looks familiar?

I was reading the newspaper last week when an article on the Philippine Daily Inquirer caught my attention. It wasn't the headline in the Business section that stood out, but instead, it was the picture on that page, which showed an image of the historic Silliman Hall. Although the Silliman Hall is popular and there are a lot of published photos of this, this one amused me because it looked really familiar.

As it turned out, this picture was taken by me! It was during summer 2003 when my team and I were working on the Silliman University Online Tour as senior BSIT On-the-Job Training (OJT) students then.




Im sure of this because I used that exact photograph as the image in the Silliman University Online Tour homepage. I distinctly remember applying an embossed effect on that image just to make it less bare.

Anyway, I remember taking that picture early one morning (according to the picture details, it was April 21, 2003). I was too embarrassed to take a photo of the building in the presence of other people, so what I did was to take it inside a car, the Diahatsu Feroza I was then driving during that time. I strategically parked the Feroza just between the "tempurahan" and the start of the long strip at the Rizal boulevard. In fact, I hurriedly took the shot to avoid passers-by from wondering what I was doing. Because of the rush, I accidently included the Feroza's side mirror.


I then cropped the image to discard the part where the side mirror was included. A few enhancements using Adobe Photoshop, and the picture was ready.

I had always been a frustrated photographer and dream of succeeding as one. Seeing it on a national publication like the Inquirer, it made me feel kinda proud in a small little way. But then again, should they have had asked permission from me? Considering it was used in the Online Tour web page belonging to Silliman University, then I guess they should ask permission from SU. Perhaps they did. But it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, the picture I took was published nationally!