Exercise: An organised event.

Outline: Look for an organised event at which there will be plenty of people and in which you can photograph freely and with some variety.

I am going back to using my Cardiff Harbour Festival 2011 photos for this exercise as within my timescale and the fact that it is rapidly approaching winter, I would not find an open air event to shoot right now.

As a bit of background, Cardiff Harbour Festival is situated at Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay and is a family friendly event with lots of free activities. The main attraction being a variety of boats including tall ships on the harbour that visitors are able to climb aboard and have a look around. The festival also hosts a continental market complete with tasty treats from across the globe and also an alternative end of pier attraction which includes a sand pit, beach huts, comedy walkabouts and live music.

It was easy to wander around this event with a camera. As it was a fairly big event which covered a large space, I wasn't confined in any way or intruding on the personal space of the people in attendance for the most part. I needed to use a variety of lenses, especially to attempt to get shots of the people on or around the boats as you had to pay a fee to get down onto the walkway near the boats.

Cardiff Harbour Festival 

Selection of boats on the harbour

One of the main attraction 'Tall Ships'

As you can see by the first image, there were many people lining the docks and overlooking the barrier at the boats on show. People who were amongst the boats were able to chat to the boatsmen and even climb aboard to have a look around. 

Learning about the boat

Climbing aboard

The boats and ships are not the only feature of this event though. As it is very family orientated, there are other attractions for the public to enjoy. 

Meeting Point

Plenty of people enjoying the market

Browsing the stalls

I felt a little less comfortable here. As you can, there were a lot of people in a small space amongst some of the stalls on the market and even with a standard focal length, I felt very close and involved as though I had the camera directly in peoples faces at times. This made me feel a bit intrusive so I did try to not directly point at anyone, although this in itself was difficult.

There were many more activities though, including fairground rides and activities, including bridge building which many children were partaking in.

Flying

Bridge Building

Again, these were easier to shoot as I could stand back and use a longer focal length. I felt this was necessary as I am always uneasy photographing children especially.

Conclusion: I am happy with the images that were produced at this event. I feel it documents the overall feel of the event quite well, maybe not in a story telling way as such but just by these few photos the viewer can get an insight as to what kind of things were going on throughout the event.