Last weekend we went to the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival for the first time.  It’s incredible! What a blast to see 20-person teams racing long sculls with ornate dragons carved on the front!  Unfortunately, we only had an hour and a half or so there, but it’s such a target-rich environment (photographically speaking) that I’m sure we’ll be back in future years.  Here’s some of the shots I got while we were there:

One team in particular was very serious about the races; they even performed a haka dance to intimidate the competition.  They were fantastic!  After shooting the race teams up close at the docks for a while, while we were just siting by the lake shore I noticed a flight of three geese coming in for a landing and was able to grab a shot of them about to splash down.  Finally, there’s a shot in there of the vendor selling his monkeyballs.  Seriously, he would ring a bell and yell “Monkeyballs!” every time he sold an order. Hilarious! Almost made me wish I did video…

These shots were all taken with the 5D and the 70-20mm.  I was looking to challenge myself and get out of my usual comfort zone a bit and work at very shallow apertures, so these were all done at f/2.8.  Usually I’m paranoid about losing focus, and shoot no wider than f/5.6 to make sure I’m at least close, and it was interesting to work this way and get out of my rut.  What about you?  Are you stuck in particular rut? Always do things a certain way?  Try changing things up a bit, just to see how it feels.  Get better at something you’re no good at now.    I’ve found that challenging myself with mini assignments like this lately has really added a bit more creative edge to my photos.  You might find something similar!

Give it a try and please hit us in the comments to let us know what you thought.