Aliwan Festival 2008

Aliwan Festival 2008 (for more photos). The country's largest gathering of different festivals from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Held last May 1-3, starting from the Quirino Grandstand and culminating in front of the Aliw Theater. Sorry for the late post. Anyway after almost 2 weeks of not posting, I'm aching to kick of this month with some of my shots during the festival. This is actually my first time to watch an event as huge as this. More or less 22 different contingents gathered to fight for the 1M pesos grand prize for the best street dance performance and for bragging rights. The mood was very festive. I was there as early as 930AM. Because after reading other blogs, I figured that there would be thousands who will also watch the show, so I thought, in order for me to shoot good pictures I ought to find a good vantage point early. As early as 2PM, me, including several other photographers were already all lined up just below the judges stand. There was some tension though when some of the organizers said that only media personnel and official photographers were allowed in that area. I approached this very nice lady, I think the head organizer, too bad I didn't get her name and asked if we could at least occupy a small area so that we could shoot for their photo contest. She asked me to show her my camera so that she could confirm I was legit and not some spectator just wanting to get a good view. After doing so, she agreed. Otherwise I would've stood there for more than 5 hours, only to find out I won't have a good view of the festival. So at around 3PM we were all settled. Cameras already brought out, anticipating the big event. But to everyone's disappointment, at around 4PM, it started to rain really hard for more than an hour or so. Everybody scrambled for cover. This delayed the festival by 3 to 4 hours. I was hoping to start shooting at around 6PM where at least there is still enough light to get me good action shots. But to my disappointment, the street dance started around 9PM I think. As any problem with a standard telephoto lens - not enough light causes blurring due to low speeds. Which reminds me, I really need to save up to either get a better lens or a Speedlight. Anyway, through patience and sheer luck maybe, thankfully I have managed to produce shots without motion blurring. Another added problem was when after the rain, the area that was supposed to be occupied by photographers were already occupied by all sorts of people. And as you can imagine, there was a lot of pushing around which made it even more difficult to shoot at night. I took about more than 250 shots and saved about only half of them. Anyway, it was one heck of an experience. Good experience. Next year I know better. Not unless I have a better set of lens. I won't wait for them to reach the end of the parade. I'd go to the starting point and shoot away.