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I don’t thing all eight of them are Brazilians but, yeah, they call them that. This is the first of the three sets of photos I’ve taken during SMB’s Barkada Valentine Party held on February 12-13, 2009 near the SMC Compound somewhere in Ortigas. The girls were called up on stage to show the audience their favorite San Miguel manufactured beer. It was quite convenient that each of them had a different favorite from the variants. Whodathunk, yes?

Sorry for the quality of the images because it is the very first time I got to use a Sony Alpha 300 DSLR (OK, I kid about being sorry for the quality of the images because there’s nothing to be sorry about, really). I charged the battery the night before and had to work in the morning so I did not really get to play around with the a300 prior to show time. I made it a point, though, to read which button I should push to adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO so I can easily manipulate the most important basic elements in composing a shot.

The dilemma in shooting events like this is you can’t make your subject stay put and hold their pose. That and lighting would almost always fuck up the colors, most importantly of skin tone. I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing, since it was really (honestly) my first time to use the cam, but I jacked up the ISO to 3200 and used shutter speeds with variying values between 1/100 to 1/250. I was under the impression that this way, I can freeze whatever movement the subjects are making. Having the shutter speed lowered to these levels would also limit the light coming into the lens thereby making an otherwise bright ISO background look just right. I might just be blabbering like a crazed loony case here but it does sound logical, come to think about it. Advise from well seasoned DSLR users most welcome here. I also used Manual because I’m snooty like that. I have set the lens to function in automatic, though, so it does the focusing of my subjects for me at blinding speed when I do a half-press on the shutter button.

More on the cam in my next posts. Meanwhile, I give you permission to drool over these schmexeh ladies’ photos. Enjoy!

Thanks to Juned and Stella of SMC for the event invites. I had a blast. Next post will have Mocha.