my first OTS

I was just a month old in my club when I experienced my first OTS. I did not even know what an OTS was then, but I kind of just figured out what it means based on how everybody was talking about it. So I learned that it stands for “on the spot” shoot or painting or anything on the spot.

Anyway, my first OTS was a festival. I have heard of the festival before and I learned that one of our club members won the top prize photo of the festival the year before. Everyone was excited because we were hoping to duplicate what happened the year before. Since our club had a big delegation, we decided to break up into groups with each group having a senior member as guide. I was lucky to be assigned under the guidance of last year’s winner.

We got to the festival site early so we were able to take some shots as the participants prepared and rehearsed their numbers. I have never taken festival photos before and even if I prepared by reading on the best camera settings for shooting festivals, I still had to fiddle around with my camera buttons because there was so much movement. I also got separated from our guide and I did not have anybody to consult with. We found each other later though when it started to rain and we had to scamper for cover.

The rain poured real hard as several of us tightly squeezed together under a very small tent. We got wet anyway but we kept our cameras dry by covering them with plastic bags.

When it seemed that the rain was not going to stop for a while, some participants started getting impatient and they started dancing even in the rain. Since it was hard to keep on changing my camera settings, I just set it in burst and P mode and kept on shooting even if I could not see anything in the rain. Well, I’m glad I did that because when I later reviewed the shots I made I still came up with some good ones. And my favorite shot is the one I share today. I also discovered a very apt quotation for the photo. So here it is, it's titled "rain dance".

By the way, this photo won 2nd prize in our club photo contest for that festival. So getting wet was all worth it.