Tag: performer

Glastonbury Carnival 2011 Photos

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It took some time, but I’ve finally finished processing the photos from Glastonbury Chilkwell Guy Fawkes Carnival from Saturday. The weather was fine all day, in fact it was probably one of the nicest days of November so far. This meant perfect conditions for the carnival. A cold wind did pick up for a while before the start, but it soon died down again.

While there were a lot of shots I wasn’t happy with (there always is), thanks to two participants, I was able to get some of my best ever carnival photographs. The first performer from Vagaonds Carnival Club turned to the camera to do her routine, while glaring intensely at the camera, perfect for the tone of the cart. While that was good, perhaps even more surprising was the performer from Centurion CC, who gave a brilliant smile. Many not familiar with carnival may not find that very surprising perhaps, but Centurion is a tableau club, where the participants stay frozen for the whole procession, but again, it fit in well with the theme. My sincere thanks must go to both of these two performers. Carnival photographs are always going to be dynamic by their very nature, but it isn’t always possible to capture the atmosphere. I felt that the relationship between them and the camera really lifted the photographs to another level. I’m not a portrait photographer normally, so it is probably one of the few occasions where I have had a buzz from photographing people, normally it’s confined to my nature photographs, when I get what I was looking for.

Like last year, I had taken note of some of the features of the carts that I had wanted to photograph, so I concentrated more on different angles (mainly portrait formats of the carts), portraits of the performers and closeup and detail shots. Not all of them were successful, as many of the performers were in higher positions than last year, which caused focusing and depth of field problems that had to be overcome. Again, this is something to note for next year.

Despite some failures, overall it was a success for me and as usual, plenty of money was collected for local charities, although not as much as you might expect, given that there are usually around 50,000 spectators.

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