My first taste of the Tenerife Carnival was at the opening parade in Santa Cruz, which was a prelude to the main parade happening a week later. Curiously the event was scheduled to start at 7pm, just as night was falling, which made for some interesting shooting conditions given the speed at which the perfomers walked/danced past us. The parade was a very colourful affair, despite the gloomy light, and there were some great costumes - watch out for the Michael Jackson troupe, coming soon :-)  First up are the chickens and the clowns…

From a technical point of view, these photos were all taken in near-darkness, with only the streetlamps and a Canon 420ex flashgun providing the light. Consequently my new Tamron 28-75mm Di lens was locked at a wide-open aperture of F/2.8 and ISO was set to 800 on the Canon EOS 10D. Despite this shutter speeds ranged from anywhere between 1/125th and 1/10th second, which resulted in the “creative blur” found in most of the shots. The Tamron lens performed very well, with the autofocus locking on to the subject despite the dark conditions, and the f/2.8 aperture blurring the backgrounds nicely. The 28-75mm (equivalent to 45-120mm on the 10D) zoom range proved very versatile for this event and I used the lens exclusively all night. I’ll be posting a review of this lens soon.