Carnival Parade

As promised here comes another photo from the carnival parade in Aalborg this year. What I like on this photo is the expression and engagement of the dancer as well as the composition. When I photograph such events I always try to hide the surrounding buildings, street signs etc. This time I used the opportunity that the outfit of the dancer covered the whole frame in my camera. I simply don't like the corners on my photos to be empty ... Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 70-200 4L at 70mm, F5.6 @ 1/500, ISO 400.

Dancers in the Parade

Let me present another photo from the last weekend's street parade in Aalborg downtown. I like the movement in the photo and the engagement of the dances. It was a great show and a pleasure to watch. Let's see what the main carnival and the battle of carnival bands will look like in May! Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 70-200 4L at 98mm, F4 @ 1/640, ISO 400.

Parade and Drums

Here is a photo I took during the parade at Aalborg last week. I like the dedication and engagement of the drum players; it is literally impossible to take an uninteresting photo of them. The overcast day of the parade was perfect for shooting, so I didn't have to use my on-camera flash for fill. The only limitation was the focusing of my Canon 5D mark ii. Normally, I am not that much into action photography so I never complained about it, but on this parade I could feel the limitations. Maybe I need to get the new 1D mark iv :-) Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 70-200 4L at 140mm, F4 @ 1/640, ISO 400.

Carrus Navalis 2010

YouTube version:



Vimeo version:


I visited the downtown of Aalborg today to watch a street parade called Carrus Navalis. Apart from taking photos, I decided to test the video capabilities of my Canon 5D mark ii. Unfortunately, I didn't have any external microphone, so the sound quality is rather poor. The footage is ok for the first try, however, the video quality after the encoding degraded little bit but I think that it is acceptable. Unfortunately, when watching on Vimeo in HD, the video is jerky from time to time. So I used also YouTube to see if there is any difference and it seems that it plays smoother via YouTube on my computer. I would appreciate if you could leave a comment on this blog and let me know whether YouTube and Vimeo played smoothly on your computer in full screen and whether you saw any difference in quality. Thanks! On Vimeo, be sure to watch it in HD (possible only from the Vimeo page). Enjoy! Camera spec: Canon 5D mark ii with Canon 24-105 4L USM, build-in microphone, hand-held.

Bye, bye

Well, after presenting a few photos from the carnival, let me close this topic for a while with this detail photo. I like the expression in her eyes and the small catch lights created by the on-camera flash used as a fill in. I have also finished scanning some older films on which I captured my trip to India in 2001 and they came out quite nice. I will present a few of them in my next posts, so check out my blog soon again! Camera spec: Canon 40D with Canon 28-105 F3.5-4.5 USM at 83mm F7.1 @ 1/160, ISO 200.

Brazil, Brazil, ...

Indeed, you can see Brazilian samba danced in the streets of Aalborg once every year. I particularly like this photo because of the expression in the dancers face and the nice colors. As usual, I used an on-camera flash to soften the shadows. In these situations I normally put the flash compensation to -1 EV or more to make the flash "invisible". Too much flash would destroy the picture. I believe that I used the Lumiquest Mini Softbox as mentioned in the previous posts. Camera spec: Canon 40D with Canon 28-105 3,5-4,5 USM at 43mm, F5,6 @ 1/250, ISO 400.

Carnival Parade

Here it comes, the carnival parade! Beautiful colors, happy people, loud drum music and lots of dance ... enjoy. Again, a little bit of on-camera flash was used to fill in. Camera spec: Canon 40D with Canon 28-105 F3.5-4.5 USM at 43mm, F7.1 @ 1/250, ISO 200.