Parade faces

We had a fun family outing to the Dallas Christmas parade.  Of course, the primary goal was to have fun with the family, but as a photographer, it was a fun exercise to catch expressions, try to use clean backgrounds and just have some fun with it.

As it turns out, the lovely wife does a pretty good job of that.  I handed her the camera while I held the 19-month-old, and she got this.


About the only clean background (using 24-70mm on a 40D) was catching folks against segments of the building across the street...






Lots of waving going on, of course.














Lots of girls with red dots on their cheeks...






Some bands only march, some go much further.




The youngest folks seemed to have the best time


And if you wonder what happened to Santa... well, he's stuck in the chimney.

Marching Band...

I am a bit of a band geek myself (drummer if you must know) so photographing the band is a lot of fun when I'm at football games.

Last Friday found me in Kennedale, TX, and they have good lights in their stadium...

There was a great glow in the sky as the band filled the stands and started to prepare for the game...


While in the stands, I could use lower ISOs (800 and 1000) with IS lenses to get much better sharpness and color than when I shoot at 3200...

Then came UIL marching contest... in the rain.

Maybe I should review the Kata rain cover. It worked great but has a few quirks.

Warming up...


Drip, Drip, Drip


Such a dreary day... so I decided to have some fun in Lightroom. This is a slightly modified version of one of the "300 Look" presets from the Lightroom Killer Tips blog.

Shooting in the rain definitely gives you rare shots.. other than the folks who were making videos of the competition to sell, I did not see any cameras out there.

Don't be afraid of the rain, just be careful.

Happy Shooting,

Don J.