December 18th, 2008 Shooting The Holidazzle

Shooting available light of moving objects in the dark seemed like an attractive learning opportunity, toss in 0F temps and it was off to the Holidazzle Parade in Minneapolis.   I parked at the 28th Avenue LRT Station in Bloomington and took the train to Nicollet Mall the quickly fell asleep somewhere after the airport and waking up at the metrodome.  The plan had been to arrive 90 minutes early to stake out a claim before the crowds grew but, for the most part the crowds don’t show up until about 5 minutes before the parade begins (except for the skyways, stores, and buildings along Nicollet Avenue).   I sat down at Starbucks as the people arrived one by one finally going outside and staking our claim 50 minutes before the event which gave us an opportunity to setup, chat, take some test shots, and discuss probable outcome’s of the photos we were about to take.   (thanks to Doug Heimstead for providing these, for some reason I am never in any of the photos I take, I am the guy wearing the fashionable holiday blaze orange hat.  9th & Nicollet)

Another vantage point courtesy of Toni Johnson.

I ended up taking a few long exposures and a few stop action shots, I should have had one battery wrapped in a handwarmer (or simply in my pocket) as I used the other one, I was not able to find the third before I left the house.  Both batteries had it by about 5 minutes into the parade, it was not really a lesson learned having spent many a night in the winter taking astronomy/etc photos for hours at a time more of a lesson ignored then paid for.  I continued to shoot with the SD1000 but, I have yet to look at those.

After the parade we hit the M&S Grill on 6th and Nicollet to thaw out for an hour or two.   The original plan was Pizza Luce which I was actually kind of looking forward to but, I could not resist hitting Potbelly’s in the IDS on the way to the Holidazzle having not eaten for a day or so.  But, M&S was able to easily accommodate the 12 or so who could make it for dinner/apps/etc (I was stuffed from earlier).

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