The Lunar New Year is upon us and with that comes fairs and festivals, lion dances and martial arts. But this event in particular was a bit different from the usual high flying acrobatics from people in lion costumes, deafening fireworks and powerful display of punches and kicks.
I was tasked with photographing the Valentine middle school's Lunar New Year celebration.
Instead of the loud grunts of seasoned warriors, the cute sounds of little first and second graders yelling "ayaa" and punching and kicking in unison started off the show.
After the demonstration of the adorable attacks was done, the students got to learn about chinese folklore through a lion dance.
The kids had a blast although I was not. The mid-day sun was hard and high above u, which casted shadows on the performers. To combat this I used a new technique using a flash to fill in the shadows. It was a lot of trial and error to find setting to allow me to freeze the fist paced action and fill the shadows of the people as they moved around. Depending on the distance of the subject the flash would not be strong enough to fill in shadows or do too good of a job and make the photo too bright. I eventually got the hang of it but it was stressful and I did miss some shots that would have been cool.
The student's martial arts teacher gathers them up for a pep talk before the performance.
The kids patiently wait for their performance.
Their teacher keeps the rythem by counting in mandarin.
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The teacher gets to demonstrate some of his monkey style kung fu.
Students prep near the lion costume.
The audience gets curious about how the lion feels.
The lion eats lettuce to bring good luck.
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