MANILA, Philippines?Fil-Am photographer Yen Baet won the National Geographic Exceptional Experience Photo Contest early this month for her entry ?Rainy Night in Hallstatt.?
What exceptional experience went into that award-winning shot?
Yen, interviewed by the Inquirer via email, was unable to pinpoint just what it was. She remembers waiting for the rain to stop on that cold autumn day in Hallstatt, Austria, two years ago.
?I only planned one night in Hallstatt,? she recalled. She sat for more than an hour on the last pew in an empty Church praying for the rain to stop.
?Twilight came and it was still raining,? she remembered. So she proceeded up a hill anyway, using her umbrella to protect her camera. She looked down from where she had come: ?It looked like a dream,? she said in another interview with FilAm Ako online. ?There it was, the Church sitting quietly on the still lake, grazed by wisps of low-lying clouds and embraced in soft mystical light.
?That was to be my fairy tale,? she said.
Baet won for herself a nine-day trip for two to the Incan mountaintop ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru worth about $13,000.
Yen has always lived a transient life.
?I was born in Ozamiz City, but was raised in different parts of the Philippines due to my father?s occupation. I also lived in Iloilo, Cebu, Manila, Laguna and Pampanga. I attended most of my grade school and high school in Canossa College, a Catholic school in San Pablo City, and attended college, finished with a degree in English, in Holy Angel University in San Fernando Pampanga.?
She and her family migrated to the US in the 90?s. She has lived in Japan and Germany as well, and is now based in England.
She has always loved the arts??drawing or painting, writing poetry and stories, or doing crafts,? she said.
She often had a point-and-shoot camera with her through her travels. ?When I got a digital SLR as a present on Christmas of 2007, that?s when I got serious about my photography and started my self-tutoring in the early months of 2008.
?I have had numerous adventures in my travels and photography. My portfolio is largely based on night images, of which a good percentage is taken during twilight or what photographers like to call the ?the blue hour.? For a female photographer to be out there shooting at night, you can just imagine how adventurous or dangerous that might be?it depends on how you look at it.
?Standing in the middle of the street with a tripod and a big camera for instance, is sure to attract a crowd. At night, my curious crowd tends to be drunks, party goers or just mere hecklers. Some will get in front of my camera during long-exposure shots or just hover behind me and look over my LCD screen. Sometimes, I get to meet friendly photographers on location and on some occasions, self-righteous photographers question what I do or why I?m there. I don?t get intimidated at all.
?It?s not only in photography, but also in anything you do in life where you have great expectations that you must give something first. In photography, it?s passion ? It?s not easy to push yourself to wake up before dawn to catch the sunrise or stay out late at night while dinner is getting cold at home, but it?s those little sacrifices you make that help you become better and ultimately, help you find that ?perfect shot,? if there is such a thing.
?I still consider myself to be in the early stages of photography and it feels odd to be giving advice when I am still learning myself. But I know for sure that all the dedication, hard work and most of all, the passion, you put in is all worth it in the end. After all, these will not go unnoticed. It will show in your photographs.?
