Rodelyn's images, continued...

Feb.21, 2007 Manila Philippines

Olympus E-1, Olympus Zuiko 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 Digital, 1/320s f/3.5 at 45.0mm iso200

Rodelyn's images continue today - she's a beautiful & intelligent English-speaking homeless child from Manila who was left behind - homeless, destitute & hungry by her AMERICAN mother & Filipino father when the parents moved to the USA - and now Mama Josie (Rosa's auntie) has found her sleeping on the street & taken her in...she has nothing but the clothes on her back)

Good Monday morning to you all - I'm dealing with a headcold today, but it's not severe - so I'm just plugging along, like the SLOW internet here (bandwith is tanking today, with very slow pageloads thanks to svs. provider GlobeLines), and I'll try to sweat it out later in the heat here (it's very humid today & yesterday, and was 90 degrees by 8:30am)

Onto Rodelyn's images - all the current images of her & Rosa/Edison were shot available light, with hellish contrast in some images outside, so it was a bit of work to post-process them, and I'm still working on more, but please understand the difficult lighting conditions I was trying to work around, on the fly (I don't 'set up' shoots with the kids & Families - I shoot their daily life & routine as it happens when I arrive, so I have to deal with whatever conditions exsist when I walk in - the images are far from 'perfect', but they are very 'real'.

Her physical condition worries me - I know she has some rice at Mama Josie's abandonded shelter they all live in, but there's not much of anything else there for her; some veggies & bread - so I brought them what I could afford while I was there last week.

I also noticed many circular scars on the top of her head - she also has these on her legs, ankles & feet - probably common insect bites from sleeping on the sidewalks; it's common in these children and they scratch them so they bleed a little then scab over, etc.

That may have been the reason someone cut all her hair off recently - we laughed about it last week when I told her I thought she was a boy - and she instantly corrected me with "...I'm a GIRL..."

With all she's been through, Rodelyn is always smiling & laughing, and has a wonderfull sence of humor.

Olympus E-1, Olympus Zuiko 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 Digital: 1/125s f/3.5 at 14.0mm iso100