Katipunan Kaidashi Kikou: Canon Photomarathon 2017

After a notable 2-year absence, the Canon Photomarathon finally returns with slightly less fanfare.

Canon's local marketing division continues to show signs of tightening its belt. This isn't really much of a surprise given how smartphones and mirrorless camera companies (Sony, Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic) have been eating into the market shares of the 2 dominant camera companies (Canon and Nikon), but the Photomarathon makes it more noticeable.

For example, the competition used to be free for anybody who owned a camera legitimately bought from Canon Marketing Philippines. For this year, participants needed to cough up Php500 to take part in the contest. Granted, Canon Marketing Philippines also held a couple of online contests where they distributed free passes, but these were a drop in the bucket compared to the number of total participants.

Up until 2013, the Photomarathon used to be a nationwide competition with events held separately in the 3 major regions (Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao). For this year, as it was in 2014, the competition took place as a single event held in Metro Manila.

Another notable change for this iteration was removal of the DSLR and point-and-shoot categories. Rather than limiting contestants to using only the one camera which they registered, they were now free to use any kind and any number of Canon cameras (in fact, my little Powershot S110 got to see more action than my trusty EOS 600D). Thus, everybody had a fair shot at winning the grand prize.

Speaking of which, the grand prize for this year was a 6D rather than the usual 5D camera. Granted, the 6D MkII was released only a couple of months ago, so perhaps that was a deliberate decision for marketing the new camera.

That said, I don't hold any of these against them; the past Photomarathons just seemed borderline decadent in comparison to this year's (heh). I'm still glad that the Photomarathon pushed through after its 2-year absence, and I hope that they can continue to nurture local photographers with events like this in the years to come.

But enough about the company, let's move on to the pictures.

Theme A: CITY TREASURES

Theme B: HUMOR

To be honest, I'm slightly disappointed with the output of this year's winners. Their pictures were ... not bad. Interesting enough for people to share on Facebook, perhaps, but nowhere close to being as awe-inspiring as the magazine-worthy winning shots from 2011 (that year's Photomarathon was held at the World Trade Center, just a few blocks away from this year's SMX MoA).

Similarly, my own shots weren't that bad, but I think I could have (and should have) done better.

Theme A shots

Theme A submission, shot at Baclaran church

Theme A backup 1, shot en route to Baclaran

Theme 1 backup 2, shot at Baclaran

Theme 1, what could have been

This was a picture that I took a week earlier. I had intended to shoot another version of it and submit it as my entry for Theme 1.

Unfortunately, I lost track of time when my watch stopped in the middle of the contest. By the time I got back to SM MoA from Baclaran, there wasn't enough time to take this shot from the ferris wheel.