And I forgot about it.

It happened six years ago. I was invited by a friend to join a group of Fuji X-Photographers for a photowalk, and I was handed a Fujifilm X20 to test out. Everyone knew I was a film photographer and I guess they were curious about how I’d fare and find shooting digital for a day. The biggest struggle was trying to learn the controls in maybe 15 minutes or so, until I decided to shoot in the best way I know when I am allowed to fiddle with settings: manual mode. 

Now, I don’t really remember much about the whole shoot other than: 

1. There was a lot of rushing around but I was trying to shoot at my own pace – something important when you’re shooting around the hot and humid chaos of Manila; 

2. Not fiddling with anything else but the manual controls (and zoom, I think) per shot because I was getting okay results that way anyway; 

3. Switching to black and white mode halfway during the shoot in my attempt to place emphasis on composition rather than all the dizzying mix of colors around me. When I had the chance to sit down with the 100+ photos I ended up with, I found that I didn’t really like them, so I promptly forgot about them.

Well, six years later, I ended up pushing myself to look at them again, this time maybe a little bit more objectively. As someone who writes about impressive photography projects on a daily basis, this is definitely daunting. So, out of 100+, I somewhat liked only 9 of them.

So, what do you think? I’m really curious. Objectively, of course.