Festival Photograph Tips: Never Stopped by the Crowd

quoted from national geographic

For Chinese national day is coming, an 8-day holiday is right here under our noses. As to most of office staff, it’s a good chance to travel around and relax them. Beautiful scenery definitely can’t be missed. Therefore, besides of keeping security of yourself and personal effects in the crowd, you may also need some useful tips on how to take clear photos in the crowd, which is more than avoiding shaking!

Keep your camera at the ready

When you're squashed in a crowd of people, trying to pull a camera out of your bag is really hard work so it's best to have it in your hands ready before the crush begins. If you want to make sure you're not going to lose it put a smaller strap on it and place it over your wrist.

Compose your shots

As you won't be able to move very far, the ways you can compose your shots will be limited and you'll just have to rely on the band getting into poses/positions you think are worth photographing.

Get decent shots as the light fades

quoted from national geographic

As most compacts try and use flash when it gets dark make sure you turn it off. If you don't turn your flash off you'll probably end up with a shot that shows a few rows of heads and nothing behind them. You can increase the ISO manually but just keep an eye out for noise as some compact cameras struggle with this when you start to use higher ISO settings.

Try and stand still

It can be hard to do when you're in a crowd but by doing so you'll reduce the amount of shake in your shot, particularly when the sun's set and your camera's having to use longer shutter speeds when any movement can be easily picked up in your final photograph.

Remember the crowd

Try turning around and photographing the mass of people around you. It's not as easy if you're standing low down but get up higher on a slight hill/banking and it's easy to capture a sweeping shot of the festivities.