Hong Kong Association Atlanta Dragon Boat Festival
September 14, 2013 | Lanier Canoe and Kayak Club, Lake Lanier, Gainesville, GA
www.dragonboatatlanta.com

Notes:  So this was my 8th year at the event. Every year I either row or take photos, and other planning stuff.  Got to the lake late because I wanted to sleep in a bit, and wouldn’t you know it, the fog on the water and sunrays coming in really made for some cinematic footage.  Oh well, this event is still way too hard to cover all the angles solo.  The good photos will just have to come out of having fun with friends and helping out.  I guess as time goes on, this is turning into a tradition like one of those annual college football games.  This year’s race was one week later than normal, but with that came some pretty nice weather.  I don’t think it’d been this nice since ’06.  Thanks to everyone who came out and pitched in at the last minute.  Thanks to all the newcomers on the team, and the parents that cooked all the delicious Lao food.  Thanks to our little dancers for promoting our culture and helping raise money for our new office/center.  I was under our tent watching an elderly couple look at the display boards I made and they put $1 in the donation box.  Hooray!  It all begins with just one helping hand!

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Technical Notes: I shot with two new contraptions this year (in addition to my normal gear of course)

• I did a few time lapses with my old iPhone taped up to a $3 kitchen timer I bought from Wal-Mart.  Found a small bracket in a junk pail and taped up the phone to a holder and the light stand.  When I have time, I hope to design a more “professional” one.  But for a night before project, this was truly DIY.

My iPhone + Cooking Timer Time Lapse setup!  Luckily no one walked away with it! 🙂

• I hooked up another 70-200 f/2.8 to a Nikon J1 using my existing mechanical adapters.  I still haven’t pulled the trigger on the FT-1 adapter since it is a steep $240, but this combo works pretty good, especially for “free.”  I had to put a piece of tape on the inside of the lens to keep it wide open at f/2.8 and not f/22 and manually focus the shots, but the reach of the J1’s 2.7X crop sensor is pretty crazy.  Simulates a 540mm FOV.  With this combo I could shoot extreme telephoto video at 1080 60i and have the ability to simultaneously take 8MP still images while the video was still rolling.  And of course with a flip of the switch, shoot 10 MP images at 10 FPS.  Nikon really did a poor job at marketing the 1 series cameras to consumers, and not to sports, or specialized users.  Oh well, I still enjoy using my little white J1. 🙂

Nikon J1 + Nikon 70-200mm via two mechanical adapters.  This combo isn’t supposed to work but it does!

Okay, enough babbling about technical mumbo jumbo, here are some photos from a Lao/Southeast Asian perspective.  Please cheer on my team Laotian American Society (LAS) next time we race!  Enjoy!

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If you’d like to view the pictures larger in slideshow format, Click Here.
Please rotate your devices Horizontally!

If you’d like to view the pictures larger in slideshow format, Click Here.
Please rotate your devices Horizontally!