Another July and another Annual Procession in Honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel from St Peter’s Church in Clerkenwell, an event which has been taking place for around 135 years – every year except during the two world wars. It’s very much a day out for Italians living in London and further afield, and as well as the procession, which includes Biblical tableaux on lorries, various walking groups, some in costume, others carrying banners or statues etc, and first communicants and clergy, there is also a fair with rows of stalls selling Italian food and drink and other things.
The highlight of the procession – for me at least – is the release of doves by the clergy, and its something I try hard to get a good picture of. But you rely on two unpredictable elements – the clergy and the doves, even when you are in the right place at the right time and ‘f8’ – the correct camera settings.
It isn’t always possible to be exactly in the right place – and in an ideal world I would have preferred a closer and lower viewpoint – and to have the three releasing the doves to have their backs to the church. I had put in a request to the man providing the doves to do his best to get them released together (and I’m sure he tried his best) the man on the right beat his two colleagues to it, his dove flying high above the other two.
At least this year all three doves were caught in a single frame, though I had to work with a fairly wide angle (28mm) to get them. To freeze motion I was working at 1/500th, and being a bright sunny day this gave me an aperture of f11 for plenty of depth of field at ISO 400. There are two images with the doves in flight on My London Diary, and they came from a burst of exposures using continous exposure on the Nikon D810, though I’ve cropped the second image.
After a bad experience using two Fuji cameras in an earlier year (one ran out of battery at the critical moment and the other just didn’t want to know when I pressed the shutter – in some Fuji cussedness mode) I’d taken the always reliable Nikon for the event. You don’t get any second chance with this.
As soon as the procession, with the parishoners joining on behind, had moved away from the church I hurried down the hill to the Sagra below where I knew several photographer friends would be waiting for me, with one thrusting a glass of Italian red wine into my hand as I arrived. One particular stall always has wine cheaper than the rest and we return there every year at the event which has become a social event for us.
By the time we had finished our second glass (or possibly more) the fair was filling up, and I moved through the crowds taking pictures on the rather more discrete Fuji X-E3 and the wider 10-24mm, now my favourite among the Fuji cameras I own, as well as some with the Nikon and 28-200mm. It’s a combination of cameras and lenses I might try to use more, as I sometimes find the 18-35mm Nikon just not quite wide enough – the Fuji lens is a 15-36mm equivalent and extremely sharp.
More pictures and information:
Our Lady of Mount Carmel procession
Sagra – Italian festival
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