Halloween Carnaval 2013 - West Hollywood - Part 1 (of 4)

This year, on October 31, I went to West Hollywood, California, for the annual Halloween Carnaval.  I drove from Mar Vista, left at 3:30 so I would be able to find a parking spot.  I did, about a mile from the Carnaval route.  I walked the mile and a half, and sat and waited.  By around 5:30 - 6:00pm I started seeing the first people dressed for the event.  By around 9pm, things started getting pretty crowded.  A little later, there were so many people that there were places I could barely move.   There was the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, all sorts of characters (cat women, wolf men (and who knows, perhaps some wolf women or cat men?), headless people, cops and sheriffs (the sheriffs were real) and many more).  And some really scary moments - I'll talk about the scary stuff in one of the next posts.

If you've ended up here, it is probably for the photos, so here goes - and I want to thank all the wonderful people who willingly posed for these photos.  After all, without them, this wouldn't be much of a post.  For those of you whom I gave a link to, if you don't see your photo in this post, it will be in one of my next posts.

The above photo is how things looked around 4:30pm or so.  The view is on Santa Monica Blvd looking toward La Cienega.  As can be seen, it was pretty empty at this time, and the weather was perfect - warm and clear.  Below are some of the first images shot.

For those of you who are into photography, and are wondering whether to shoot in RAW or JPG - I shot all photos in RAW.  JPG would work if all your exposures were spot on perfect.  But with changing light and conditions, as well as an occasional hand or arm that may get in the way and throw the meter reading off, shooting in RAW can save your photo, as it did for this one.  Below is the same photo as above, before adjustments were done (I was testing the exposure, setting my camera) - had I shot in JPG, I would not have been able to get a usable photo.  Additionally, whenever you edit a JPG photo, some information is lost, and eventually the image gets degraded.

I was shooting with a new camera for the first time.  The daytime ISO was from 200 - 400.  After dark, all the shots were at ISO 800.

All the images below pretty much speak for themselves.  When you click on any image, you can see a larger size.  If you see yourself in an image and would like a larger size, let me know.

This is the end of part I.  I hope you enjoy looking at the images as much as I enjoyed shooting them.   Part II will be coming up soon, although I may have a short post relating to the dangers of GMO foods, which is why they should be either outlawed as in many other countries, or at the very least, labeled.