Rose Parade Floats

On New Years I went to the 2008 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena. This year the theme was "Passport to the World's Celebrations." And fittingly there was the Chinese Beijing Olympics float which was nice looking but the impressive part was the outfits of the chinese dancers. It was beautiful to witness, well through the viewfinder anyway. :-) Then there was the El Salvador High School marching band that rode by bus for five days to get here. That was touching. I find the most interesting aspects to photograph are the people in the parade and the protesters of which there were a lot this year. The parade is so crowded near the beginning of the route that it is hard to shoot but it was a little easier to get photos at the post-parade rose float viewing yesterday the day after New Years.

When I first got to the Rose Float viewing at Pasadena High School yesterday morning, it wasn't too crowded. But by the end it was just as busy there as the parade was. Some guy even tried to start a fight with me. Aside from him it was quite enjoyable though. It's awesome to see in close detail what the floats are made up of.

Red Roses on Rose Float, Pasadena, California - 2008

Tiger on Rain Bird Rose Float, Pasadena, California - 2008

I do almost all of my travel and landscape photography on the 17-35mm lens because it is a higher quality lens but I used the 17-85mm lens this time so I could focus in on the details of the rose floats in addition to shoot a few wide angles when necessary. Around this time of year I get a fair amount of traffic to my website from people looking for rose parade pictures so I wanted focus more on the details at the float viewing because that is an area in which I had lacked pictures of previously.

Happy New Year!