You can visit any of the pictures in this blog by clicking on the relevant picture except the second and third images as the Fuji method of uploading for blogs won't allow me work that way........Sorry.

Last Sunday on the 22/01/2012 I left the house at around 11:45 to photograph the local Chinese New Year Parade which starts at 12:00

Yes I'm that optimistic and the town center is literally a five minute drive from my house .

Parked within a five minute walk of the celebrations and grabbed my camera bag and looked for a likely spot to grab some pictures.

I'm quite used to crowds by now and know the limitations so with that in mind I took two DSLR bodies , one with a short 24-70mm lens and the other with a medium 70-20mm lens to cover when I had to shoot close and further away.

With street photography in relatively small high streets such as they have in my local large town of Chatham , long focal lengths are not a really needed piece of equipment unless you are trying not to be noticed. With something like an event though everyone is taking pictures whether it's with a phone , compact , bridge or DSLR , so mostly you go around pretty much un-noticed. The chances are though even when you are noticed you will either be ignored or smiled at depending on the nature of the person and their reason for being there.

Above I've combined two shots left to right the first focused on the photographer and the second on his subject that is posing for him. I quite like the effect of the combined shot.

The night before .

I had checked the cameras for battery level and made sure the cards where formatted and set up the cameras for the following day's shoot. Also checked for dust on the lenses and that I had spare batteries and cards just in case.

These events local to me are well policed by both police , special constables and event organisers with identifying jackets and to date I've never seen trouble of any kind so I feel quite safe as someone of authority with backup is always visible and not far away.

For those nervous of shooting in crowded public places , these are ideal events to start out with . If you are very worried stay with the crowds and keep any bags in front of you.

I do this with my camera bag which is reporter style (That is to say it looks like an over-sized ladies shoulder bag ) and is a Lowepro classified 160 for those interested. It holds two DSLRs with lenses attached , up to two flash units , or external battery packs or a combination and has a storm proof cover . It's my favoured walk around bag .

Anyway it was packed.

The crowds that is as well as the bag , so I went away a short distance , unpacked both cameras , put my bag back on so it was against my chest at the front and slung both cameras over my shoulders and went back into the crowd with a camera in each hand so as not to hit any unsuspecting kid around the head with half a hundredweight of metal and took a few shots between people and above their heads.

 It was difficult to get clean shots between the crowds of people at ground level as my DSLRs don't have swivel screens but you try anyway .

 

 

 

Now while it was possible to get pictures it's difficult to move around a large crowd in limited space and I'm not the type of person that will barge past you sending you sprawling or even say a hurried excuse me and try to barge past someone else's view. There is little need for this type of aggressive behaviour even if you were doing it professionally . I would only do that to someone that treated me the same way. Most Pros I know though help each other rather than compete at a petty level.

However , going around the ground was slow and not helpful as others pushed passed me to get their shots.

I needed higher ground.

So I slunk away back to the street corner where the parade traditionally kicks off from and found a one meter perch in the form of some granite street seating slabs that had square upright towers of open lattice iron as a form of cage protecting street lighting . I was at the back end of this as the front was occupied by others trying to do the same as me or just get a better view.

Because of the ironwork though I had a hand free if needed to swing out around the other people and take pictures. This alowed me to get photos of some of the smaller participants of the parade and some unrestricted head shots of somke of the dignataries hanging around at the front waiting for the off.

The Mayor of Rochester.

People in the crowd .

 Dragon Dancers waiting for the parade to begin .

People trying to get a memory for the day

Official , traditional , leading guard of the parade ?

 

 At any rate I had as good a vantage point as I was going to get at this stage so I stayed there until the parade had passed and while waiting for it to start took a few more closeups from above as well as a few wider angled , deeper field of view shots in.

Trying to get ten winks in  ;)

A back to back review of the situation.

I'm a sucker for a Suzie Wong style of outfit !

Symbols of other Chinese years are often present as well though I didn't notice any monkeys at this one.

 Now , photographing any shiny surface can be tricky and silks and fake furs are the worst when trying to retain detail in a picture .

Chinese celebrations are mainly both

The colours are anything up to day-glow orange as well so trying to take any type of picture without blowing out the finer details is quite tricky. To do it in a limited time frame means you don't have time to experiment .

So what to do ?

Well I have two very different camera bodies .

A Newer Nikon D300 and an older Fuji S2Pro which is an early form of Fuji's EXR system .

Both getting a bit long in the tooth now but good cameras in their day still more than capable of getting good results.

Both very different to set up in some respects.

The setting that were the same as close as I could get them were the following.

Average metering.

I chose this because spot metering on shiny subjects that can be mat or shiny dependant on angle of reflected material can vary wildly but I wanted to expose for the costumes not the surroundings . For that reason I didn't chose  area metering either which may have over darkened faces or costumes.

A neutral film simulation mode as the objects where colourful enough .  

You may feel you would need a vivid setting for a vivid scene but this often results in a single colour channel blowing highlights before the rest of them to such a point that even shooting in RAW won't save it.

Sharpening to soft .

My lenses are very sharp and accurate to begin with and having sharpening happen in camera only makes background bokeh worse my my experience. Sharpening after that only makes it grittier . It will depend a lot on how the lens is to begin with but I don't need or want it.

Your experience may differ depending on the glass at the front of your camera .

For this type of event I prefer to shoot in

 Aperture Priority .

I'm not shooting a race or a chase or anything much that would look better blurred more or less . ( I've just thought of an exception Damn ) Oh well there is always next year :) 

 I've rabbited on a bit so a few more pics to look at before I go through the rest of the settings and why I do it that way.

I'n never sure why the British army is depicted in veteran costume at these although I know about our role in China it seems odd to me.

 

Anyone know why ?

Though this chap looks as if he's looking at me it was just a glance as his head turned.

The guy below though is the Chinese ambassador talking to one of the town's mayors.

About twelve Kent Chinese communities gather in Medway to make a larger prescence for the parade.

People seemto have problems with photographing glassess . I like them as a point of interest in themselves.

If you click only one picture of this set , make it the one above as I rarely upload a full resolution picture on a public site.

Back to settings.

White balance .

Left on auto as I am dipping in and out of shadows and maybe taking pictures looking both sun-ward and away and anywhere in between.

Tone.

Set to medium to help with post processing should it be needed and a better graduation of tone within the image .

Flash Off.

I see tons of people shooting with flash everywhere at all types of events.

I don't unless it is for a very specific purpose.

My flash could ruin someone else's picture if they are unfortunate enough to take a picture at the same time.

I have more respect for others than that.

Also it's tand amount to useless as the light shining back is making the fabrics even more difficult to control light wise Then there are the pearls , gold , semi precious stones all contributing to a photographer's hell.

Want those nice bright discs of blown highlights ? That's how to do it.

Well it's my hell at least.

Maybe you are better at flash use than me and that's quite possible , so let's say it's a preference on my part , but don't say I didn't warn you.

Now after a few more piccies I'll tell you the differences on the set ups and why.

The horrible blur in the bottom right hand corner is someone's head and short of chopping off that person's head it is normally almost unavoidable .  Shallow dof helps with separation of this  shot as well as for isolation from the background.

The problem with any photography that's outside and varied is you never know what you can be pointing at next and this darker photo is much different to the brighter colours yet ideally you want just as much detail if possible.

It's all too easy to make blacks completely black or blend into a darker background .

The same with whites which is why weddings ( traditional ) are so hard with both white and black side by side. A really good photograph could show you the thread making up both materials.

Mayoress , though who's I couldn't tell you

 

 

I think though I'm not 100% sure that the gentleman above is the representative of the Medway Chinese traders association .

The Parade finally moves off.

A Lion Dancing team below.

A bit of colour poping which is remarkably quick to do in Capture NX taking me less than thirty seconds to do .

 Then a change of aperture for the final few shots as the parade passes by.

 So as the last of them pass by I pack my cameras back into the bag while the security is still around and walk off in the opposite direction to get to some back roads where I can catch the parade further along at the end of it's journey.

Now as well as settings that are the same the cameras are about two generations apart and my software is not so good at processing Fuji S2Pro RAW files so I decide to shoot the Fuji in jpg only as it will also save the files quicker between shots .

It's a bright-ish day though not sunny so I set the ISO to 200 as I have wide apertures if need be and dial in minus 1/2 EV to help stop blowing highlights as I don't have time to wait for the painfully slow screen to load between shots to see how I'm doing. As it's got the 24-70 on it I can allow the shutter speed to drop because although the lens does not have any form of optical stabilisation on the lens , the relatively short focal length ensures that the shutter speed could drop to 1/200s before I have to worry too much about camera shake.  Anyone not understanding that last statement , use the site's search engine to find an answer on this site . It has been gone into many times on MyFinePix  and is a basic photographic principle .

As for the D300 I shot that in 14 bit RAW + jpg with no EV dialed in and as it has auto ISO , I set the base ISO to 200 and the maximum to 400 and had a minimum shutter speed of 1/400s ( I think ) to activate the auto ISO.

RAW gives at least one stop of adjustment of light post processing so is a safety measure in case there are problems with the jpgs or I want to do finer adjustments to the images later. There are many variations of the RAW file and not all are equal and can range from camera to camera from 10 bit to 16 bit files with every two bits giving approximately around a quadrupling of digital ' steps ' dynamic range within the image .

Most people feel twelve bits is enough for most situations and if you don't have RAW to fall back on or are not so happy about your abilities this is one event I would use a cicular polarizer with a bridge or compact if possible to try to keep the dynamic range within working limits of the camera.

While I've been rabbiting on about setting I've noticed through the connecting streets I've already got ahead of the slow moving parade , so instead of going to the end point I go down the side street and set myself up again on a similar plinth.

The crowds are now thinning and I have a better view of the front of the parade.

The light is different here with the tall buildings either side and the whole area in shadow.

 

 I get better side view photos and an unusual angle for me .

You can see more clearly in these shots above , the slight elevation.

I'm now switching back and forth between cameras to get long distance shots of the on coming parade and the people walking past me.

 

 

 Soon though they pass again into the distance .

I pack up again and get to the end point of the parade .

 In a side street the dragon dancers and others mill around waiting for the rest of the parade to catch up , ready for the press photography to be arranged and for them to be set up for the photo opportunity.

 

I find here , more natural photos are to be found.

 

 

Eventualy the call for the press photos came and people began to move into position of a large semi-circle at the far end of the high street.

Press and public alike started to take their pictures.

 

 The shot below is one of my fast manual pan and stitches to live action shots.

Who needs auto stitch ?

When you pan the circle straightens out.

I tried a few closer up shots.

  

But finally to end on what else but someone using a FinePix camera.

 

Then I packed up and went home.

Total time taken was an hour and a quarter and I had taken around 350 shots of which a few are here and more can be found in the Chinese New Year gallery on my flickr pages .

All my images retain all thier exif data if you need more information on the settings .

Hope you all enjoyed this and it wasn't too long winded.

Ray.