Everyone Loves a Circus

It was the evening of Valentine's Day this past February when Jo Ann and I were walking up to la Parroquia and we saw that the church was under a sea of circus lights. As we walked over we could see that the circus was in town and they were putting on a short exhibition and there was probably three or four hundred people sitting in the chairs and in the jardin waiting for the show.


Well I had my Olympus camera, but alas no tripod and so I kept waiting for the show to start hoping to get some nice photos. The first image is of the Parroquia under the circus lights and was probably around 6:15 and the ISO settings were at 640.





Finally as the clock ticked to around 7:15, the performers started to assemble and prepare for their performance. During this time, I kept shooting images and to get decent images, kept moving the ISO settings higher, until finally the only shots that I could get were being shot with my ISO at 1600. This image of the performers awaiting for their time, the shutter speed was 1/10 sec. and f/4.5. As I said earlier I did not have my tripod so there is some movement as I tried my best to keep it still.


I also was having to deal with the lights coming from the background buildings but since there were so many people in attendance, there was not much I could do to move around and get a better sight line. However, the colors from the circus lights and the colors of the costumes were beautiful and I did not want to mess these up.

The evenings in San Miguel can be so wonderful, with the stars, the moon and the wonderful temperatures, then finding something like this on Valentine's Day was so very nice.