Manila, Easter Sunday Photowalk (part 2)

 The siblings



Bananas in the crowd

A man peddles boiled bananas in the middle of the crowd under the soft morning sun.




Go ate, do the walk!



Bikes can carry more

Bikes can carry more than people and things, smiles too.




Family Day

Sunday is family day




Stroller strolling down the street

A baby taken out for a Sunday morning walk



                      Boy
                      
The boy looks for food in old ice cream containers his family brought to store food.




                      Can't walk well, so he bikes
                      
Disability is not hindrance to move.




                      Not a money for food
                      
A scavenger opens up a plastic bag of thrown food, hoping to find scraps for breakfast.




                      Morning bathers
                      
Rest after a refreshing swim.




                      Morning bathers II
                      


                     Divine shelter
                     
Father and daughter seeks shelter for the night under a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Manila, Easter Sunday Photowalk (part 1)

                                       Balloon Man
                                       


                                      Balloon Man and the Flower Woman
                                      


                                     The boy and the morning sun
                                    
A young boy selling balloons on a Sunday morning. I pray to God that one day he will be living a better life. Just dream boy, just dream and go for them.


Fishing for lunch

A man, waiting for a bite. His catch will be his lunch or if he's lucky, will last for the whole day.


The busy Sunday bathers

Southern part of Manila's Baywalk, filled with weekend swimmers.


The busy Sunday bathers II

The northern view of baywalk, filled with weekend swimmers.


Out with friends



Sunrise smiles

A mom and her friend, smiling at the morning Sunday sun.


Space-retro bikes



Family Day II



The lady at the house of God

An old lady at the church. I was watching her for a while. She's not really begging for money, but just stands there. She has a very beautiful face, one can even tell how beautiful she was when she was younger. Her tattooed eyebrows and sharp nose, tells something about her past and her ancestry. I kept on wondering what happened to her, what made her to what she is and what is she doing there. I can tell she's not like that in the past, but what happened?


When everyone went home

Manila's Red Light district, early in the morning, when everyone was either taken home or went home.


Oh my morning

Near the front of a famous gay club. All that's left after a night of merry drinking and dancing, are the scandalous stories of love and lust on the street where many hearts find refuge and cravings indulged.


Susi?

Susi or sushi?


Morning Sun

A peaceful scene on an Easter Sunday morning. A piece of a little peace, in the middle of Manila's clubbing district.

Selecting lenses for your shooting style

Lenses are very important, they are the eyes of your camera, for obvious reasons. One thing I love about Canon is that they have so many lenses to fit a lot of budgets. They generally have two kinds of lenses. One is the general type of lenses that fits a wide variety of budget types and the L lenses. The L in the L lenses stands for Luxury. These lenses are very expensive, some are even more expensive than a car or even a house. They are heavy, bulky, and attention grabbing. Despite all the bulk in price and size, these are the top of the line lenses Canon has and are very very sharp, as in "I can see your pores" sharp and fast (more about this in another post), most L lenses are weather sealed.


So what lenses do you need? Again, what do you want to shoot?

• Portraits - the longer the focal range and the wider the aperture, the better. Lenses with wide apertures are essential in portraiture, because it gives a very nice bokeh or depth of field. Bokeh is the blur used to isolate the subject from its background or foreground. Focal range also affects the the amount of background blur. Factors affecting blur are: Aperture and the subject's distance from the background as well as the photographer's distance from the foreground. However, when choosing the focal range of the lens, you better consider the working space you will be using. 

• Landscapes - wide lenses are primarily used in this type of photography. There are Wide Angles and Ultra Wide Angles, wide starts at 35mm(or so) below, You really don't need a wide aperture to shoot landscapes, because during the night, you will need a tripod for those light streaks and you will absolutely need a tripod to shoot night time landscapes because you will be using a small aperture to make everything in the frame sharp.

• Street Photography/Documentary - You need a fast lens. In street photography, not only you need your best judgement to spot a subject but also speed. A certain scene can be gone away in a few seconds, so you better be armed with a fast lens on this type of photography.  There are two ways to do documentary or street photography... The "In the Scene" style, where the photographer blends in with the crowd of where he searches for a particular scene or subject, he gets to know them and interacts with his environment. This way, the photographer becomes invisible and accepted by blending and interacting, people gets comfortable with his presence allowing him to shoot as he like and has their silent "go ahead take a picture" acknowledgment. The "Invisible Stalker" type, the one that shoots from far away and keeps his presence hidden from his subjects or makes them think he is not shooting them at all, one will need a fast telephoto lens for this style of street shooting.

• Macro - Taking super close ups of different objects requires a special lens called Macro lens. Macro lenses allows the photographer to take super close ups by enabling them to focus on the subject at super near distances, like several inches close.