The Sangyaw Festival of Tacloban City
Today, June 30, is the fiesta celebration of my home city of Tacloban in the central Philippines. It is highlighted by the Sangyaw (local word for dance) Festival. It is a dazzling street parade showcase of pomp and pageantry, of costumes and choreography. This was taken in 2011, the last time I was in Tacloban. If you follow world news, Tacloban City may sound familiar to you. In early November 2013, it was ground zero and in the direct path of Typhoon Haiyan, a category 5 super typhoon, the strongest cyclone to hit land packing sustained winds of 315 kph. It left more than 6,000 dead and over 1,000 missing, most of them in Tacloban. Today, after a year and a half, I have heard the city has recovered from the devastation. And I hope the celebration this day will continue the tradition of people carrying those festive smiles, graceful poses and a resilient spirit. God bless them!
A new chapter in this life journey
Starting tomorrow August 19, 2013, I become part of a U.S.-based advertising agency. The company president invited me to join her team of creative professionals to do work on a full-time basis. The job includes writing online content and designing blogs and websites – things that are right down my alley. I’ll be a remote staff, doing work from home. This post is not about saying goodbye to blogging. Previously I was doing online freelance work so I had more time in my hands, enabling me to do multiple posts a day early on when I started this blog October last year. By tomorrow I may not be able to follow my habit (yes it has become a habit) of daily posting. This blog will continue but not on its frenetic pace, it will slow down a bit. I still have many pictures to share together with experiences, stories and learnings. I thank all of you my blogging peers for making this online activity for the past 10 months very worthwhile, enjoyable and meaningful. But, probably like every one of you, blogging is just one chapter of my life. There are others, and for me a new one starts tomorrow which requires my undivided time and skill. I will have to focus on that. For the meantime this is JJ saying “Take care my friends and keep on clicking!”
Island dwellers
These are actual island dwellers I’ve encountered during my travels to far-flung provinces. They are fishermen, children, kids – people who live simple lives and enjoy their natural surroundings. They don’t have elegant homes, fashionable clothes, regular work or a lifestyle to speak of. I don’t even think they have cellphones. In the first place there are no signals in these remote places. What do they have? An affinity with nature that we, dwellers of the metropolitan jungle, so obviously lack. And the barest of their needs to live a life are aptly provided for by nature’s resources, right at their doorstep. God bless these island dwellers, these people of the sea.
Cuts through the clutter
These photos were taken earlier in the week during a local festival. People were in colorful, native attire. But that’s just it, I get color fatigue after featuring full vibrant pictures the whole week. If you’re new to this blog, I reserve weekends for monochrome, a respite from the magnificence of color and a return to the striking simplicity of black and white. Since these are festival images, expectedly they are filled with people and details rendering them almost a dissonance of forms, a disarray of shapes. Yet in black and white, one still finds order – a harmony of mood, expressions, movement and drama. No wonder black and white is the preferred medium for portraits, photojournalism, street and people photography. It cuts through the clutter and presents purity even with subjects in seeming disorder. It was father of Canadian photojournalism Ted Grant who said:
When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!
All the best to everyone! Keep on clicking!
Photo Quotes 167
Every image needs strong underlying compositional order so that it grabs the eye from a hundred feet away…If it can’t grab the eye from a distance, it will never be an interesting photo, regardless of how many fine details it might have. Details don’t matter if there’s no story behind it.~Ken Rockwell
The expressive tool of B&W
Article Excerpt:
When we look at photographs or any images do we really need the colour aspect of the information to “see” the message the image is trying to convey? The monochrome image has been around for well over 100 years and even considering the advancements in image making and print production there remains a desire for people to see monochrome images to this day. It could be said that when we look at a monochrome image the very fact that the colour information is missing seems not to have a detrimental effect in many images…
It would be simple to say that the only discernable difference between monochrome photographs and colour photographs is the absence of colour but I believe this to be not true at all. If we are to pursue the making of fine monochrome photographs then we must understand a world with no means of chromatic expression and accept we enter a different discipline. I have seen several “colour” photographers attempt the passage into monochrome and stumble and fall without being able to fully verbalize why. The reason is that a photographer must fully understand how a particular subject will be expressed in a range of tones with the removal of colour. If monochrome is to become an expressive tool in your armoury of image making then you must eradicate the thought process “it looks good in colour so it might look good in black and white” frame of mind. If only it was that simple!
~Paul Gallagher from his article Black & White Photography – Why Take Photographs in Black and White?
The mark of its maker
Outlines, forms, shadows, shapes, lines, light, tones, textures – these are the ingredients of black and white photography. Have fun with your imagery. Play with the elements and composition. Love the light. Bask in contrast. Experiment. Crop to exclude and emphasize. Discover. Assess with your eye. Process with your brain. Capture with your heart. With these, I can offer no other more meaningful tips when it comes to making monochrome images. With tools and knowledge, it all boils down to you – the creator and artist. After all, each picture is an individual mark of its maker.
Framing elements
Boats in themselves are uninteresting subjects. You may frown in confusion what with a whole series of boat images filling my posts for the whole week. Boats per se are boring. You may notice that with the boat pictures I have posted so far they are always framed with some other elements – people, sunrise, beach, ports, sky, clouds, splash of water, etc. Supporting elements, background and foreground placements and overall composition will provide appeal to an image. Though boats take center stage in this week’s picture series, they may not always be the point of interest. They may take on secondary, supporting roles. The picture above may have the boat as focal point, right smack in the middle of a 16:9 aspect ratio, but what really drives the image are those large brooding clouds that may signal an upcoming thunderstorm. That is a dramatic image that foretells a story – a vessel at sea being chased by a thunderstorm. The photo below may not be high-impact, and this time the fisherman is the main cast. But it also tells a tale – the sun is high and the fisherman decides to “park” his boat in an island and take a rest under the cool shade of coconut trees. Framing elements in a photo may seem to add clutter and distraction from the main subject. But a careful arrangement of these elements simply leads the eye to the point of interest and strengthens the message or story. It’s a technique tested and used time and again. Let me close this piece with something from Annie Leibovitz:
One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.
Boat week
It will be a week-long images of boats – large and small, fast and slow, empty or with people. The Philippines is an archipelago with 7,100 islands and a combined coastline of 23,000 kilometers. Though airplanes provide fast, convenient means of transport to major cities, it is the boat, from large inter-island ferries that carry a couple of thousand passengers to small dozen seaters, that are preferred by most of the budget-conscious traveling population. Smaller ones are workhorses of the country’s fishermen. And of course, island-hopping with these boats provides a different kind of adventure. All aboard! Have a great week ahead my friends!
Photo Quotes 162
It’s not your story, it belongs to your subject. You must never forget that.~Edmond Terakopian
Secondary role
Windows and doors are interesting main subjects. But they can also play a secondary role. Since their geometric shapes are mainly squares and rectangles, they are perfect for framing primary subjects or points of interest. I was at this antique house (over a century old), and I was composing a shot of the old, open window (the white checkered design in the sliding shutters are made of local capiz shells). Then out of the blue from the inside of the house, a photo buddy suddenly appeared and was bent on taking a shot perched on the window. I pressed the shutter. The window was now relegated to an important supporting role – nicely framing the main subject. It is with situations like this that one has to be ready, from shifting composition to changing focal points, with literally “finger on the trigger.”
Understanding the DM
Article Excerpt:
What he was talking about was only one type of shooting: call it journalism, documentary photography, spot news photography, interpretative or environmental portraiture – even snapshooting.
Cartier-Bresson was talking about photography of the evanescent, of the here and now. The kind of photography that, in many ways, defines the entire craft, the entire art.
Most photography, but especially this kind, has a tenuous reputation for truth-telling largely because of the camera’s, if not always the photographer’s, ability to record events objectively. In fact photography is unique among the visual arts, not only because a photograph cannot be created from (sometimes clouded or prejudiced) memory, but because the subject of the photograph – and not really the photographer – determines absolutely what that depiction will be.
That is to say, Richard Avedon may trip the shutter when he makes a portrait, but the subject’s face and surroundings are what actually burn the image onto the film. Of course, Avedon brings hugely important elements into the equation as well: his talent for composition, for lighting, and of course, his sense of when his subject’s expression becomes, for Avedon, “the picture.”
~Fra nk Van Riper from his article Creating The Decisive Moment
Photo Quotes 160
A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.~Bill Brandt
Know what the event is
Article Excerpt:
It goes without saying that if you want to photograph a festival, you should know what the festival is all about! You should know how it originated, what it commemorates, and what the significance is, in relation to the current times. Armed with this knowledge, you could decide your “workflow” – the series of pictures you should take to record the event without missing out on any important picture taking opportunity. In other words, do your homework and plan out your strategy rather than going to the festival and then taking photos haphazardly. If you are new to the location or if you have not covered such a festival earlier, it would be wise to ask the locals about the path of the procession, the type of ceremonial floats, the time for the event to start, and whatever other information that you think will help you in your picture-taking project. If you can check out the details with the organizing committee, so much the better, as the information could be more specific, and more reliable. All this takes time, so make sure you don’t think of ‘what-am-I-supposed-to- do’ at the last minute. Remember though, a festival may not necessarily have a parade and floats.
~Rohinton Mehta from his article How To Photograph Festivals
Headless
These are headless and sometimes bodiless shots that you will not find in any well-meaning photojournalism or travel publication. It will not pass the scrutiny of photo editors. And as a photographer you know it’s a no-no to chop off the head. Even casual snapshooters know that. Of the many Philippine festivals I’ve covered, I take in the big picture most of the time, that’s how you photograph precision, choreography and action of performers and participants. But I also have this tendency to zoom in on body parts and details particularly lower extremities, capturing the dynamics of the human form during still moments or split-second movement. These images from the Dinagyang Festival may not find its way into magazines but heck, they sure found their way into my photographic mind and heart. The non-traditional can also be fascinating.
To be fair, some of my “traditional” shots of festivals have been used in in-flight magazines and travel websites.
Photo Quotes 159
It’s the subject matter that counts. I’m interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can’t always see. ~Harry Callahan
Expressions
This to me is the joy of informal people photography – being able to capture pure, spontaneous, unrehearsed, off-the-cuff moments of genuine expressions, such as in this series of images taken at a local water festival.
First code: observe
In more than 500 posts, I have mentioned one time or another that photographers are voyeurs, predators, opportunists, hunters, watchers and observers. Some of these descriptions may not be that flattering. But you have to admit that when you go on location and events, such as festivals, your photographer instinct kicks in and, whether you are aware of it or not, you follow the first code of photographers – observe. For what? For the interesting, appealing, amusing or unusual. You look out for colors, situations, actions and what people are doing.
The above photo was of a festival participant. The event celebrates nationalism and people were garbed in native local costumes that came in many variations. I eyed this guy in indigenous woven hat with scarf and long-sleeved shirt. In other words, he was in a very traditional attire reminiscent of what people wore in my country during the late 1800s and early 1900s. With this information, now you know why I just had to take a picture of the guy. Its the contrast in the image, he with a modern gadget while clad in literally age-old fashion. There are lots of delightful subjects and situations during people-filled events. You just have to watch eagle-eyed and observe.
Stories and portraits
Article Excerpt:
Telling a story
To document a festival it’s important to choose a variety of subject matter. Don’t just take random pictures of revelling crowds as they rarely make great pictures. Instead, focus on individual participants who are dressed up, capture details of costumes and try to make shots that are representative of the festival – dances, floats, musicians, the crowd’s enjoyment.
Get variety in your shots by framing vertically and horizontally and changing viewpoints (look for walls, balconies, rooftops) to give different perspectives. Don’t focus solely on main events, the peripheral activities are usually very photogenic too – think ‘behind-the-scenes’ shots, such as dancers dressing up, vendors selling knick-knacks, and so on.
A festival is also a great time to take portraits – people are in a festive, relaxed mood and are more open to being photographed. Plus you’ll have hundreds of different models to choose from! Have all your settings ready on your camera and work fast as you don’t get a lot of time to compose and shoot.
~Jean-Bernard Carillet from his article Capturing the Moment on Camera at Festivals
Visual feast
Festivals are my perennial favorites. My country isn’t lacking in this colorful cultural event. Almost every city and town, from the metropolis to far-flung villages, celebrate an annual fiesta or festival in honor of a patron saint, of good harvest, or of a product the place is known for. Why are festivals such great subjects? They are literally visual feasts with the explosion of colors, pomp and pageantry, street parades, choreography and movement, and of course people, lots of them. You can capture expressions, freeze motion and action, experiment with blur and the swirl of colors. And you get to shoot that “decisive moment” such as with the image below, taken at one of the premiere Philippine tourism events – the Dinagyang Festival of Iloilo City.
I have had a previous post on how to capture celebrations like this. You may want to read the article Focusing On Festivals. I also have a whole issue, Issue #6, of the Junsjazz Digital Magazine devoted to images of fiestas and festivals that I have covered. It’s the start of the week and I’m back to full color photography and I’d like to focus on people and festivals. Expect images and articles on this topic for the rest of the week. Thanks!
Imagery with black and white
Article Excerpt:
In an age of digital photography, a lot of us appreciate the visual impact and elegance of black and white photography when juxtaposed with color photography. Black and White photography is not simply a result of old technology of a bygone era. Black and white is a technique that we can still employ today to enhance our photography. With black and white photography, we are allowed to see the world beyond colors. With black and white photography, we can control moods. With black and white photography, we can highlight details we normally would not see in color. Ultimately, with black and white photography, it is a technique that can enhance our ability to tell our story through imagery. However, unlike color photography, many of us have trouble creating artistic or compelling black and white photos.
~The Art of Black and White Digital Photography from Intructables.com
All about light and shadow
Article Excerpt:
Black and white photography can seem dull next to the burst of colours emitted by colour photography, which creates a feeling of optimism and joy. Today, however, people are rediscovering the purity, beauty and power of black and white photography, which strips the image of the interpretive colours and has the ability to portray the timelessness, deep human emotions of pain, loss or despair.
Although the subject you are photographing is an important element of the picture, there are some other important factors to consider when shooting black and white photography. Basically, black and white photography is all about light and shadow. If you want to create stunning images, you need to learn to use these elements to compose your photos effectively and correctly. Experiment with the quality and intensity of light and try to take pictures of a subject at different times of the day and notice how light and shadow can affect the mood of the photo. For example, take a picture of a subject on a cloudy day, and then photograph the same subject on a bright day.
~The Art of Black and White Photography from fotoLARKO.com
Enjoying the cinematic feel
I have been playing with this 16:9 aspect ratio and I’m loving it. Based on what I’ve picked up on my online readings and personal experiences, I found that this aspect ratio provides the following:
- A cinematic feel
- A whole expanse of placing your subjects
- A great way of having a negative space
- A different way of “macroing” focusing only on certain parts of the subject
- A splendid landscape view
Recently I have shifted to using 1:1 square format in my black and white images, now I’ll be using regularly the 16:9 and utilize its full potentials in my color photography. There is so much to learn and I’m enjoying it in this photographic journey of discovery and expression.
Junsjazz Images & Inspiration 