FLASHBACK: Vesak 2551 Float Parade

Vesak Day is coming in a less than a week's time, while we anticipate this coming Vesak Day on Monday 19th of may 2008, Let us look back at 31st May 2007....


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Last weekend, I a visited the Vesak 2551: Harmony in Action even at Takashimaya. Read more about it here. Yesterday, I went for my first Event & Reportage photoshoot. It was very crowded when I reached the front of the temple around 6.30pm. I managed to station myself beside the gallery area, immediately opposite the temple. It was warm an everyone was squeezing to the front. At times when I was loosing my cool, I told myself to restrain myself as this is all a Buddhist event and I must treat everyone with a compassionate heart, thus I have never liked crowds. However, this significant religious event is one that I have anticipated for weeks, the Soft Opening of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum link along South Bridge Road (opposite Maxwell Market). The guest-of-honour for the evening was our President Nathan. In conjunction with the soft opening of the temple, there was also a celebration on the eve with a float parade. Displays from around Asia participated in this meaningful event. My dad participated in the event as well. He was driving the float display called 'Dharma'. I did not know that the 'Dharma' was his float until after event back at home. I thought that it was the best display of the evening, the theme and sound gave me a very peaceful and spiritual sensation. At the end of the hour-long parade, there was a short 5-minutes fireworks display fired from the temple itself followed by the opening ceremony. The temple will be officially open to public from 11pm onwards until dawn.



Click on thumbnails above to learn more about the parade details.


Armed with my D200 and SB-600 with SureBounce MK.I, I burnt 271 films (shutter counts) for this event, but most of the shots did not turn out good, due to the lack of night event experience and also my poor location, as I was blocked by many standing guards and official photographers. I regretted that I had not asked my dad to get me an Official pass. I had a hard time trying to capture shots of the performances, over peoples' shoulders, since I was using 50mm (the longest I have) and most of the shots turned out blurry at full resolution. It was hard cropping away shoulders, keeping around 30-40% of the blurry images, which also meant that I had to resize them small to make them sharp. This might just be the last of my event & reportage shoots, as I find the shots not worthy, unless I am an Official and had shooting privilege.
Nevertheless, here are the pictures from the event.



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