I left the house with a single Nikon 35mm camera, five rolls of film, and a lens brush stuffed into the pockets of my windbreaker jacket. I hate packing all the rest of the stuff you need to shoot properly: Another camera body, two or three extra lenses, some strobes, some backup battery sets and more film. I do carry this stuff, but today I wanted to travel light, look around (I've not shot one of these San Francisco Chinese New Years Parades before) and cut out early if the light and the subject seemed hopeless. This parade, unlike most of the others, starts at 6:00 PM and rolls well into the evening. Only the Hong Kong New Years parade is larger.

I have no idea how they might turn out. There were some potentially nice shots, but you never know until you've gotten them back from the processor and, as I said, the lighting conditions were, um, problematic.

The actual shooting was nice. I took BART to San Francisco and got off right at 2nd and Market, where the parade begins. Most of the people who watch the parade (and there are hundreds of thousands) are up the way near Union Square where all the TV cameras are set up. The parade begins around 2nd where I got off the train and although there were lots of people about, there was plenty of room to wander through the floats shooting candids of the people preparing them to move.

There were a lot of other photographers milling around, mostly amateurs like me shooting for fun. A few professionals were mixed in covering it for the media. Lots of Nikons and strobes, a couple of Hasselblads and a TV crew from San Jose, probably a satellite truck with their main crew back up the road with the others.

The drill is simple enough. You wrap the camera strap around the wrist of your shooting hand, you check the settings (often, they're easy to mix up) and you look as you move. You look all the time and you try to see what's there from a little different angle or interest. I arrived at just after 4:00, a good two hours before the parade began and left at 6:30 when the last float had crossed the starting line. You don't really rest, you're always on the move looking, stopping to shoot, moving, stopping to shoot.

Without a strobe I started with Ektachrome 100s, then Ektachrome e200, then T-MAX 400, then T-MAX 400 pushed one stop to 800. Life in the fast lane. Most everything was hand held at a 50th to a 100th of a second, f 2.8 to maybe f 3.5 using a 35mm to 80mm zoom. All that really means is there are many chances for something to go wrong and if you don't see any pictures next week and I'm not talking about the subject, you'll know. Screw it. It was a good afternoon.

Returning on BART I sat two seats down from an older man wearing a photographer's shooting jacket, a couple of Nikons hanging around his neck, an external power pack for his strobes and who knows what else in the zippered pockets and pouches. He was wearing a Tilley hat, a blue one, the same model as the white one I own. He looked a proper caricature and I wondered how closely we might resemble one another when I was decked out as well. He was a lot heavier than I am with a full beard, maybe not as tall, but still, I wondered: Am I fated to be that man ten years from now? Could be. I always wanted to grow a beard.