Introduction

Would you like to see what it is like to do photography during night with neon lights?

Hello Guys! What's up?

Raymund Bumagat here and today, I would like to share you the photo series that I took when I decided to go to the famous neon street here in Makati Philippines.

Night Photography in Neon Street

June last year, me and my girlfriend decided to pay a visit on this famous neon street located in P Burgos, Makati.

Every street here is surrounded by well lit colorful neon lights, no wonder why many local photographers have done many photo shoots here and still going back.

With this kind of lights at night? You can definitely do creative and great pictures with lesser noise.

But. . . How did I heard about this place?

If you can still remember my introduce yourself story, I mentioned there a blogger that has a mind blowing night/dark pictures with different colors and hues that is very pleasing and looks new to the eyes.

That blogger's name is Dee Gee Razon, he is a lifestyle blogger here in Philippines. Last year, 1st quarter of 2017, he has this feed that looks very cool and you will be very curious on how he edit his pictures. Let me give you snap shot of his feed way back then:

As you can see his pictures are very unique, looks impossible to edit, and very pleasing to ones eyes. Maybe some of you will say that this kind of pictures are very trendy nowadays but during the time he's doing it, there are very few of them that can achieve these kind of photos.

Although right now he is not using this kind of tones anymore, I'll admit that he is one of the main influence ( aside from Brandon Woelfel ) why I bought a real camera ( Fujifilm X-A3 ) just to achieve pictures like he has. ( This is not a collaboration or so, I just like to mention him because I still admire these pictures of him. )

One time, he made an IG Story and posted a picture that they are doing a photo shoot on this place filled with neon lights and guess what, my mind was still blown on the picture that he posted.

Many people liked his post and commented. I tagged my girlfriend and she said that she knew the place.

Our Photo shoot

I forgot to mention that I ordered a 3rd party lens ( 25mm f1.8 ) online for my camera because I cannot afford to buy one of the fuji native lenses. Although I have my kit-lens, it cannot achieve bokeh and it is hard to use in low-light situations.

I already have the right lens and searched for the right settings to do a night photography so, I decided to ask my girlfriend if we can go ahead and shoot there in Burgos, she said yes.

Finally, the time that I have been waiting for since I got my camera "Do a night photography with a prime lens then try the way Brandon and Dee gee edit their pictures!"

I am about to show you some of the photos that I took:

( This is the 1st photo that I took since we arrived there.)

Right beside that Bourbon sign, we took portraits of each other.

After taking photos of each other, we walk and saw one of the trendy neon diner today, the Filling Station:

( Brandon Wolfel's Tone )

( Orange and Teal of course. )

You can be comfortable shooting, posing and taking pictures here. People here won't mind you except the bouncer of the bars and beer houses that you can see. Many of them but not all will hinder you to take photos of their sign so you need to be quick ( so please excuse if I was not able to frame my shots properly).

I took another portrait of my girlfriend

After walking at the end of the block, I shot these pictures that for me summarizes how the neon street looks and how colorful it is:

( I didn't do any color manipulation here, I just adjusted its saturation and luminance. )

( Tried orange and teal but there are many colors that was not seen. )

After that we decided to eat at Señor Pollo, a casual diner nearby. ( I did not took any pictures inside because we are really hungry. )

After eating, we decided to walk around the streets that we haven't seen yet and shoot.

Tried orange and teal for the both of us:

( Blurred lol! I cannot blame her, we are using manual lens. )

We saw this bar that is glowing with pink neon lights and I cannot manage not to take a picture of it:

( Very Brandon feels. )

We're back again at this sign where we took our 1st portraits:

Of course, I asked my girlfriend to take one last picture of me for the gram!

Here's the last picture that I took before we left, and guess what? the bouncer accosted me haha!

Conclusion

After we went home, I tried to edit the pictures immediately in Lightroom even it is so late already.

I have no regrets, really love the photos and the way I was able to edit those.

All those curiosity since I bought the camera and the time that I allocated to study the settings and how to edit was paid by the results, though there a lot for me to improve, having these kind of pictures for the first 3 months that I have my camera is not bad at all.

I uploaded some of the photos in my IG and I can say that somehow I was able to achieve my feed goals back then:

Follow me in Instagram: rymndbmgt

Thank you!

You can try and visit, there are many photographers here daily, you just need to be aware of the surroundings and make sure to take care your things and obey the bouncers just in case they will hinder you to take pictures.

For best results, just do your research about what gears you should use, settings and always remember to shoot in RAW.

So that's it for me today guys! I hope that you liked it, hope that you enjoyed and experience the neon street here in P. Burgos, Makati Philippines.

So! Hit that up-vote button, follow me if you haven't yet, and see you guys in the next posts!