Fitful Mind

An Escape from reality. A Mess in Progress.  Cebu, Philippines

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Traveling with Dogs: 5 Quick Tips

Traveling with Dogs: 5 Quick Tips

If you are one of our friends or if you follow our blog and social media, you know for sure that we are furparents (we treat our dogs like our children, furbabies). Most of the happiest moments in our lives is traveling with our furry kids.

We have four dogs. 2 Labrador Retrievers, and 2 Pugs. Sometimes we travel with four pets at once especially when we are going overnight in our destination…

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Our Christmas Tradition Almost everyone who celebrates Christmas have traditions they follow. For us, it's a day with our babies road tripping somewhere. Last Christmas we went for a quick travel to the beach!

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Somewhere in Dahican Five (5) years. Five long years away from one of our pieces of paradise. Last March upto September of 2020, I never thought we'd be able to have a roadtrip again, let alone return to one of our favorite places - Dahican, Mati, Davao Oriental. Well, something magical happened.

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A Filipino Street Food You Must Try What is this Filipino Street Food?!

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When in The Philippines This Is A Must! Find out where this is in the Philippine Islands!

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The Starfish Story

This is one of my favourite stories. This is an original by Loren Eisly.

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Bibingka – A Delicious Filipino Treat Are you visiting the Philippines soon and is curious what food to eat? You might want to try our > > > Bibingka! < < <

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A mini road trip with the Bratpack

A mini road trip with the Bratpack

It is always a joy to have our furkids on the beach!

If you are curious and want to know more on how we travel our pets in and around Cebu, bring them to the beach, or where specifically this beautiful whitesand beach in San Remigio Cebu is, please follow this A Day at the Beach with the Furbabies.

Kindest Regards.

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My Wife starts to Blog!

My Wife starts to Blog!

One of my greatest joys in life is to see wifey happy – pursuing her passions, doing what she loves, playing with our furballs, and just being lost in what she does best. It’s been quite a long time since she started to want to blog, but there are alot of circumstances that have delayed it.

Between the two of us she’s the writer, I am more on the visuals. She also loves to take pictures,…

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Cebu City to Getafe, Bohol

Are you looking to visit Getafe, Bohol for it’s tourist spots (Banacon Island, Pandanon beach), or do you have friends to visit, or do business in this municipality? Travelling to Getafe is now made easy as there is a direct

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Travelling in cars with Pets

For people like my wife and I who choose furbabies instead of having real kids, or for pet-parents and pet lovers in general, travelling with your pets is a normal part of life.

Hitting the road with your furbabies in cars can be a bit challenging especially if you have a small car like ours where you cannot fit a varikennel or a crate. Also, having a 2 labrador retrievers and a very hyper pug,…

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Desiderata

This is my favorite prose.  Beautifully written by Max Ehrmann, this piece resonates life so much.  A gentle reminder to the soul.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they…

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My Very first Review When planning to buy a product or learn something about a product I always go online to watch and read about it and hear the opinions of the users and "experts". 

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Furbabies' Day Out

Furbabies’ Day Out

What a lovely day in the park with these furbabies! Hero & Kai (Labrador retriever), Dude (Pug)

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equipment: gopro hero 2018, gopro hero 3

white music: Where you wanna be – Charles William (no copyright infringement intended)

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Transit

a short clip of our road trip down south Cebu and out time with the gentle giants of the sea; “the whalesharks of Oslob”

To bask in nature’s beauty and indulge in its splendor and magnificence is a time so precious, And as we pass moments into memories, may this awe and wander always inspire us to seek more, discover more, experience more and live more fully. Here is a short clip of our road trip down south Cebu and out time with the gentle giants of…

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I started photography more than a decade ago to shoot my furbabies, that’s it.  I never intended it to be my bread and butter, nor a long standing hobby.  I just wanted to buy a decent camera to take photos of my dogs with bokeh.  Yes, all for that for a bokeh.  I didn’t know any better.  At first I didn’t want to shoot people or portraits because it wasn’t in my personality and I fear I would not do any justice capturing a person and freezing it into a photograph, but then I tried and it propelled me into a beautiful journey in Weddings, Events, and Portraiture.  I guess my personality rendered a different take on people photography.

Why am I telling you this?  At this moment I am so interested in Landscape photography.  A decade ago I was not really interested in this genre for some reasons:  1.) Landscape photography accessories are expensive.  2.)  I love to shoot run and gun, quick, and on the go.  This type of photography require you to bring lots of accessories, wait for the right light, and go to places just for a photo or two.  3.) I tried before but I was really bad at it.

Fast forward 2018 and here I am starting to love landscape photography.  It all started when almost all of my wedding/portrait gears broke down.  As I’ve said during the last post all that’s left are just a few working lenses and camera bodies.  As I went through all my gears for disposal I found these cheap filters and told myself “hey, since you have no choice but to really slow down then why not use the weekends and most of your free time exploring and learning this genre…”.  Also, I got inspired with the works of the people I follow on the internet and the great masters of landscape photography.  Their works are just so awesome!

I know I am just beginning and learning with this new adventure, the learning curve might take time, and some purists might scoff because my approach incorporates seascapes and travels alot, but this June 2018 I am quite happy with the results.  There’s a lot more to learn, and I know it’s very difficult to integrate my gritty, dark, black and white style that I have come to embrace and love, but hey, photography is subjective, and as long as I am happy with my photos then there’s all there is to it… and if I can inspire a few others with my work then that’s a sweet icing on the cake.

Reignited and Happy… Here are some of the photos that I would like to share this (both Film and Digital).

Reignited I started photography more than a decade ago to shoot my furbabies, that's it.  I never intended it to be my bread and butter, nor a long standing hobby. 

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Wow!  I miss this!  It’s so nice to be back blogging again after seven long months of hiatus from social media really, except in my Instagram.  There are so many things, good and bad, that happened I don’t even know where to begin.

The Bad:

Almost all my gears broke down around December 2017.  We live near a watershed/reservoir and the humidity is crazy high, and it drizzles all the time.  It was more on complacency and neglect on my part that I relied only on desiccants to protect my gears.  My favorite lens – canon 85mm, my 50mm, my Fujifilm xe1, Fujinon 35mm 1.4, my Carl Zeiss Jena, Practika, my back up 600d, and the list goes on, got fungus so bad that these became unusable.  My main backup cam 7d with its main lens were saved because luckily one of our favorite wedding clients got it for sentimental value because a few years back I used it as main camera for their wedding.  To make the matter worse my Macbook Pro went down as well with a busted battery and graphics card.

Add some pasaway (stubborn and difficult) clients, it was an understatement to say my life was hell.  We declined most client bookings for portraiture, and limited to fulfilling early bookings before all these happened (shoots that my limited gears can do).

Basically all I had left was my Canon EOS 6D and a 24mm lens, and a barely hanging on plastic fantastic nifty-fifty, some very old and unused ND and CPL filters, a defective flashgun, and a heavy tripod.

Photography is a big part of my life, and now with all the gears gone it means that a major overhaul and changing of approach must be done.

The Good:

After 7 months of wallowing and beating myself up, I am able to start of slowly recovering, and on the process indulged myself more in film/analog shooting.  I got some cheap film cameras – an Olympus 35SP and a Canon EOS 88 (EOS 3000), and started the process of slowly healing myself by shooting lots of film and learning how to develop. We bought a decent sized Dry Cabinet, too.  Make this investment please before it’s too late.

We take our furbabies out to the park more, lots of mini road trips in the island, finding good places to eat around and about, and basically just slowing down, and letting loose.

The weirdest part in all these is my newly discovered interest in Landscape Photography.  If you are one of the very few followers of this blog, you know that one of my weaknesses and major fear in photography is shooting landscape.  I remember my fear on shooting people when I started, and basically became and wedding and events photographer… I hope I can duplicate such feat and become a tolerable/decent landscape photographer.  I am still learning the ropes on this kind of photography and finding how to work around it because I not much of an outdoor person except for my love for the beach.  I know it’s ironic, but it’s one of the things that excite me. Haha!  Also, I want to limit myself (not that I have a choice really), to shooting landscape in black and white film with my very limited camera body, lenses, and filters.  Will I be successful, I do not know.  What I know for sure is this new path makes me happy.

The Best part in this big mess is I have learned what shooting for yourself really means to its essence.  Yes, I share my shots in IG, but the operative word there is Share.  I share my humble shots because I am actually happy with it, not because the end goal is to get clients or earn.  I shoot for myself more now, and I have rediscovered happiness in the process of shooting, developing, and just sitting, and looking and appreciating my photographs.

Will I be back shooting portraits for a living?  Right now I really do not know.  I am finding ways first to upgrade my gears, buy a decent lens for the job, and in the near future rebuild a portfolio, and get my brand out there again… but until then I am going to enjoy this new journey.

Finding My Way Back (Tragedies & Lessons) Wow!  I miss this!  It’s so nice to be back blogging again after seven long months of hiatus from social media really, except in my Instagram.