Express & Star

Photographing events: Tipton Carnival

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The events season is well under way now and I can look forward to more carnivals, canal festivals and fun days.

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All these events are outside and tend to be very colourful affairs, especially at Tipton Carnival where the sun shone!

[breakout title="Mike Maynard" align="right"]Mike is a photographer and blogger, and key contributor to the Express & Star's Star Witness section! He runs two blogs of his own Mike10613 and A Zillion Ideas.[/breakout]

I use a Nikon D3200, which is a 24 Mega pixel DSLR, but you can get good pictures with almost any camera.

Try to make use of all those vivid colours that you get at carnivals and fairs. Pack as much colour into the shots as you can.

The shot above has lots of people and colour in it, making it interesting. You can get people to pose for photos, but I prefer candid shots showing people enjoying themselves.

Your shots will give an image of the event. This one says 'carnival' and 'funfair'.

Make sure you include people involved in the event you're photographing and make sure you consider the background.

I really like this shot, but it was really dark. I had two choices: either use a flash or make the picture lighter in editing. I chose the latter and look what it did to the background. It's made the shot look quite artistic.

You can wander around taking pictures or you can create images. Creating images that tell a story is far more interesting. This image is very 'busy' and shows the stalls selling all manner of things at the carnival.

You need fast shutter speeds at events to capture the action. I find the sports setting on my Nikon is ideal for this kind of shot, with spot focusing.

See the original blog post at A Zillion Ideas.