Christmas (Lights) in Pampanga

This was a great year for me. I pursued photography (just a hobby) after years of obsessing over my Instagram posts (thanks Instagram). 

And now it's the best part about Christmas 📸💡

I have never been happier that I live here in Pampanga, which I recently found out is the Christmas Capital of the Philippines, with our giant lanterns, christmas lights and fireworks displays 💛

And we've spent this Christmas season following these lights

Christmas Lanterns in San Fernando

Every Christmas season, lanterns light up in almost every street in Pampanga. And in San Fernando, the Lantern capital of the Philippines, it gets grander every year. 

Good thing there was a footbridge in the center where I got to take photos.

This is also my first time to try long exposure 🤗

Story time: I used to work with the son of the lantern maker for these and this one time I got to social climb to their house and it was nice. (back when I still don't know how to take photos with lights)

Biggest Lantern of Hope

An annual fireworks display by the Pampanga Eye (a ferris wheel in Sky Ranch Pampanga). We have parked our car somewhere not too close, and it ended up being a perfect spot 👌🏻

Getting nice photos of fireworks are not easy! Especially without a tripod, I just placed the camera on top of the car instead which wasn't a perfectly flat surface, but it worked so 👌🏻

Some fail shots

...traffic was bad though.

Clark Global City (CGC) Lights

Okay I don't know what you call these but I heard they were here for an event (and then it stayed).

It is located next to the parking of Starbucks CGC. And there were only us and 1 more set of people there when we went ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Giant Christmas Trees

These trees are everywhere in Pampanga (probably almost everywhere in the Philippines too) during the holidays.

And one of those is the one located in my Alma mater, Holy Angel University. It had come to a point where lighting it up became an annual event.

My bestie and boyfie and I sneaked in just to get a picture 🙈

Angeles Electric Corporation (AEC) Lights

This has also become a yearly thing, which I think bloomed when Starbucks opened next to it.

Their theme is white for this year. 💛

(if it wasn't obvious yet, I don't know where to focus my lens here 😲/ I may be using the wrong lens)

These lights were created by the same one who did the famous Christmas lanterns in San Fernando.

A few more I didn't get to see this year

Giant Lantern Festival

The competition event is in Robinsons Starmills and then the Giant Lanterns get to be displayed in different locations (mostly San Fernando) after that until the end of the holidays.

This year's competition was set to a date where we couldn't go 🙃. And then also got cancelled the day we were supposed to go see it due to bad weather 🌧

And then I got sick and couldn't go outside after a 3 day staycation in MNL 💔

Pyrofest

A fireworks exhibition from different countries that gets displayed every weekend of November in SM City Clark.

Haven't seen it ever since 👎🏻(Tried to this year but we ran out of Saturdays)

Maybe next year!

Taking these pictures were so much fun and I hope I get to do it more on the years to come. And looking at these pictures once more, I am not quite satisfied yet...

Can't wait (to learn more 📸) for next year 😍

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