Camerahaus Photo Festival 2026
Event Recap · Photography Community
CameraHaus Photo Festival 2026: Six Brands, Twelve Speakers, and the Filipino Festivals That Taught Manila How to Shoot
Two days. Six brands. Twelve speakers. Six of the Philippines' most iconic festivals — reimagined as workshop stations. The CameraHaus Photo Festival 2026 didn't just show up at Ayala Malls Manila Bay. It arrived with a full program built to teach photographers something real.
From the moment the floors opened on May 16, it was clear this year's edition was different. Every brand came with a Filipino festival as their visual theme, their own speakers, their own setup — and the specific intention of teaching photographers how to capture the energy of a festival while they were standing inside one. That kind of meta-experience doesn't happen at a product launch. It happens at Photo Festival.
What followed over two days was one of the most structured, community-driven, and genuinely educational editions of the festival yet. Here's everything that happened.
The festival floor buzzing with anticipation. Between sessions, the crowd stayed — because there was always something worth staying for.
A Festival Inside a Festival
The concept behind Photo Festival 2026 was as clever as it was deeply Filipino. Each brand partner was assigned one of the country's beloved regional festivals as their booth theme and workshop demo backdrop. The result was a floor that felt less like a tech exhibition and more like a celebration of Philippine culture — told through cameras, light, and community.
Walk the floor on either day and you moved through Sinulog, Kadayawan, Panagbenga, Dinagyang, Masskara, and Ati-Atihan — six festivals, six brands, each one competing for the Best Booth Award while teaching attendees how to photograph the soul of those very festivals.
This wasn't decoration for its own sake. The Filipino festival themes gave every workshop a real visual reference point. Speakers weren't teaching abstract technique — they were teaching you how to shoot these festivals, with their costumes, their crowds, their light, and their emotion.
Workshop stations ran non-stop across both days — cameras always in hand, instruction always in session.
Six Filipino festivals. Six brands teaching you how to shoot them. The whole floor became the lesson.
The Speakers: Every Brand Brought Their Best
Each brand arrived at Photo Festival 2026 with a dedicated speaker lineup — two sessions per brand, one photo workshop and one video workshop. The result was a full spectrum of perspectives, from documentary and editorial photography to wedding videography, content creation, and street photography. Twelve speakers across two days, all giving their sessions for free.
Martin San Diego brought a documentary photographer's mindset to his sessions — the idea that a festival isn't a backdrop, it's a story happening in real time. His workshop on capturing live festival stories gave attendees both the technical foundation and the editorial instinct needed to find the frame within the chaos. Sherard Yu closed Day 1 for Sony with a deep look at cinematic wedding videography — how motion, light, and emotion translate from a Sinulog procession to a wedding aisle.
Canon's "Nagpasiga sa Espiritu sa Sinulog" theme ran through every detail of their booth and program. Wesley Villarica's portrait workshop tackled something that trips up even experienced photographers at festivals — how to get a meaningful portrait when the scene is loud, fast, and unpredictable. Gab Altonaga's session on the Canon EOS R50 V brought the content creation conversation into the picture, showing how a compact mirrorless camera can tell a full festival story from setup to screen.
Nikon's Kadayawan Festival setup was matched by a strong two-speaker program. Ted Madamba brought the kind of teaching that comes from years of photographing across a wide range of genres — precise, practical, and built around real results. Kris Gidz expanded the Nikon conversation into video, covering how motion work at a festival demands a different rhythm than still photography. Moon Verona, President of Nikon Philippines, was present across the weekend — a strong signal of how seriously Nikon views the Filipino photography community.
Fujifilm's Dinagyang Festival theme gave their booth one of the most visually dramatic setups on the floor. Ambassador Lito Sy led the workshop sessions, bringing work from Iloilo's warrior festival directly into the conversation — showing how Fujifilm's color science and film simulations handle the intensity of festival costumes, skin tones, and crowd light. His sessions were a reminder of what Fujifilm does best: rendering the world with warmth and character that feels immediately photographic.
Lumix brought the largest speaker roster of any single brand — three photographers for their photo workshop sessions, plus a dedicated video presenter. Arlene Donaire, Stanley Ong, and Raymond Tanhueco each offered their own perspective on shooting the Ati-Atihan Festival's raw, kinetic energy, giving attendees three distinct approaches to the same creative challenge. Alex Ruelo then extended that thinking into video — how Lumix's capabilities translate that kinetic energy into motion.
Austin Garcia's session was one of the most distinct of the weekend. Framed around "Street Spirit & Energy," his workshop cut to the core of what makes the GR so compelling — the ability to move with a crowd, disappear into a scene, and pull out something true. Against the backdrop of Panagbenga, he showed how the camera you carry changes the kind of photographer you become. The GR booth was one of the most intimate and conversation-heavy spaces on the floor.
Robenson Ong Lo alongside Nikon speaker Ted Madamba and Moon Verona, President of Nikon Philippines — a strong presence across both days of the festival.
Closing Each Day: The Video Talk Sessions
At the end of both festival days, the workshop energy shifted into something more reflective. The day closed with Video Talk sessions that pulled the full program together — technique, storytelling, the creative decisions behind moving images, and the way stills and video increasingly speak the same language.
These weren't summaries. They were standalone sessions that covered the parts the workshops couldn't — the philosophy behind the craft, the business of visual storytelling, and the practical realities of shooting for multiple platforms at once. A strong, substantive close to two full days of learning.
End-of-day Video Talks rounded out both festival days — diving into the full creative and technical spectrum. From shooting philosophy to post-production thinking, every base was covered. Attendees stayed. The content earned it.
The Booths Fed You Too — Filipino Food at Every Station
In true Filipino hospitality fashion, each brand brought something to eat. Not branded merchandise — actual Filipino food. Walking the festival floor meant moving through a spread that matched each booth's regional festival theme, from kutsinta to bibingka, suman to biko.
| Brand | Food | Drink |
|---|---|---|
| Sony | Kutsinta | Gulaman |
| Canon | Suman & Latik | Hot Pandan |
| Nikon | Mini Bibingka | Buko Juice |
| Lumix | Pitchi-Pitchi / Puto | Cold Green Tea |
| Ricoh GR | Biko | Kape Barako |
It sounds like a small detail. But it's the kind of decision that turns a photography event into a Filipino experience. People moved from booth to booth not just for the workshops — but for the conversation, the kakanin, the kape. Community gets built in those moments as much as it does in any seminar room.
The Unscheduled Moments
No program sheet captures everything. The ice cream queue, the hallway conversations, the strangers comparing lenses, the group laughing at the back of the Canon booth — those moments happened all weekend and they mattered just as much.
The community energy between sessions — easy, warm, and genuinely Filipino.
The free ice cream line became its own social event — one of the weekend's most photographed moments.
Photo Festival isn't just a place photographers go to learn. It's a place they go to remember why they started. That feeling was everywhere on May 16 and 17 — in the booth conversations, the ice cream lines, the excited faces right after a workshop session wrapped.
Raffle Time: The Weekend's Loudest Moment
The raffle has been a Photo Festival tradition for years, and 2026 was no different. Names called, winners rushing forward, the floor suddenly twice as loud as it had been all day. The brands made sure the prizes matched the energy of everything else that weekend — which is to say, they were worth the noise.
Raffle time — the weekend's loudest moment and always the one that brings the whole floor together.
Why Photo Festival 2026 Mattered
There's a version of an event like this that's just a trade show with free snacks. Photo Festival 2026 was not that.
The decision to anchor every brand to a Filipino festival — to build workshops around Sinulog and Kadayawan and Dinagyang, to make the subject of the teaching something deeply, specifically Filipino — was the right call. It gave the whole event a sense of cultural rootedness that most photography events don't even attempt.
The twelve speakers brought real knowledge, real experience, and real commitment to their sessions. Martin San Diego's editorial mindset. Sherard Yu's cinematic approach. Wesley Villarica breaking down the portrait within the crowd. Gab Altonaga on content creation. Lito Sy on color and culture through the Fujifilm lens. Austin Garcia on street energy. Arlene Donaire, Stanley Ong, Raymond Tanhueco, Alex Ruelo, Ted Madamba, Kris Gidz — all of them showing up for the community.
And CameraHaus was the reason they all came together in one place. That's what the Photo Festival has always been about — not selling cameras, but building the culture around them.
Twelve speakers. Six Filipino festivals. Two days of non-stop shooting. This is what it looks like when a community takes photography seriously.
Until the Next One
Photo Festival 2026 wrapped at Ayala Malls Manila Bay, but the learning didn't stop when the booths came down. The frames shot during workshop rotations are still being edited. The techniques from those sessions are already showing up in real work. The connections made over biko and kape barako are still going.
That's what a good festival does. It doesn't end when the lights go down. See you at the next one.
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