Saturday, September 02, 2006

The correlation between photography and traveling

When I would talk to my friend who dove into photography with his Nikon D50 two or three years ago, I could not seem to relate with him when he starts talking about his passion for traveling. He is passionate about it to the point that he wants to be part of WOW Philippines. He just can't seem to stay put. He always seems to be talking about going to Bohol, to Puerto Galera, and wherever there is a beach.

Now that I got my own Canon 350D, I seem to have suddenly increased my interest in traveling. Suddenly I find myself dreaming about going to beaches, to the rural areas, to mountains, to fields, to rivers, to fiestas. My eyes crave for color, for "Kodak" moments.

There is indeed a correlation between traveling and photography. Get into photography and travel. Capture the culture with a click. Capture the drama of life.


Thursday, August 31, 2006

MTRCB and Freedom of Speech

I just read the news yesterday about an Erap documentary being rated as "X" for possibly inciting a mutiny against the govenrment and therefore causing a destabilization. All of the MTRCB members voted for the docu to be rated X except for one. This sole counterflow explains his side saying that they should uphold freedom of speech and that it should be rated as G for general patronage.

Well, sometimes we cannot tell where the line of freedom of speech ends. I could always say bad things about other people and say I should be respected because it is freedom of speech. What if I do a docu about that guy, and say bad things about him in my docu, then it should be a G because of freedom of speech.

If freedom of speech is the sole and absolute criteria for rating movies, then all films should be rated G. Even the bold films can get a G rating because of "freedom of expression."

Freedom is not absolute. Freedom is checked by morality. We just don't decide. We weigh our decisions and weight them against which one is better to do, or which one is the right thing to do. We never do things without validating our decisions against a standard or a minimum criteria.

Freedom is to choose the good.