The san francisco chinese new years day parade

[ivy'sgrandkid]

one of the top 100 parades in the world and the largest outside of china... it rained.. it poured.. yet they kept going strung.. I'm amazed I'm still alive

1


2


3


4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

[ukanfoff]

nice colors n contrast....
yea it was rediculous when it rained.
well ill be there monday morn..

[ivy'sgrandkid]

what are you up to mon morning?

[ukanfoff]

transcripts.... ill go hella early..

[ivy'sgrandkid]

good luck with that! our offices always mess things up and take forever to get em done!

[klips]

The negative:
There are two big problems: repetition and clarity.
Repetition: A lot of these shots are similar enough to other shots that they don't add anything, such as 34 and 35. Cull and cull and cull, you must. Ukan's thread is a good example, same event but MANY less images which gives all of them more impact. It's like having a wall absolutely covered in pictures vs having the best three, framed and ready for inspection. While you may get more 'data' out of the full wall, each of the three will be more memorable for being isolated.

Clarity: yeah, a lot of them are blurry. This is a peril of shooting at 1.8, if you're even remotely off your focus then you may miss focus entirely. Look at how much sharper 39 is than 40, the difference is spectacular. While blurry photos can be used to portray movement, having this many of them unsharp implies poor technique or an unsteady hand.

The positive:
There are some images in here that are really good. 12 is a great example of when to have some blur, as it really works when combined with the slant of the runner's body. 1 is very sharp and well composed. 21 is excellent, the big light flare really works, as does the low aperture to emphasize the number of flautists. You have got some great captures in here, you just need to isolate them.

Suggestions:
Practice more with your lens at night in poor conditions
Put up the ISO and use a narrower aperture to get more DoF
Shoot at 50mm instead of 85mm and then crop, for both stability and DoF reasons.

[ivy'sgrandkid]

thanks kilps , but all of them were placed in here for a reason both bad and good but thanks anyways

[eazym]

festival photos aren't easy to shoot. I'd watch the compo, though. And exposure in some instances.

[ivy'sgrandkid]

and klips two pics or 3 never sum up an event true dat eazy!

[klips]

Tell that to a newspaper journalist, who are very lucky if they get three whole photos to cover something I admit that it wouldn't cover everything, but I still think that with 10 photos instead of 44 you would a lot more impact from each picture. Ah well, agree to disagree in this case? Looking forward to coverage of some other stuff.

PS: Were you standing next to Ukan? I thought I saw one shopfront in the background of both your photos.

[ukanfoff]

we were at the same corner. yea it was harsh weather.

[Nike]

I'm pretty much with klips here - you have some really strong stuff going on here, and some that don't show any new scenes, but are technically much weaker. Some are overexposed, in some you've missed the focus. You don't have to choose 3 for here, but choose 10 or 15, select the strong pieces for showing and use the others to learn from them.

I agree with eazym that festival photography isn't easy.

My favourite ones are 21, 22, 24, 32. Movement, strong colors, and the most important things focused. 24 is my favourite. It shows it all - emotion, movement, color, contrast, heavy rain.

[klips]

A friend of mine pointed out that I was wrong on something, and I like being proven wrong, it makes me think more. By shooting at 50mm and cropping it would magnify any shakes, meaning that it was pointless. Instead, just shoot at 50mm

[ivy'sgrandkid]

lol !

[ivy'sgrandkid]

but yeah parades are a bitch to shoot and even worse when the weather aint on you're side sigh

[ukanfoff]

my button for choosing the focus points kinda works..
it just wont let me focus on the middle. but its not really a prob for me.
water sux.

[Grumbledook]

What did you do with regards to the rain?

Have an umbrella or did you use some kinda plastic bag set up?