Ottawa Lumiere Festival of Lights – Full Camera Skills Needed

The Ottawa annual Lumiere Festival of Lights is not just a wonderful events for kids and spectators it's also a great chance to get some interesting and new photos for your collection.

 ISO 400; f6.3; 13 sec; -0.67ev; 123mm; tripod mounted; Nikon D300

This is my 3rd time attending this event and each and every time I go there is something new to see. The festival is all about light and for this event it means candle power. There are activities for kids in the leading-up week where they make wonderful colorful paper mache objects that have holders inside to take those small candles in metal cans. These candles go inside the object and are lit at dusk. This creates a wonderful glow emanating for the colorful paper mache objects.

ISO 2,500 f5.6; 1 sec;  48mm

Hundreds of these lit lanterns in the shape of many different forms from faces to animals line the many paths around New Edinburgh park in Ottawa.

For the photographer it's visually stunning but also provides many photographic challenges in order to capture the event as the night unfolds.

When you first arrive around 7:30pm, you are at the golden hour of light and normal settings gets most of these shots.  You may need a bit of fill light from your flash and here an attached strobe flash is necessary to get just enough light to fill area and the ability to reduce the exposure (-ev) so as to not over power the ambient light.  See image of man on stilts below.

 

ISO 200; f5.6; 1/60 sec; 40mm; Flash -1ev

With hundreds of kids moving around and depending on their activity in front of you, a long exposure shot may create interesting photo image. The children in the image below are playing a large chess game. I wanted to show motion blur to create effect of action within the photo.

ISO 80; f25; 3 sec; 32mm

As dusk starts to envelope a more  stronger flash is necessary to freeze motion and completely fill subject as with the Tango dancer.

ISO 200; f5.6; 1/60 sec; 100mm; Flash

There are other areas like the lit swans in the river where flash won't work and a long exposure is needed to amplify available light to avoid the noise of higher ISOs. But when there is some wind movement then you will need the higher ISOs as in the photo below. In these photos it's all about the soft glow of candle power.

ISO 2,500; f5.6; 0.3 sec;  -0.3ev; 190mm; tripod mounted

ISO 2,500; f5.6; 2 sec; -1ev; 28mm; tripod mounted

But a near full darkness only longer exposure times and a tripod will get you those interesting photos like the girls with their glowing and twirling hula hoops.

The main event at this festival is a giant maze on a baseball diamond (to reduce chance of grass fire) covered with lunch paper bags filled with a little sand for stability and then a small candle. There are hundreds of children walking around this maze but with long exposures they do not show up in the photo because of their darkness. It's only when they are carrying candles or light that they show up as a moving white line.

ISO 1,000; f5.6; -1ev; 3sec; 1230mm; tripod mounted

At this event I did use my new Nikon D800e and I found it worked well. I did forget to bring my small flashlight to light the buttons on the camera.  Thankfully there remained mostly the same from the D300 and I could with some ease figure where to press to make changes to seetings.

In summary for an event like this you need to be able to switch between:
Aperture, Shutter priority and Manual mode – Flash will freeze when necessary.
Low and high ISOs.
Normal shutter speeds and long exposures of 2-3 seconds.
Flash power adjustments for fill light strengths.
Hand-held and tripod shooting.

I do hope you all get a chance to try events like these or a an amusement park or fair ground.

Niels Henriksen

Festivals in San Miguel de Allende

It seems like there is always some sort of festival going on in San Miguel. In fact, there really is. Most of these are tied to religious or Mexican national events, but at times there also those unexpected festivals. When they involve children they can make for extra special photographic events. And who doesn’t love the smiles and special faces that children can make. Add a few costumes and now there is magic in the air.

Last year and again this year there was the multicultural school event with kids coming from many districts. I wasn't paying special attention to the date as I didn’t even know it was happening again. I only came by the festival when I was heading by the Jardin. Which is a daily ritual for me in my treks around town. I didn't notice the festival event in the local paper Atencion which is great for highlighting events in and around town. There is always so much going on that it's easy to miss one, or sometimes the festival's name is in Spanish and it may not be evident by its title.

I asked one of the girls participants to pose with the rose as she seemed to have the best smile of all of them.

She and the boy in the image above were the central characters in their school skit.

The pair of them started off sitting on a bench and the boy appeared to reject the advances of the girl. I believe that this was part of a Valentines theme as every person had a heart on their palms.

After a short interval, with the music was playing all the time, the rest of their class mates joined them on stage and performed a choreographed dance.

It was great fun to watch and in this photo you can see all their hearts on their hands.

A few weeks later I came across an art festival called “Thank You Art' project. This is were kids and some adults, me included, glued coloured tissue paper to a clear plexiglass sheet.

They were allowed to cut the sheets into strange shapes or with cut-outs and even write messages on their sheets.

Then they were glued on top of each other in a multitude of different colors. When the panels were hung in a lighted area they glowed like stained glass panels.

During my photographing of the kids enjoying themselves one of the directors of the project asked me if they could use some of my photos for the up coming display of the final glass sheets.

I was fortunate to have several of my images selected for the Art show in the Biblioteca that ran for 2 weeks.

They printed my images 39cm x 52 cm (15” x 20”) and hung them on the wall around the 2 plexiglass sheets that looked like large stained glass windows.

When in San Miguel you should always, and I mean always, have your camera with you as you never know what's just waiting around the next corner. Three times during my winter stay I did not take my camera with me and I regretted it each time. Now I don't leave home without it. It may be a bit heavy so I carry it in my backpack.

Niels Henriksen