Aliwan Festival

It's almost that time of the year again! I mean fiesta or festival time!

I'm sharing here a photo taken during the Aliwan Festival 2 years ago. This is the mother of all festivals as it includes the contingent from other regions of the Philippines. This year, it's going to be held on April 11 - 13, 2013.

I have written about this festival in my HubPages. Here is the link: http://jill-of-alltrades.hubpages.com/hub/I-Recommend-the-Aliwan-Festival-in-the-Philippines

motion blur

When photographing some street activity like dancing, it's usually hard to decide what to focus on. There are so many points of interest like the costume, the people, the activity itself or even the reactions of spectators. All of these usually require different camera settings in order to get the real feel of what is happening. What usually happens (in my case anyway), is I win some and lose some shots.

Anyway, what I am sharing today is a photo wherein I used a slow shutter speed to get the motion blur effect of the swirl of the dancer's dress. The same effect can of course be obtained using photoshop. However, I usually prefer to produce the effect while shooting rather than during post processing.

Can you feel the rhythm of the dance?

have you ever tried street dancing?

Have you ever tried street dancing? If you haven't, I suggest that you do. One good way to do that is to join the Ati-atihan festival which is being celebrated every 3rd Sunday of January here in the Philippines. The celebration actually lasts for about a week and culminates on the 3rd Sunday of January. The eve and the final day are the best ones to join.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned the origin as well as the highlights of this festival.

It has been years since I last joined this festival so I had the time of my life when I joined last weekend. I did not have time to put on a costume and some paint on my face though. Still, I had fun dancing.

saying hello without goodbye

Hello,
I was out for a week but was not able to say goodbye. Well, nobody seems to have noticed because I did not receive any inquiry. Anyway, I had to attend to some family matters in the province and didn't have a chance to say goodbye before I left.

I'm back today and I wish to share with you one of the photos I took while I was in the province. I was lucky my trip happened to coincide with the Ati-atihan festival there.

The festival is like a mardi gras but with a religious flavor. People paint their faces black, wear colorful tribal costumes, and dance in the streets while carrying statues of the Child Jesus.

The activity commemorates the agreement of peace between the Christians (Spaniards) and the original natives called Atis or Aetas (dark-skinned people). The Christians gave a replica of the Child Jesus (Sto. Nino)to the natives while the latter gave food to the Christians.

Anybody can join in the festivities. The frenzied beat of the drums usually makes even timid souls forget about inhibitions and just join in the fun. Somebody once commented that the festival gives license to anybody to go crazy and nobody will mind (as long as you don't hurt yourself or anybody else in the process). So the festival is a good stress reliever.

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.