Jacob Maentz’s Blog

Here are some images from a Debut (turning 18) I photographed a couple of weeks ago. Sisters, Krizia and Kirsten were the debutants celebrating their special day together. A fun event and great family!

Yesterday at Abellana Sports Complex in Cebu City, an attempt for a new world record was made — The Worlds Largest Dance Class. With just under 8,000 participants this attempt would be the World’s largest breaking the current record held by Budapest, Hungry.

Here are some selected photos from Robert John & Sheryllyn’s wedding last June 14th, 2009. Preparation was at the Hilton Cebu Resort and the wedding and reception was held at Amara in Liloan, Cebu.

I like to venture into wet markets to photograph all the exotic foods I see. I live in in Cebu City, Philippines, but I never get tired of going to the market and seeing what new foods I can find. Just when I think I have seen everything, I find new images to take. I love to see food in its raw form and everything is so fresh. The fruits, vegetable, meats and seafood.

I also enjoy walking around the markets because of the people I see there. It is a common place for people to gather and makes a great place to photograph faces and people doing ordinary life activities. Everything in the market environment makes for great photography. I am fortunate enough to live only 30 minutes from a good size wet market in Cebu City. I like to go down at least once every two weeks and take photos. I feel alive and I’m always surprised to see what images I able able to capture, always different. I try to get there in the morning when the light is not too harsh and people are bustling with the start of a new day. Additionally, in the morning harvests have just arrived from the provinces and seafoods are fresh from the fishing boats.

I would encourage travelers to venture into the markets and spend some time there. Sit down at a local stall and have a cup of coffee watching all the activity around you. If you are into photography you will be sure to get some good images. I like to use a 60mm macro lens for up-close shots of the food and a wider lens for photographing people, etc. You will be sure to find some exotic foods to eat too if you are into that. Enjoy.

You can see more images of mine from local markets on my stock site.

This morning I was called out of the house to look at a rainbow. To my surprise it was a circular rainbow wrapping around the sun. This was the first time I have ever seen this and so I took some pictures and did a little research.

Apparently, this phenomenon is called a sundog. These appear when the sun is low in the sky and its rays catch the thin vapour formed of ice crystals which lies in the atmosphere six miles above the Earth’s surface.

The rays are refracted by the crystals to produce what looks like a halo round the sun.

Sometimes, as here, they display a spectrum of colours from red closest to the sun to a pale blue furthest from it, which has led to them being mistaken for full circle rainbows.

In centuries past, they were thought of as signs of ill omen. These days they are most often mistaken for UFOs.

Pretty cool for a Thursday morning.

I’m posting some pictures from a wedding I had this past Saturday. Joseph and Jean are from Cebu, but they are living in New York. My wife Oma assisted me and we had a fun time with the couple and their family and friends. Hope you enjoy the selected images.

• Monday morning and a hot cup of coffee. Going to look at Pocket Wizards for my upcoming events this June. #

Sometimes we can forget that we don’t need to go far to find something captivating to shoot. Last week, while being weighed down by office work, I found inspiration from a least expected place–a papaya tree.

I often find myself sitting in front of the computer for hours, editing, uploading and doing website optimizing. I try not to spend full days doing this, but sometimes it’s inevitable. It’s in these long days that I feel the creative juice leaking out of me. I’m tunneled into what I’m doing and that’s it.

As Freeman Patterson states in his book, Photography and the Art of Seeing, “preoccupation with self is the greatest barrier to seeing, and the hardest one to break.” I have recently felt this statement to be true in life and started some simple daily acts to help prevent this barrier to seeing. One of them being to take my camera and explore something new to shoot.

Last week, I took an hour away from my busy day and looked for something to shoot in my backyard. To my surprise I found more than one interesting subject. I ended up spending more than two hours shooting and had some interesting images in the end. However, what’s most important is I felt inspired and full of creative energy after the shoot.

Freeman Patterson says, “one barrier to seeing is the mass stimuli surrounding us. We are so bombarded with visual and other stimuli that we must block out most of them in order to cope. Instead of seeing everything, we select a few stimuli and organize these. Then once we have achieved order in our lives, we stick with the realities we have established. We seldom try to rediscover the possible value of ignored stimuli, and are reluctant to do so as long as the old ones still seem to be working. We develop a tunnel vision, which gives us a clear view of the rut ahead of us, but prevents us from seeing the world around us.”

He goes on to say, “a photographer who wants to see, a photographer who wants to make fine images, must recognize the value of the familiar. Your ability to see is not increased by the distance you put between yourself and your home. If you do not see what is all around you everyday, what will you see when you go to Tangiers? The subject matter may be different, but unless you can get to the essence of the subject matter through keen observation, and express it through your photographs, it doesn’t matter how exotic your locale.”

Some great words of advice that I hope to return to often.