Viernes Santo (Not Really!)

Here in the Philippines, when you say "mukha kang Byernes Santo", it means the person you are talking to is sad or gloomy. Well, I was hardly gloomy yesterday. In fact, I was inappropriately (given that it was Good Friday) ecstatic.

I only turned on my computer to retrieve a document when I saw an offline message from Nina. She was congratulating me for winning in the Lasting Impression Websters' Pages challenge. I immediately checked the PS egroup if there was an announcement but it was a slow day at the board, given that it is the Holy Week break, and there were few posters. None of them Maybs or April, DTs of Lasting. I began wondering if too much KFC and McDonalds in Taiwan made Nina delusional until I saw the official announcement here.

I was happy to be one of the winners and even happier to see the names of my friends Nita and Cookie. Cookie was online so I immediately buzzed her. Nita wasn't so I called her up on her cellphone to give her the good news. She thought I was joking. I said, it's not April 1. She responded everyday is April Fool's for me. Now I was getting irritated that she wouldn't share my excitement, so I told her would I be wasting my precious free calls calling you? She said she would believe it when she saw it and unfortunately for my credibility, they just had a brownout at their house and she couldn't connect to the internet. She had to call Au, who had to confirm it to her. Hahaha.

My layout Adore placed second. Here is what Brandin O'Neill, owner of Webster's Pages had to say about my entry.

"Scrapbooking doesn’t always have to be feminine and we love when men are brought into the pages. We love to see the masculine interpretation of our papers while keeping the subject delicate and gentle. That’s how we like our papers interpreted."


Well, I loved working these photos and papers, too. Truth is, I have had these papers since last year, and it was only after Candy persuaded me to join the challenge (thanks Candy) that I found the perfect photos to go with them. Even if I had not won, I would be quite content with the fact that I captured and scrapped these precious interaction between my DH and youngest DD.

These were taken while we were in line inside The Rialto in Enchanted Kingdom. The light wasn't very good, but I couldn't resist taking the photos. DH and Kahlo were unaware that I was taking photos of them, until I called them to smile for the camera (third photo). See that bemused look on their faces? It was like they were in their own world and I rudely interrupted them. But they still obliged with smiles. (This scrapbooker trained them well. Hehe.)

The photos were a bit blurred but when I converted them to sepia, they were perfect. Here's the original photo.


It was just too orange so I changed the colors. I don't use flash and my WB is always set to auto. No time to twiddle with controls if I hope to capture fleeting moments like these. But I do compose my shot through the viewfinder before I click so I don't have to crop in Photoshop. Less work that way. :-)

I had second thoughts about using the three photos when I saw the other entries. A big blowup of the first photo would have made a similar impact as the other beautiful LOs in the gallery. But I wanted to scrap the two other supporting photos as well and in the end I was quite happy how it turned out.

I was mesmerized by the look in my DD's face that I couldn't think of any other title than Adore. It really seemed appropriate. I kept the journaling short and sweet, too. Anything more would've been superfluous.

BTW, this is my first local challenge win. I couldn't be happier that it was this particular LO.