Hat trio

I guess my previous picture uploading woes have been resolved. I can upload from my computer once again. Fanks, Google!

Taken during last week's Chinese New Year celebrations in London. Despite the fairly decent weather I decided not to go to the main stage like last year, I instead walked around to see what else was going on. I tried to walk through Chinatown just after midday, I say "tried" as it was completely packed with people. I just ended up walking through a bunch of side roads, seeing if anything caught my eye.

These three ladies were the only non-Asian people that I saw who seemed to be into the spirit of the day, and that line of conical hats really stood out in the crowd. I kind of shot from the hip, and was pretty lucky to get the image so straight. Normally when I try to blind shoot the image is crooked, the subject is out of frame or my camera focused on something else completely (happens a lot with my not-very-fast Tamron lens).

I can't really decide whether I like it in black & white or colour. In colour it's still fairly neutral, and you're still drawn to the three ladies who have purple toy dragons.

I like 'em both.

Bian lian

Also known as the Chinese art of face changing.

I took this at the beginning of the year during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Trafalgar Square. I got there a bit late and started off at the back of the audience that gathered for the main stage. The weather was really wet and a lot of people who weren't prepared for the downpour were driven away, so I slowly made my way towards the front of the audience. I eventually ended up at the front of the stage, umbrella in one hand and camera in the other.

This performer was brilliant. It was extremely difficult to see how he managed to change masks so quickly. I've seen a couple of pics online where other performers have been sloppy and are "caught" at the moment where their mask changes, but the transition from one mask to the next on this act were just too smooth and very well hidden, and he was very fast.

I was mostly on shutter priority and burst mode by the evening, taking 3 or 4 shots per press. I bumped up exposure compension by about 1 stop so that I could keep my ISO fairly low, reason being that I only have my Tamron travel lens with a good enough reach and it's not brilliant in low light (I'd also just learned about exposure compensation so this was a bit of a test :D ). I shot in RAW which filled up my cards quickly but helped with retaining details in post-production. My camera also got rained on pretty hard despite me having an umbrella, but it survived the night thanks to my trusty microfibre cloth (pretty lucky for a camera/lens setup that has zero weather sealing).

Some of the other quick change masks he used. I didn't snap them all as I actually wanted to watch him perform:

The man behind the masks.

 

If you know his name, please let me know :)