Sultan's 62nd Birthday Lantern Procession (Fireworks)

We were just about to leave when fireworks shot up in the sky and
the view from the PGGMB multi-storey parking building was spectacular.

My sister loves this picture for some strange reason.
She said the fireworks looked like a ball of electric charges while
I thought it was poor timing on my part. Oh well..


Right after the procession, more fireworks flew
before the game of tug-of-war started.


Meteor shower! RUN!

Sultan's 62nd Birthday Lantern Procession (Marches & Floats)

The following pictures are a series of marches and floats, some marchers were in traditional indigenous attires.




























Some floats had strong messages to send out.




Here's our winning float of the year; Brunei Shell Petroleum.

Personal Notes:
Use of direct flash seems to do the trick on the floats from a distance
On human subjects, cheeks tend to be scorched. In worse cases, entire face is overexposed.
Need to play around with aperture size, shutterspeed or watch the distance, otherwise adjust flash intensity.
Need to reread Planet Neil's Flash Photography notes.
Found Flash Photography on EOS systems and Flash Photography Made Simple.

Sultan's 62nd Birthday Lantern Procession (Crowd)

On this very night, the whole town was cluttered with people. Be it in the SOAS field or outside, Bandar Seri Begawan was simply swamped by us.








I overused "screen" and the picture appears completely ruined on my work pc. Sigh..

Personal Notes:
General comments from fellow photographer friends are that some of the pictures are grainy and that they are generally underexposed.
ISO was pumped up to max and where little light was captured, PS's screen blending option was used. These made the graininess worse. May have to compromise with shutter speed though may introduce blur.

Sultan's 62nd Birthday Lantern Procession (BPY08)

We were supposedly given media passes to get close to where the Sultan was seated so that I could get a few shots. These shots will then be used for our posters that will be exhibited in our BPY booth for the SSEAYP programme. However, due to some unforeseen circumstances, we ended up within the SOAS field along the main entrance. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a great night! The fireworks and the floats were impressively entertaining and best of all, there were some good coincidences which bought me some shots which I was happy about.

So, here's a post of the BPY08 whom I went to the procession with. We had a picnic outside Neo Metro and Court Furnishing after we purchased some Bruneian goodies over at the Gadong Pasar Malam. Great food, good company and a lovely view of the mall.

Brunei Museum (SSEAYP)

In the afternoon of the same Friday, we went to the Brunei Museum. Interestingly, the big, stuffed orang utan had been removed and now we have two massive collection of whale bones.

The traditional Bruneian food is the ambuyat which is served with grilled fish, vegetables and some special sauce called the tempuyak.

Brunei Royal Regalia (SSEAYP)

On Friday, some of the BPYs went to the Brunei Royal Regalia to take some pictures and collect materials to be put up for the exhibition to be held in Japan. An awfully tiring day it was as we had little sleep and a long day ahead. The Brunei Royal Regalia is a famous landmark of Brunei where it receives many tourists a day. It is a must-go in Brunei as it features many of the royal Malay artefacts such as the famous chariot used during Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah's coronation as well as the chariot used during the silver jubilee of his reign.