Saturday, June 30, 2012

Faces of the 2012 Chicago Pride Parade

I stopped by the 2012 Pride Parade with the intention to take just a few photos and post them by Monday or Tuesday of the following week.  Here it is Saturday and I'm finally writing a blog post about it.  Needless to say, I found myself with a lot more shots than expected, which is a good problem to have. 

Here's a set featuring 25 of my favorites:


All photos taken with a Nikon D7000 and either a 16-85mm or a 70-300mm Nikkor lens. Copyright Andy Marfia 2012 All Rights Reserved.

Since Flickr is still using flash for these slideshows, those of you on iPhones and iPads probably can't see a thing.  Follow this direct link.

This set includes the usual mix or parade subjects-- from politicians to spectators to a guy in an over-sized dog outfit-- but I did try to focus more on faces this year.  The thing that I've realized after going to this event for many years is that I really don't care about the floats, at least not in and of themselves.  It's the people sitting on them or walking along side them, and the emotions they reveal as they soak in the day-- that's what's interesting to me.

All of these photos were taken on Broadway Ave between Montrose and Irving Park Road.  The city of Chicago changed the route of this year's parade, extending it to Montrose and removing the hairpin turn that used to exist at Halsted, Broadway, and Grace.  Overall, I think this was a very good change and it was notably less crowded where I was. 

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