One of my favorite candid shots from the 2009 Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Festival.

There are a few images that I like more than others. I originally planned on posting 20, but decided to make a square collage with 16 images.

Another candid street shot from the 2008 Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Parade. It’s unfortunate that I had to clone out some distractions on the lower right area.

Here are a few more images from the parade. The last one, Solar Flair II, is my most favorite from the series.

Shot this year’s Summer Solstice Parade  on Saturday afternoon. It’s always difficult to shoot at high noon. This year, I decided to stop documenting the Santa Barbara Summer Solstice parade with my photos. Instead, I picked out only those “photogenic” moments and attempted to work the light into my shots instead of trying to fight against the harsh noon light. Black and white works well as it removes all the distracting colors and let the viewers focus on the light, the dancer’s shadows and her movements. I shot this with a circular polarize filter at its max, converted the color version to back and white, added a slight touch of diffuse glow, and finally introduced some artificial vignetting to darken the corners.

Here are some “outtakes” from the same dancer. I’ll probably post some more next week.