Day 3: National Mask & Warwagira Festival, G6 in action.

The overcast cleared a bit on Day 3 of the Festival (Thursday last week), and the action was lively. For daylight pix, I used the G6 exclusively but the GX7 in the evening because of the very poor lighting (I needed more ISO than the G6 would give me).

Singsing leader. Typically, one of the older ladies (or men in a male singsing) provides a lead in the song, then after up to about 30 seconds, everyone else joins in. Theoretically! Of course, not everyone learns the singsings properly.

A whip dance where participants are whipped around the wrist and ankles by others using long lengths of vine about twice as thick as your thumb. It is moderately stiff, as you can see by the lengths held ready here and they are applied with maximum force -- see how the whipper is following through. The vine splits and wraps around the whippee's (for want of a better word) wrist. The vine has lime rubbed onto it to make the white powder "explosion" you can see here. Shooting single frames to try to catch this action is hopeless, it is explosive, so burst shooting is your friend. I used medium burst here; I should have paused and switched to high speed. I didn't because after a few days of mostly using the GX7 I was a little unsure of the G6 controls -- I had changed them to be in line with the GX7! LOL!

Kids get into the singsings at an early age. Makes for cute pix.

A rare use of the Oly 9-18 -- but there is nothing like it (in my repertoire) for pictures like this.

This might have been the 45-150 or the 100-300 -- I suspect the latter.

Another photog at work! In this case, a member of the singsing group video recording for later review in the village. Mobile phones are cheap and ubiquitous.

I almost switched to video for this dance! The dancers were twisting the panels sharply, creating a wonderful, mosaic effect. ("Almost switched to video" -- but then I thought, "what will I do with the result?" I would have to edit it. Nah! :()

Afternoon of Day 3, and after two days of singsings, the tourist chairs were pretty empty.

In the evening, we had the second string -- "junior" -- "paua ben" (power bands -- electric and electronic stuff as distinct from the "string bands" or guitars and ukuleles). Rock-Islands-Caribean fusion.

A seriously junior performer gives his all -- and he was pretty darned good, too!

A focusing error here but it turned into a pretty good picture, I thought. Good stuff happens!