I have photographed the iron giant of Manila, the Minor Basilica of San Sebastian twice before. On both occasions, I was attending a wedding and I wasn’t really able to shoot to my heart’s content in deference to the ongoing ceremony.

With this year’s Scott Kelby Photowalk, one of the three itineraries is the San Sebastian church, and I was more than happy to reenter the towering pastel-green gothic structure again.
I have described in detail the history of this amazing church, one of the shortlisted UNESCO World Heritage Site in the country, so I won’t go into details about it anymore (click here for my previous post about San Sebastian).

My main focus on shooting the Basilica for the third time was to get angles I was unable to do before as the whole church was opened that morning specifically just for us photographers.
I would have liked to say that I went there with cameras blazing all over the place, but not really.

I’m really not the type of shooter who clicks nonstop just because I still have gigabytes and gigabytes of space left on my SD card. I’d like to think that I choose my angles before clicking that shutter (which sometimes leads to frustrating moments when I’m already at the front of my computer, editing may photos and wishing I shot some frames of such and such but was too picky in tripping the shutter.)
So there I was, checking the place out while my fellow photographers were crawling all over the church floors, craning their necks up high and getting their shots. And I can’t blame them, with the beauty of this church, it’s really quite hard to stop your fingers from clicking your camera’s shutter button every second of every minute.
And after everyone got their photos and the floor was almost clear, I started exploring and found the angles that was lost to me on my previous visits. It was at last time for my reshoot of Manila’s Gothic legacy.

Parish of San Sebastian
Plaza del Carmen
Quiapo, Manila
(02) 734-8931 ‎