Peace Festival

Week 14

This week is about festivals but I've strayed from the book quite a bit. The chapter in the book is about going to Venice to photograph the Carnival. I don't think I'm going to get to Carnival this year, but it just so happens they were having the Calgary Community Peace Pole Unveiling Celebration this morning so I went there instead.

The Venice Carnival is brimming with people that are in costume and photogenic. The Calgary Celebration is a little lower key but I did photograph this lady. She goes by the name Shanti Amani Salaama, the Peace Fairy, at least for this festival. Festivals are a great place to photograph people though. You see a lot of real characters and they actually like to be photographed :-). Other good spots are Renaissance Festivals, Battle Reenactments, other Mardi Gras celebrations, you get the picture...

Light is from late bright afternoon sun over my right shoulder. You can see the hard shadow on her face. I was using a Nikon D3, ISO 200, at 1/2000 second in aperture priority. The lens is a AF Nikkor 300mm 1:4 at f/4 to minimize depth of field since the background wasn't too appealing. I've been working on reduced depth of field this week and here is another example with two blackbirds.

Post processing was minimal - basically a crop and slight contrast increase.

Idea based on Festival Spirit, pages 38-39 in the book 50 Photo Projects, by Lee Frost