Weekend Photographer: Alay lakad 2013, Antipolo City

Weekend Photographer is my blog post for my instant projects during my rest days.  My rest days varies sometimes in the weekend, other times in the middle of the week.  My wife doesn't tag along in these solo-projects, so I'll try my very best to write down what I've experienced during these weekend projects.  Just another addition to the many blog posts here, hope you guys like and enjoy.  Comments would be appreciated as always!

Lightroom 4 Geotag of the photos taken during my solo photo walk.

Right in the middle of summer, Antipolo my home town hosts an annual pilgrimage from Quiapo Church to Antipolo Cathedral held during the evening of Maundy Thursday (Roman Catholic Calendar). Church goers start to walk from Quiapo then straight to Antipolo (according to Google Maps the route covers an approximated distance of 27.3 km). 

I on the other hand was free and was on my rest day so I opted to walk along with the crowd and snap some photos, to practice photography in general.  

During this project, I honestly hesitated to pull out my camera in public since there might be  some thieves lingering about and with this in mind I still went on ahead and pulled out my camera but with my senses up a notch(if that makes any sense).

A puto vendor waiting for the people. 

So I brought along my camera(Canon 500d), camera bag which has 3 lenses( 50mm f/1.8, Canon 18-55mm(kit lens), Sigma70-300mm macro, flash, back up SD cards), a tripod, and a bottle of water.  You can say that I may be  dragging along a lot of stuff, and well see how this goes later.  

To me once you see this view, when travelling along Ortigas Extension Ave., you are in Antipolo.  A few meters later, you'll see the Capitol of Rizal(the dome structure behind the the trees) and Ynares Center.

Familiar sight, the Capitol of Rizal beyond the horizon.

When I travel to the main proper of Antipolo, I always thought of capturing this.  I'm not completely pleased with what I have right now but I may have to revisit this shot and do it all over again and recompose.

I didn't catch anything interesting on the way to the cathedral.  When I got to the church, this is where I used the tripod, since I planned to shoot panoramic and HDR images. Below is the result of what I did.

The photo below, is a merge of 3 or 5 images on different exposures, and merged them all together in Photoshop CS4.  I like the way it shows the people in motion, it gives more character to the image.

Antipolo Cathedral - HDR

A hint of rainbow

In the photo above, I set the camera low to make the church look bigger.  It's just unfortunate that I'm standing near a shade of a building or tree(not sure), and it is pretty obvious since the people on the foreground are all silhouette.  Although this gave my image a more interesting look as it leads the viewer back to the church as it is the main subject here. 

I went on to hang to hunt for some shots, I equipped the 50mm for low lit situations such as the image below.  It seems tight but I got the effect that I wanted.  Using candles as the main light source to get some people exposed in the least to show expression and a little detail.  

Snapping away

Another reason why I switched to a 50mm lens was due to the rain, so light was hidden by the clouds and the rain.  Luckily, the rain stopped after 10-15 minutes.  

Image on the right is a kid shooting his parents with a telephoto lens.  It's nice to see kids starting early with something that they might consider doing in the future.

Street sweeping kid

As I went back home, I saw more interesting sights, for example this kid on the photo above.  I noticed him sweeping the streets of Antipolo, even thought there were lots of people walking and some vehicles passing by. I just got lucky with this shot since I have a vehicle coming from behind to light the kid up to show how much dust and dirt he's sweeping.  I showed the shot to the kid and he smiled at me when he saw it.  

As I come in close to home, I setup my tripod again to shoot more motion and trace light and got some interesting results.  Good thing vehicles are still allowed to pass the streets, the traffic enforcers usually close the roads for any vehicles at a given time during the annual pilgrimage.

As I came home I immediately started on working on the photos that I shot.  I can say that I'm quite content with the results and was definitely ecstatic that I didn't lose any of my equipment.  

At first I didn't like the idea of venturing out in the streets with strangers all around but I wouldn't be able to produce any of the photos here.  There's no point in not trying, so just keep on shooting as always.