This is the yearly event that people in the publishing and technology industries as well as hobbyist photographers look forward to every year. Huge discounts on camera equipment, photography seminars and a lot of partying await amateur and professional photographers alike. The event will go on from Febrary 2 to 6, 2007 all around the metro.
For detailed information about Photoworld Manila, click here. Registration costs P4,000 for the seminars.
I’m posting the three “best” photos I took during the World Pyro Olympics and as far as I can remember, illustrate how I took them. May I reiterate that I am not a professional photographer and that most of the tips I got from shooting fireworks was taken from online tutorials and from Anton. Click on the images for the full size. You can also click here for my Flickr gallery.
Photo Tip Number 1: Catch the trail
This is the ‘Spanish Sojourn.’ To catch the trail, you must make sure that the streak shooting up is very visible to the eye. Using bulb mode and a dark cloth / cardboard, expose when the flare shoots up and expose again (use the dark cloth) when the fireworks are at full bloom.
Photo Tip Number 2: Paint the flower vase
Similar to photo tip number one but applied on a wider scale. The objective is to paint a flower vase. China had several of these in line so I had many chances to get the vase. Again, using bulb mode expose when the vase (bottom) is being created. While still in bulb, shut the lens with the cloth. When each fireworks are shot up, expose depending on how you want the “flowers” to “bloom.” A variety is good. “Paint” several of these by exposing and covering the lens but not too much, because the longer you expose, you are slowly overexposing the vase.
Photo Tip Number 3: Have an interesting foreground
Here is a shot i took of team Philippines’ fireworks display. I wanted to fill in the frame with a lot more interesting subjects so I used the foreground as filler. There were a lot of kids wearing glowing devil headbands so I decided to use them as a frame.
For manual mode camera settings and logistics, click here.
This was the question posed to me in an interview for Filipinas Magazine by Yvette Tan.
My short answer was no it won’t – just look at the magazine industry. In fact, advertising in the print industry is a bit trickier with viewed ads because consumers have to buy or subscribe to the magazine first before ad placements are viewed. With online ads, all you need to do is type in the URL and voila! Instant product placement.
I’m not one to claim that print is dead or even dying (although I did blurt this out during a strategy planning session which caused the room to laugh out loud) but in the same way that magazines are becoming more and more niched, the demographic becomes more targeted – same thing with blogs and online forums.
So there. It’s not about blog advertising being saturated. It is about consumers evolving into smaller and more concentrated groups, thus allowing advertisers to pinpoint where the conversation is going on.
January 16 2007 will be the biggest date for 8 million PC gamers worldwide.
Thus marks the end of gamer social life for the next few months. For the next several weeks, more 8 million players around the world will be engaged in getting from level 60 – 70, training skills, doing the Eye of the Storm battleground and increasing reputation with the different factions.
I remember the first few weeks after buying World of Warcraft. It was February 2005 and I had a consultancy status with another company. This allowed me to come in at any time for work – and you guessed it. I spent most, if not all of my time exploring the huge expanse of Azeroth with several dozen other players from around the world.
Now I am back to being a consultant, and timely as it is I started playing again thanks to Kiven who got me a 60 day game card last Christmas. And so after a long hiatus, I’m farming honor, reputation and getting my skills up to 300 in time for the expansion. And the best thing about this new development is that everybody basically starts from scratch in terms of equipment since the current “purple” (epic) gear are crap compared to the standard level 65 weapons and armor you’ll find all over the place. My god, I can’t wait to do 10 more levels!
I’m obviously babbling. It’s due to the excitement of being a kid again with his video games. From a financial perspective, spending PHP 800.00 a month versus several thousand pesos on dinners and clubbing makes much more sense too 🙂
As a regular contributor for Mobile Philippines, I sometimes republish stuff that I wrote in this blog. The main disadvantage of the print medium is that though page planning and editorial content are done one or two issues in advance (so if it is late January now, we are working on February and March) it still takes a while for an issue to be laid out, printed and circulated to the many stands in the country.
As a writer, publishing your work online is a good thing for you and your publisher, but you also need to take into account certain exclusivities that you owe the magazine you write for.
