The Ottawa Asian Fest Night Market on Sparks Street is one of several popular and free public festivals in the urban core of the Nation’s Capital during the summer months. Held on the weekend of July 21 to 24 this year, it followed on the heels of the Chinatown Night Market on Somerset Street a few weeks earlier.
I tend to approach all my pictures as run and gun street photography, and festivals like this provide a great opportunity for it. I shot these with a Nikon D7500 DSLR, an AF-P DX NIKKOR 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6G VR and a Nikon SB-700 Speedlight. I used the Speedlight in the camera’s hotshoe because there is no time or space for studio photography niceties during events like this. Even if a subject poses, you only have a few seconds at best to take the picture, and you really have to get it on the first try.
Don’t be frightened or misled into thinking flash photography has to be more complex than what is required for the task at hand. Despite what you might see on YouTube and other media trying to attract clicks or sell something you don’t really need, you can get more than satisfactory results just using an unmodified flash on top of the camera, paparazzi style. If it ends up having the people magazine look, so much the better. I like it.
These photos required no image editing. I usually shoot raw plus JPEG, and I just use the JPEG whenever I can.
