Technoparade - Paris clubbers take to the streets

[Franglais]

I see interesting things around me all the time, but it is not always socially acceptable to get out a camera and start snapping. Sometimes I have to wait for the right opportunity.

The Paris Technoparade is place for the young people I see every day in the trains and in the streets. It started out political years ago when the police were closing the Techno music nightclubs. Today it’s just an opportunity to put the sound system on a big truck and have a party in the streets of Paris.

It’s about the easiest thing in the world to photograph, providing you don’t mind crowds. The kids come up and beg you to take their picture:

1. Our photographers refuge on a traffic island in the middle of the flow of clubbers. The kids loved the guy on the left with the big video camera, they all wanted to be on TV
2. After much hesitation, here is my preferred girl photo.
3. Idem boys
4. Best expression
5. This photo is so weird, it doesn’t look like the Boulevard St Michel at all. I was trying to get the guy with the flare and inevitably the guy with the beer can zoomed across going take-me-take-me. The D300 has done a good job but I wonder what it thought it was photographing

All photos D300 + 18-200 + SB800 on full auto, nothing fancy.

More pictures in my User Gallery

[Frog]

Looks like everyone was having fun. You must have taken a LOT of shots.
These are all interesting. Especially like the angle of the first one with those arrows seeming to point at the photographers.
What does that guy on the left background in #4 have on his face?

[Franglais]

...
What does that guy on the left background in #4 have on his face?

Well-spotted. The young man appears to be wearing an article of women's underwear as a makeshift mask against the H1N1 Flu virus - a wise precaution in the circumstances.