The Rookie Blogger

June 13, 2011

Dolphin Island Resort in Misamis Occidental Aquamarine Park

One of my unforgettable experiences was going to the Dolphin Island Resort in Misamis Occidental because for the first time in my life, I saw and touched real dolphins. It has been my wildest dream to touch one of these mammals because I only get to see these creatures in National Geographic. Some of my friends saw live dolphins performing in the Manila Ocean Park that is why I am so jealous and desperate to see one.



When I saw this dolphin rescue center in the internet, (yes, it is not a typical dolphin theater wherein you can watch dolphins performing) I immediately searched for a flight to Ozamis City, Misamis Occidental because I want to see these creatures. Luckily, the airplane ticket of Air Philippines Express bound for Ozamis City only costs 900 pesos (from Cebu and excluding terminal fee) that’s why I booked a flight instantly.

You need to take a bus from Ozamis that is bound for Oroquieta City or Dipolog City in order to get to this dolphin rescue center. This dolphin rescue center is located within the properties of Misamis Occidental Aquamarine Park (MOAP) in the town of Sinacaban and this resort also boasts rich marine ecosystem and a small sand island. All bus drivers in the area know where MOAP is located so finding this place is not a problem at all.



When we arrived in MOAP, we paid 10 pesos for the entrance and another 300 pesos (round-trip) for the boat that will take us to the Dolphin Island Resort. Another 350 pesos was collected because I want to swim with the dolphins. If you are too afraid to swim with these creatures, you can try snorkeling around the island resort and see some recovering corals and numerous fish species. The small sand island is another attraction near the resort and it was my first time to see an island that disappears every high tide.



Swimming, feeding, and touching the dolphins was a great experience. The people who are working in the resort are also accommodating and friendly and this doubled the awesomeness of the activity.

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February 21, 2011

Sony 50mm f/1.8 Review

For just $150+ I already have a new Sony lens 50mm f/1.8. After I bought my Sony a300, I was already hoping to buy a portrait lens because the lens that came with the camera produces generic quality photos. After taking few shots with my new portrait lens, I am very satisfied with the image quality it delivers because, for just a small amount of price, I can already shot professional looking pictures. These are the sample photos I took.

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I just tried taking pictures of people until I learned that large aperture captures lots of light. After reading tutorials about photography in low light conditions, I began taking pictures at night. I tried taking pictures of landscapes and obtain satisfactory results. After I got bored shooting mountains and cities at night, I aimed my camera to the night sky and I was amazed by the results. Even though there are lots of pollutants in the air, I still obtained pictures that contain hundreds of stars that I can’t even see with my naked eye.


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I am very impressed with my new lens because I can capture portrait shots with satisfactory quality. With this lens, I also learned long exposure photography for night shots.

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January 2, 2011

Largest Known Star - VY Canis Majoris

Ever since I was a young student, I am so fascinated with stars in the universe because of their sheer size and power. My vision of star exceeds that of our own sun. I always look further using my naked eye for some stars in a clear night. During my elementary years, the information I had about stars are limited; red giant stars like Betelgeuse and Antares, some orange giants, and the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius. I was always told by my science teachers that the largest stars are those classified as red giant stars. Well, by the name itself, red giants are really giant stars that are mostly 0.5 to 10 solar masses (0.5 to 10 times heavier than our sun) and the sizes of these kinds of star vary.


VY Canis Majoris compared to our sun. (Image from Wikipedia)

I was curious about stars that are very large that’s why I Googled for some answers. I was shocked while I was reading about a star with a catalog name of Mu Cephei which is classified as a red super giant. I didn’t know there was even a classification of a red super giant; I thought red giant is the largest kind of star. I kept on searching about stars that are red giants on steroids, and then I read about the VY Canis Majoris which is classified as a red hypergiant and is located in the constellation Canis Majoris. This star was first catalogued during 1801 but its absolute size was only discovered recently with the advent of space telescopes. Its size ranges from 1800 to 2100 solar radii, the largest and the most luminous of its kind and is 4,900 light years away from us.

There are googol^googolple (googol, 1 followed by one hundred zeros, googolplex is 10^googol) stars out there or maybe more and I think the stars we know today are just nothing compared to other undiscovered stars in the universe. Maybe in three years time, astronomers will be able to find a much larger star or maybe a star system that has an earth-like planet thriving.

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October 9, 2010

Sony A330's ISO Test

I always see blog posts about ISO tests of certain cameras and I always observe that they always capture images in a well-lighted room. Testing the ISO capability of your camera in a perfectly-lighted room is useless. Most often, the owners of these cameras are boasting that their systems produce little or no noise. Obviously, if there is perfect lighting for the subject, then there will be few or no noise in the digital image. I have heard that some expensive DSLRs can’t produce noise even at ISO 6400, way beyond the limit of my camera which is only 3200.

Increasing the ISO sensitivity of a camera will help brighten the image when the subject is not well lighted. Increasing the ISO level of the camera is also way better than using the built-in flash of a camera because these built-in flashes produce strong shadows when used in dark places.

So I decided to test my Sony A330’s ISO capability in a low-lighted room. Well, the results are quite promising for ordinary sizes like 3R and 4R but for 100% crop, some photos are unusable.


ISO 100


ISO 200


ISO 400


ISO 800


ISO 1600


ISO 3200

All of these images are unedited except for the comparisons between the full size and the 100% crop. Overall, Sony A330’s ISO sensitivity is excellent since the noise produced even at its maximum ISO level is still good for 4R or 3R prints. Adobe has also developed a software called Adobe Lightroom that has a feature that can remove noise without destroying much of the detail of a photo.

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August 12, 2010

Me Rivaling Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Michio Kaku

I just want to make my own view of the universe. You may be wondering why I am writing this but don’t worry, I’m not crazy. Some may find this post boring but I think someone out there likes this topic.


Credits: SpaceArt.co.uk

Most of us or maybe you are fascinated about the universe. When someone asks me how the universe was created, I would immediately answer the most famous theory of creation, the Big Bang. I can still remember when I was still in Grade six that there were theories like the Steady State Theory and the Bubble Universe existed but those two were sort of trashed when someone proved recently that the our universe is expanding. If you are going to ask me how big is the universe, well, it depends on when will you reach the question mark of that questions because the universe is still expanding up to this moment. Approximately, the universe as of this moment is 13 billion light years across; meaning, light will travel from one end to the other end of the universe for 13 billion years. That is also the approximate age of our universe.

Now, if you can conclude that our universe is way too big, you may be wondering about the “others”. You may be asking right now, “Where are they?” or speculate about the existence of aliens. There are a lot of reasons why we haven’t seen any aliens yet. One obvious reason is that the vast distance from one star to the other. We are sending radio signals to other stars hoping that any alien out there has a satellite dish and receives our signal. That’s rubbish! We are sending radio signals using our own electrical power but we have to consider that stars also emit radio signals and we all know how powerful stars are. It’s not just stars which produce massive amount of radio signals but also supernovas which is a hundred times more powerful than a normal star. The radio signals from the stars and supernovas will be mixed with our sent signal and thus destroying its form. The signal that will arrive to the alien’s receivers will be garbage not to mention we have obviously different languages. The other reason why we haven’t seen any aliens yet or aliens haven’t found us yet is that we humans and the species of the earth are not interesting. Similar to the analogy of man and ants, when we pass on an anthill, we don’t care who’s living there because for us, ants are not interesting. In this analogy, the humans are the aliens and the ants are us stealing food from the humans. Ants is somewhat interested in humans similar to us, we are interested about aliens.

Let’s talk about civilization. We have Mesopotamia, Persian, and a lot of civilizations we learned in our history class but at this point, we will be talking about the civilization in a universal scale. According to Michio Kaku, author of the book “Physics of the Impossible”, there are three types of civilization. Type 1 civilization is an empire who can control earthquakes, weather, climate, and anything planetary. Type 2 civilization is stellar; an empire who has exhausted the power of their planet and get their energy from their parent star. Type 3 civilization is galactic; they travel from one star to another star to acquire energy from it. If you are going to ask where we belong in these types of civilizations, well, according to Michio Kaku, we are type zero. We can’t control anything planetary and we get our energy mainly from fossil fuels not from the sun. Dr. Kaku has only three types of civilization but in my wildest opinion, there could be a type 4 civilization. Type 4 could be the creator civilization, our God. This civilization creates and watches the universes created by them. Sounds crazy but that’s the only way religion can get into physics and science - to be treated as the most powerful of all.

Now let’s go back to the universe. People nowadays are talking about when the world will end. I strongly believe that 2012 is a hoax. The movie is telling us that the earth, sun, and the center of the Milky Way will be aligned on December 21, 2012. Astronomers said that the alignment of the sun, earth, and the center of our galaxy happens every December and it’s not even a one day event, not only December 21 of each year. The end of humanity may not be exclusive as the end of the earth. But if ever the world will end on its own, one of the causes maybe is that our sun will undergo supernova and earth can’t withstand the blast. Another cause could be gamma burst from other stars that will directly hit and fry the earth. If we are going to imagine the end of humanity in a galactic scale and use the concept of the big bang and the expanding universe, there will be a time where everything will be ripped apart (a theory called the big rip). Just like a balloon being inflated, there will be a time that the balloon will explode. But the universe’s end will not be slightly different, instead there will be pieces or remnants like a blown up balloon, everything will be ripped from the atomic level and no one will ever survive, not even the type 3 civilization.

That’s all I can say as of this moment. I will write additional posts if I realize something.

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July 18, 2010

LightBox for Blogger

I actually planned to create a WordPress blog with a webhost because of the lightbox plug-in for WordPress but when I try to search for this plug-in for blogspot blogs, I was astonished that there’s a way to install the lightbox plug-in. I carefully followed the simple steps and after 5 minutes, one of the photos of my blog can be viewed using this plug-in. You can view the tutorial in the BloggerPlugins.org website.


Click to view image using lightbox plug-in.

The next day after installing the lightbox plug-in, I was so excited to take photos around so that I can make use of the plug-in. But before I can use this plug-in, there are some HTML codes to be changed.










Feel free to post comments on the photos. I am just starting in the field of photography that's why most of the photos taken looks crappy.

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About The Rookie Blogger

This is a personal blog of James Arnold. This blog contains posts about travel, technology, dining, and many more. James is also a freelance photographer that caters events such as weddings, debuts, birthdays, and even personal photoshoots.


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