dancers on a float
A couple of years ago, armed with a new 105mm lens, I went for a walk about town. I was eager to try out the new lens and it was a beautiful day in the city.
The Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro lens is by far one of the best lenses made by Nikon that I’ve owned. It has great picture quality including tack sharp focus as well as really nicely rendered out-of-focus areas (known as bokeh).
While the primary intended use of the lens is for macro photography, I find it also makes a nice portrait lens – although the 105mm focal length (especially combined with the 1.4x crop factor on Nikon dx bodies) means you have to stand quite a distance from the subject in order to get that portrait shot.
As I was walking around town I came across the Love Parade (since re-branded a few times) – a celebration of techno music in the streets. It’s actually a pretty cool scene – streets swarming with people just dancing to the music.
I spent a little while with the crowds enjoying the sun and the music. This photo was from one of the many floats going by. It was shot at f/2.8 to minimize the focal plane down to just the dancers, and to render the background out of focus. With the bright sun and open aperture, I ended up with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second which helped freeze the action.
I like the way that everyone is smiling and having a great time – and I like that each of the dancers is looking someplace different. In addition, their arms going in different directions also adds a to the interesting composition while at the same time they’re each wearing the same outfits and wigs bringing some consistency across the scene.
I decided to crop the photo down to remove some of the float and to really draw the focus in to the dancers.
Street celebrations like these can make for great photo opportunities – especially ones with so much energy. I have yet to bump into this one again but I’ve always got my eye out for street celebrations that I think would make for more compelling shots.
