Photo of the Week | Chinese New Year

This week’s ‘Photo of the Week’ comes from the Chinese New Year celebrations here in Beijing. This year, I decided to go to the Temple of Heaven, situated just south of Tiananmen Square, to photograph the festivities taking place there. In case you don’t know, the arrival of CNY is accompanied by what are called ‘temple fairs’, which are basically festivals held within the grounds of many of the city’s temples. They are normally quite interesting places to wander around and photograph, especially at this time of the year when there are many activities taking place.

This image was taken whilst a performance was taking place in the central part of the Temple of Heaven. The people pictured were watching the performance whilst I took this picture. The performance itself was quite interesting, although I had a terrible view. I therefore decided  to turn my attention to the large crowds of people who were there.

What I like about this image, are the faces. It reminds me of a miniature Where’s Wally/Waldo. You can spend a lot of time just going from face to face, each with their own interesting expression. I also love that people aren’t reacting the the camera. I’m not a huge fan of images where people are looking at the camera. The more natural, the better. The majority of the people were conveniently distracted, so I was free to photograph them quite closely with little reaction. I’m looking forward to perhaps printing this photo. I think the larger size will be even more intriguing.

Camera Info: Canon 7D | 50mm lens | ISO 200 | f8 | 1/640th