Diwali!

I've been a bit slack again with blogging, but that's because not much has been happening on the gaming / photography front of late.

Real life has been rather hectic!

So it was good to catch up with Rob last Saturday for dinner followed by some time out photographing the Auckland Diwali festival at dusk.

Previously we've been during the afternoon, but figured it would be good to check out the event at a different time.

It's certainly a very colourful and energetic event.... I'm not just talking about the performances either! The crowd were certainly loving it!!

So much so, that after awhile all the phones and heads getting in the way of the camera was all a bit much, so it was time to head off home.

Not a bad selection of shots from the few acts we did see. Enjoy.

Diwali: Take 2

I've been playing around with some of my Diwali photos and tried a bit of a different way to finish them in Lightroom.

Basically I've cropped in a lot closer and then used some gradient / radial filters to bring out the subjects. Have gone for a higher contrast than normal as well.

Also tried a few basic borders to see how they look. The simple white outlines seem to work well with these photos since they have a black background. Not fully convinced on the border I've used on the last one though.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the images have turned out and am very happy with my 70 - 200mm lens :-)

Always keen for others thoughts though.

Diwali!

The Auckland Diwali festival has been on again this weekend.

For photographers, it is a great festival with all the bright and vibrant costumes.

So.... Mark G and I popped along to have a look. f2.8 was going to be perfect for this event! :-)

Enjoy all the colour.

 

We'd timed our arrival quite well.

The PM got things opened...

And then the international (I think) act came out! They were pretty good... :-)

Then the dignitaries left and the local acts started again...

I'm just glad I'm tall otherwise most of my shots probably would have been like this....

It wasn't all song and dance though... plenty of food, henna and even a puppet show...

A couple of treks up and down Queen St gave me a chance to try my skills as a street photographer.... not sure I'll make the best street photographer... :-)

The boat in the harbour was pretty impressive too....

All in all a good fun day (even with the extra exercise).