Amami Superman Photography

I'm starting out this series of posts of the Amami parade with this big habu. The parade is held on Sunday and is the last event of the Amami Summer Festival. This big habu is apart of the parade every year. It's always fun to watch.

The parade stops at regular intervals and each group does their thing for the crowd watching. The habu is performed by the workers of the Amami City Hall.





They throw buckets of water to cool off the performers. It's fairly warm and humid and it's pretty easy to get overheated running around like this.

In other parts of Japan, they have festivals called "Hadaka Matsuri", which basically means "naked festival". Probably the most famous of these naked festivals is the one held at the Konomiya Shrine in Inazawa. Over 9000 men come out dressed in nothing more than a fundoshi tightly tied around their loins. Every year they select one man to move down the middle of this huge crowd of men. The objective of the entire crowd is to touch this one man and give their misfortunes for the year to him. This man has 4 others with him to help protect him so he isn't killed under the crushing weight of the crowd. So much heat is generated from all the bodies pressing together, they throw buckets of ice and ice water out over the crowd. Although it's not as crowded as that here in Amami during the parade, it's still hot and it feels good to have the cool water poured on you.



So there I was, down on one knee trying to take my shots and up strolls this camera man and stands right in front of me. I was a bit peeved but didn't do anything about it except move over a bit to get a clear shot. Then he moved and came and stood right in front of me again. I moved again and he moved again and stood right in front of me! I usually don't get too angry with people, but man! I wanted to throttle this guy! It was just after I shot this photo that I actaully growled at him and he turned around and realized he was standing in front of me. After that he tried to move away from me.













I couldn't believe how some of these camera men didn't care who's view they were blocking. They would just come up and stand in front of you without saying anything even when I was down on one knee right in front trying to take a shot. It was everything I could do to keep from standing up and shoving them out of my way. BUT! I kept my cool and bit my lip.

So that is the first of a few posts to come of the parade this year. I've been trying my best to use the manual settings. I didn't use the zoom that much during these photos so the focal length is almost always 18mm. This let me get a bit of practice adjusting just the shutter speed and aperture. It was a bit cloudy but the sun would break through and it would get bright at times so it was pretty good practice.