Advice for shooting upcoming parades

[swatcop169]

As the title states, I'm shooting a couple parades here in my home town. My lens choices are, 18-55, 50mm 1.8, 28-105, 70-200L.

[sGu]

Take widest and longest in your collection, so 18-55mm and 70-200mm.

Find where parade would be going through on the map, do some research on the location, try find yourself a unusual and good vantage point, get high up if you can.

Spare batteries, spare CF cards, flash(just in case), wear something comfortable so you can walk/run a lot without feeling tired.

Open your eyes, watch out for anything interesting, oh, try to have some fun yourself, too :D

[dhbailey]

Keep your eyes on the crowd as much as on the parade itself -- everybody's seen marching bands, Shriners' groups, Miss Wherever winners, 4-H groups, etc., but if you can catch the look of wonder in a youngster's eyes, or a picture of a grandparent and grandchild sharing a special moment of joy, that will be the best shot of all.

[swatcop169]

Keep your eyes on the crowd as much as on the parade itself -- everybody's seen marching bands, Shriners' groups, Miss Wherever winners, 4-H groups, etc., but if you can catch the look of wonder in a youngster's eyes, or a picture of a grandparent and grandchild sharing a special moment of joy, that will be the best shot of all.

Thanks, I never thought of that.

[defordphoto]

Keep your eyes on the crowd as much as on the parade itself -- everybody's seen marching bands, Shriners' groups, Miss Wherever winners, 4-H groups, etc., but if you can catch the look of wonder in a youngster's eyes, or a picture of a grandparent and grandchild sharing a special moment of joy, that will be the best shot of all.

Actually, that'd be my preferred shot. Hard to beat the look of wonderment in a kid's eyes.

[IndyJeff]

Who are you shooting this parade for? Yourself? A magazine? An organization in the parade? Each of those will yeild different answers as to how to shoot a parade.

As Gu said, visit the parade route early, at least a day or two before. Look for vantage points that you will have easy access to. Make arrangements to get up on a building with the owner ahead of time. The day of the parade is a little late to ask, "Can I shoot the parade from your buildings roof?" Watch your backgrounds. If you can find a spot where you would be able to shoot and crouch down and get nothing but sky in the background that would be a good place to shoot at least some of it from.
Use the 70-200 and shoot tight. Head on shots of the band coming at you can be good but, be sure to get faces in some of them. The Drum Major with the band in the background would make a good shot coming straight at you, even if the band was soft or completely out of focus.

Floats look nice when your looking at them from an elevated point and shoot tight. Someone riding in a car is best if you can be at street level, shoot at standing height, crouch down and shoot looking up at them as they come at you from the side of the parade route. Remember your backgrounds, clean them up.

I have only shot one parade, I started near the beginning of the route. By the time it was over I had walked about 4 blocks. A slow moving parade passes by much faster than you think it will. Be ready to move down the route to get a backup shot in case your wondering if you got what you needed. Don't try to back up and shoot, turn and run down 50 feet and get set up to catch them when they get to you.