I had the privelage of being the official photographer for the first annual South Asian Festival  took place at Confederation Park in the heart of Ottawa!  Thousands of people attended despite the few spells of rain we received! A big thanks to all the organizers for doing a flawless job at organizing this event, all the vendors for not only the amazing goods and services but also for opening up their booths to let people stand in the shelter while it poured on the grounds! The Volunteers for doing an amazing job at keeping on top of everything! and the biggest shout out goes to all those who attended! It was definitely an unforgettable day and it wouldn’t have been half as fun if you guys didn’t come out to show your support!

Now a little about the festival - There was such a wide variety of performances all day. One of the earlier performances was the ‘Atan’  by The Afghan Student Association. Atan is a traditional dance where everyone dances in a circle to the beat of the dhol & shehnai.  Just Wow!  There were two stunning performances of the Snake Dance from Sri Lanka.  Very soothing beats of Calypso performed by Sri Lankan groups.  Of course lots of Bollywood dance numbers and Bhangra teams and a whole lot of others!  Prita was the last perfomer for the day…she is such an  amazing singer and the fact that she’s South Asian is super! She’s so down to earth and was just great at getting everyone dancing to her songs.  The evening wrapped up with the DJ mixing some amazing bhangra and bollywood beats.

I can promise you that this Festival is going to only get bigger and better! See you all next year!

To view all the pictures from the South Asian Festival. Please go to:

www.amnahakim.com > portfolio > clients > Events: South Asian Festival   [You can download pictures from there.  If you want prints or high resolution files, feel free to send me an email.]

In the meanwhile enjoy some of my favourite shots below followed by a slideshow.

A few of the Afghani Dancers. I love their clothes! They are sooooooo lovely!

Prita performing one of her awesome songs.

The crowd having an amazing time.

This is what happens when it rains buckets..no one wants to leave..so everyone just waits for it to stop raining…! hehe

and when it stops raining..it’s like nothing ever happened! hahaha we’re back to enjoying ourselves!

Now the slideshow: