots were at the reception itself as I didn't have time during the christening. Still, I only managed to get a few ones since I concentrated on shooting videos.

Secondly, our hired photographers managed to take about 1300 or so pictures. Unfortunately, most of them had their white balance settings messed up. Most of the shots were too orange or reddish. Not to mention, the shots weren't framed right. Also, about two thirds (I think there were three of them taking pictures) of the shots had very harsh lights and shadows, suggesting they didn't use flash guns (I didn't notice) or had their flashes trained straight at the subjects.

So with that, I had a very small set of pictures to use from them, and most, if not all, had to be post processed to correct the colors which was a pain in the posterior. It was hard to correct most of the ones that I needed so I either had to switch them to black and white, or reduce saturation which made them better but still toned down the colors.

I'll rant about the party's suppliers more lengthily on another post.

I had to ask +AnGelo Chiu for some of his pictures and Nina (Cyrus' amore) as well. Even with their pics, I simply ran out of good shots that I had to spread some the better ones across two pages. Still, I ran out of them for pages 38 and 39, that I just had to make do with whatever I could pick out.

I'm really enjoying Photobook's services. I hope they provide more vouchers at the price I got them for (around 550 pesos for the 2000 pesos 8 x 11 softbound 40 page book)

I've posted the layouts here for posterity's sake:

Thirdy's First Birthday Party photobook cover. It was late at night and I was fresh out of ideas so I just went with Photobook's stock images.

Page 1. This was from the Studio shoot.

Pages 2 and 3

Pages 4 and 5

Pages 6 and 7

Pages 8 and 9. This should have been orange, but since I changed PCs, it turned out that my display wasn't properly configured and the actual color turned out to be mustard yellow. Ugh.