Sunday Morning Parade

There was a parade and fireworks on Saturday honoring San Miguel's patron saint but by 11:00 AM on Sunday, everyone was ready for another parade. I like to get to the staging area for the parade because then I have room to maneuver and make contact for photographing the people in the parade. When I reached Ancha de San Antonio about 10:20, there were 3 floats (flatbed trucks) parked at the curb and maybe 50 people and some of the mojigangas were being unloaded. Wow, did I have the time right? I started walking around and checking out the costumes. Gradually people started to arrive and the parade left right on time at 11:10.....well that is very on time here in San Miguel! But while the front of the parade was moving well on down the street there were still groups arriving to join in. As usual, it was a huge parade with many, many dance groups, floats, some flatbed trucks with sound systems, a band or two and of course the Queen.

I brought a new lens back with me in July and I'm just now getting around to using it. My friend, Frank, raved about the Canon 70-200mm, f4, L lens. I was covered for focal lengths below that so I thought that this lens would round out my camera bag. I've shot a lot of the festivals in San Miguel so Sunday when I picked up the camera to head over to the staging area for the parade, I put this lens on my camera to give it a try. I set it for aperture priority at f4 to see if I could blur the background and make the main subject standout.

This is a big lens at just over 10 inches long with the lens hood but it felt balanced on the camera while I was shooting hand-held. Frank, was right. This is a good lens. Very, very sharp and I didn't notice any distortion on the straight lines of the buildings although architecture wasn't the subject for the day. And depending on how far away the background was there was a nice blur for the background. I need to work with this lens some more to learn how to use it but so far I can see using it as a great portrait lens.

If you want to see some more of the shots from the parade with this lens, click here.