San Francisco Carnaval Images

Once again, the photo opportunities were endless in the Mission district this past weekend for the annual Carnaval street fair and parade. Sunday morning dawned gray and overcast, so I added a couple of Nikon Speedlights to my kit for the day. The wireless Speedlight Commander mode built into the Nikon D700 is perfect for this kind of shooting, allowing me to add an extra touch of light to heighten the contrast and add drama to the street scenes. Handholding one of the the Nikon SB 800 strobes in my left hand, with the camera in my right, allowed me to instantly adjust the angle and balance of the light for the constantly moving subjects, and the fully automatic TTL settings rarely missed an exposure.

For these shots the flash system was set to the high-speed FP sync mode to allow shutter speeds up to 1000 the second. I usually tend to shoot in manual mode when using external flashes, but in this case, things were changing too fast so the TTL mode was welcome. These dancers were part of the African tribute group marching in the parade, dressed in very colorful and authentic costumes. All of these images were captured during the early morning set-up along Bryant St. Shooting before the parade starts brings us up close and personal with the performers, and an extra bonus was discovering that one of my former students was a member of this group.

I had a lot of fun out and about early for the pre-parade shoot. But as the parade kicked into high gear, the hard work was just starting. My gear went back into the bag, and I met up with my family. My daughter Audrey climbed onto my shoulders for the next hour and a half for the best vantage point in the Mission.