Luton’s Spring Carnival

The town of Luton in England started of the Carnival Season with a colourful parade on the 27^th May 2018. The month of May had much needed rain with thunderstorms. Thunderstorms were forecasted for the 27^th but it did not happen. The day was a mix of cloud and sunshine which made it good conditions for taking pictures.

With May comes the beautiful greenery and colourful flowers which will not be covered in this blog. The predominant colour green will be seen in the background of most of these images. This blog will cover the beautiful colours of the costumes and the wonderful people who are wearing the costumes.

With the strong sunlight you will have dark shadows on the ground and across the picture some off the images will be dark whilst others will be just right (properly exposed). With the cloud cover the shadows will be faint or not present. The images will be properly exposed across the whole of the picture. This is the ideal situation.

If the strong sunlight is coming from behind the subject the face will be in the dark. Provided the light is of a suitable level and the light contrast is not too strong you can compensate using software. Increase the exposure for the face and burn out the sky.

If the subject is facing the strong sunlight details can be seen in the costumes with fine details in the design. You will still have details of the sky in the picture.

After taking all of this into consideration start capturing images that will make people want to look.

Compose your shots by taking account of what is in the background.

Try to plan ahead as the parade moves through the streets.

The picture below was to remind people that it was seventy years ago that the Steam Ship, Empire Windrush came from the Caribbean with black people to help rebuild England after World War II.