On my boat rides to and from San Antonio, I noticed an interesting stretch of coastline in the northern part of Tacloban. There were two ornate churches there plus a lot of houses built on stilts out over the water. I decided to go there with my camera and see if I could walk around and take some pictures.

Before I went, I stopped at my favorite eatery for lunch. While there, I played around with my camera and experimented with a whole bunch of fancy features that I never used, such as focus tracking and rapid-fire shooting. I tend to use just the simplest settings and features. From that point of view, I might as well have a point-and-shoot camera. I rarely adjust anything while taking pictures. I simply put it in aperture priority, choose an appropriate aperture for the light conditions and then shoot all day.

I had a very enjoyable time walking through that district. It was a poor area, of course, and the housing could be called established slum housing. The houses were quite simple in construction and they were jammed together with a maze of narrow alleyways barely separating them. There was no running water, of course, and they had to carry water from nearby wells. Bathrooms consisted of little tin shacks built on platforms out over the water. That can lead to some awkward moments as I wander about with my camera. Once, I was busy lining up a nice picture of the ocean and some boats when I realized that I was looking straight at two men that were squatting down inside these makeshift bathrooms over the water. The walls were quite low and even squatting, their upper bodies were still visible. I did not want to embarrass them and I quickly lowered my camera. I find I get caught out like that all the time. I’m constantly heading into narrow laneways and making my way to the water’s edge. By doing so, I often surprise people answering nature’s call. Turning corners, I also often come across men urinating against walls. Since I’m always looking for subjects for a picture, my eyes are wandering everywhere. When I catch sight of a person in my peripheral vision, I automatically turn to look directly at them. Then I see that they’re taking a leak and I have to turn away quickly.

[slickr-flickr tag=”Tacloban Stilt Houses Walkabout”]
The children in this neighborhood were numerous and extremely boisterous and friendly. Rather than only shooting from the hip, I occasionally raised the camera to my eye and focused on the children like a normal photographer. I did this because the children were asking me to take their picture and they only realized a picture was being taken when I held the camera to my eye. When I held the camera at my waist, they didn’t realize I was taking a picture. Pointing the camera directly at the children nearly caused a riot as more and more children rushed to get into the frame. Unfortunately for them, I had mounted a 50mm lens on the camera and I had a relatively narrow field of view. Most of the crowd of children didn’t make it into the pictures. A wide angle lens would have captured a pretty interesting sight. Looking at the pictures later, I noticed a significant number of the boys were giving me the finger as they posed for the picture. I hadn’t noticed that while I was taking the pictures.

The children also wanted to give me a high five and I had to work my way through large crowds of them high fiving everyone in sight. It was actually a lot of fun and I found myself laughing and smiling a lot.

While there, I decided to take some video. I hit the video button on the camera and then walked along the narrow laneways and just captured whatever was in front of me. The result was very pleasing. Unfortunately, the video files are extremely large and probably impossible to upload to the Internet.

My time in that neighborhood was so intense that it felt like I was there for a long time. In reality, it probably wasn’t that long. I stopped to talk with only one adult – an older man who told me that he used to be a carpenter. Most of the time, I was just walking around practically swimming through the crowds of children. That can become exhausting after a while, and I can only do it for so long before I can’t take the noise and chaos anymore.

I was surprised to see later on that many of my best pictures were out of focus. I don’t know why that should be, but I figured it was because I had been experimenting with new settings. I was also using the 50mm lens, and I hadn’t had it on the camera much in the last few weeks. I had been using mainly my wide angle lens. Whatever the cause, I put the camera back to my usual settings, and hopefully I will have better luck with the focusing in the future.

 

 

Tags: eatery, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, San Antonio, Tacloban