There are photographic outings that are planned far in advance (such as the outing to the Viking markets last weekend), and then there are those that happen very fast and with next to no planning. That was the case this weekend when my dear mother told me at lunch there was a Latino festival in Malmö that day and I thought “cool, that’d be interesting to photograph” and off I went. There’d be a carnival parade too, but given that I had heard about it late I figured I would miss that part (turns out I did), but that was okay. It just felt nice to be out and about with my cameras in the summer sun!
So, I sweated myself into town on the bus and indeed there were lots and lots of performances going on, food was served and various stalls promoted opinions, causes, wares and all kinds of things latino (since I am not a Spanish speaker or reader I wouldn’t know what many of them were). I focused on photographing the performances instead.
I mostly shoot analog and black and white these days, but an event like that absolutely called for color…and lots of it! So digital I went. However, for some reason yet to be determined I decided to put my Canon 600D into “sports” mode. I suppose my sun-battered brain thought “lots of movements when they’re dancing, makes it like sports”. Turns out that was not the right choice given the blazing sunlight. So many shots were COMPLETELY overexposed, since the camera apparently decided it needed lots of light to cover “sports”.
I guess it was a small blessing that I absolutely applied the “spray and pray” method when I shot the dancers’ performances, even though I swore at myself when I looked at the number of exposures done at the event: 371! I rarely shoot a full roll when I am out and about these days, so to have THAT many to go through and edit…not fun! At least it was easier to “kill my darlings”, since so many were either out of focus or overexposed, or both. No qualms about getting rid of those! Just a quick “X” in Lightroom and never seen again! In the end I managed to weed it down to around 50 shots I was at least somewhat pleased with after I salvaged the worst overexposed areas, and I’ve picked a few of those for this blogpost.
If I am allowed to be somewhat political in these far too xenophobic times it is fun to show the world that Swedes are not all tall, blonde and blue-eyed people, we have all kinds! And in Malmö we have them more than many in this country, and we’re all the better for it. So many people from different parts of the world, sharing the same space, learning from one another, seeing that there’s more than one way to skin a cat (sorry felines, just a figure of speech).
All blond, all tall, all blue-eyed…right? ;-)