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!
Photos are “made”
Article Excerpt:
The best photo images are not taken anyway, they are “made,” and I have always thought that learning photo composition is not that much more different than learning anything else. Some people just catch on faster than others, but eventually with practice most people can do it. How long that will take mostly depends on how you go about it. The only real way to practice composing an image is by recording them on film, or digitally, so that you can see what you did right, and what you did wrong? It is actually all of your mistakes that teach you how to do it right the next time. However, just slapping a lens on your camera and shooting away is not the answer either. As the saying goes, “There has to be a method to the madness.”~by Paul W. Faust from his article The Art of Seeing: An Exercise in Photo Composition
The most active of shapes
Magazine Excerpt:
Shapes
The most active of shapes use diagonal lines – the triangle is an eye-catching building block for your picture. Its three sides also introduce odd numbers into the photographic vocabulary. As well as triangular-shaped subjects, think about the structure of your photograph – are there three elements you could join together with imaginary lines to form a triangle?
Four sided shapes such as squares and rectangles mirror the four sides of the picture frame – there’s no conflict there, so the viewing experience isn’t as absorbing. However, they can be used alongside diagonals and triangles to produce a more exciting image.
~Digital Camera Magazine: Master Composition
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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
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
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
Weekend Inspiration 22
Wishing everyone a lovely and inspiring weekend! Keep on clicking my friends!
Photo Quotes 113
You are the conductor – your orchestra are shapes, textures, stories, objects, patterns, emotions, design, moments, depth, focus, rhythm, shades, colour, movement and light. It is your performance. It is your vision.~Steve Coleman
Point and shoot like a pro
I lug around a medium-sized camera bag during photo walks and event coverages. Aside from my Canon DSLR with its 18-55mm lens, this bag contains the following: two extra lens (35-80mm and 75-300mm), an external flash unit, flash diffuser, battery charger and extra batteries (both for the camera and flash), lens hood and caps, a set of filters and extra memory cards. If the shooting situation calls for it, I bring along my sturdy tripod with its own carrying bag. If it’s a one week out-of-town trip with lots of possible shoots, my laptop and external hard disk goes with me. It’s a hassle bringing all of these along. And it’s just a hobby. Now imagine a gear guy (not me) with equipment enough to fill a small car, carrying such Fedex-sized baggage on a kilometer long trek up a mountain trail. Only to find upon reaching the top that the sun has settled over the horizon bidding him goodbye…and goodnight. This gear guy faces the perilous journey of hauling all his gear down the steep slope in darkness. The point? For casual city or nearby strolls, I just carry a point and shoot cam tucked conveniently in my belt pouch. I read somewhere that the best camera is what you have. If you have a DSLR and can’t part with it wherever you go, that’s your preference. But since last year I can’t seem to go out of the house without my P&S on my belt. Like my keys, wallet, cellphone and wristwatch, its an item that can not be left behind. Point and shoots now have risen above their lowly reputation with the latest compacts sporting long zoom capabilities, fast processors, large megapixels and tons of creative shooting modes. Others can even capture in RAW. In other words, point and shoots with prices lower than DSLRs have now become your all-in-one travel cam – smart, rugged, stylish, powerful, feature-filled and pocket-sized. Now all you have to do is understand the various settings and options to maximize the use of your P&S. You can start off with this article How to Use Your Point & Shoot Camera Like a Pro which gives a rundown on the most common shooting modes available on point and shoot digital cameras. The above image was captured with a 16-megapixel Nikon Coolpix with shooting mode at Landscape, picture mode set at Vivid, and post-processed with PhotoScape.
Artistic design amid the visual chaos
Article Excerpt: “It’s not difficult to show good examples of graphic design in photographs. I can present to you countless beautiful images with perfect compositions and with subjects that have striking or compelling shapes. The hard part is to go out in the woods, or the desert, or a city, and find graphic designs that are great. The world is, after all, a compositional mess. There are rocks, mountains, buildings, dirt, bushes, branches, and man-made objects all over the place. It’s our job as photographers to make sense of it, to find in all the visual chaos a design that is artistic and pleasing.”~Jim Zuckerman on Composition: Graphic Design
(Photo location: Cancabato Bay, Tacloban City)
Photo Quotes 57
For a photographer this is a magic moment… about 45 minutes before sunrise, light is already starting to push back the dark. I open my camera and let nature paint me a picture.~Steve Coleman
Rise early
What a title coming from someone who is a certified late riser and sunset shooter. I probably have only a couple of dozen sunrise shots from my vast collection of outdoor images. But whether sunrise or sunset, these are the magic hours sought by photographers. And the rare times I get to personally greet the dawn, it is always worth the while (and the effort of getting up from bed). Lots of photographic moments happen during early morning, and these include the mood of the surroundings, the stillness of things, the almost monotone color, elemental shadows and forms, and the slight tinge of light in the horizon preparing for day to break out. The unholy early hours always beckon. It is such an enigmatic power that pulls you at the core, touching your consciousness, pricking your heart, hugging your persona. Such is the feeling maybe because all your senses take it in – cool breeze caress your skin, the scent of salty sea overpower your nostrils, the shrill cries of birds passing overhead echo in your ears, and the soft watercolored views delight the eyes. You get your camera and snap on, hoping to capture what you feel, hoping to freeze the sensual bliss. A picture may not only speak a thousand words, it also convey emotions accumulated during the moment. Rise early. I’ll include that in my resolutions this coming New Year. (Photo location: Cancabato Bay, Tacloban City)
Photo Quotes 52
You can put this feeling into a picture. A painter can do it. And a musician can do it and I think a photographer can do that too and that I would call the dreaming with open eyes.~Ernst Haas (Photo location: Cancabato Bay, Tacloban City)
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Of course it’s all luck.~Henri Cartier-Bresson (Photo location: Tacloban City Sangyaw Festival)
Capturing the decisive moment
It was the famous photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson who coined the term “decisive moment” and described it as “the moment the photographer is creative.” It is that fraction of a second where the photographer tells his story in a single shot. It may not always be freeze-framed, gravity-defying images of people hurling, jumping or wheezing through the air (think of frenetic sports action) though they certainly are decisive snaps. It may be ordinary street scenes or special family events (your kid blowing candles on his birthday cake) or like the accompanying picture, a festival performer who momentarily looked at me (all the others did not). A split second later he was back to doing the choreographed routine with the other performers. It is the moment which, if you missed it, you might never have a chance to capture again. The secret? Oh there’s no secret, its still the common “patience, practice and persistence” approach as expounded in this article 5 Tips for Documenting the Decisive Moment. Some may say its all a matter of luck. Well, if you are not prepared to capture the decisive moment that flashed right before your eyes, then better luck next time. If there’s a second time. (Photo location: Tacloban City Sangyaw Festival)
Photo Quotes 25
Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.~Peter Adams (Photo location: Sangyaw Festival, Tacloban City)
Photo Quotes 14
The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.~Brooks Atkinson (Photo location: Cancabato Bay, Tacloban City)
Pondering patterns
Patterns are all around us. Finding patterns is a matter of practice. Together with perspectives, lines, shapes, angles, contours and colors, they provide dramatic elements to an image. They draw the eye to the picture, produce a certain feel, and make for an interesting visual display. I found this concise and informative article from PhotoTuts titled A 10 Step Guide to Understanding and Utilizing Pattern. Follow it and create interesting and striking images. (Photo location: San Juanico Bridge, Tacloban City, Leyte province)
Life is like a good black and white…
When I started taking pictures almost a decade ago, I shunned black and white (B&W). I mean, we see in color so why dabble in pictures that seem to have been taken from a vintage TV show? I basked in the vivid and the vibrant and the colorful. Until I saw online the works of Ansel Adams, Andre Kertesz, Elliot Erwitt, Diane Arbus, Alfred Stieglitz and other monochrome masters. I was stunned. “Black and white are the colors of photography”, said Robert Frank, another legendary photographer. Indeed, the elegance, art and aesthetics of black and white photography cannot be disputed. So now during photo walks, I see to it that I take images suited for this photography genre. With today’s digital cameras, it is easy to take black and white pictures. Or take colored pics and convert them to B&W during post-processing. However, like the article on the difference between a snapshot and a photograph in an earlier post, there are things to consider in order to come up with a good B&W image. Most enthusiasts and professionals know what to look out for, but for those starting out (and those who need a refresher like me) here is an article on B&W photography tips from PictureCorrect. By the way, the title of this post was taken from a quote by Karl Heiner: “Life is like a good black and white photograph, there’s black, there’s white, and lots of shades in between.” (Photo location: At the lobby of Hotel Alejandro, Tacloban City)
Junsjazz Images & Inspiration 