Warrior’s Day Parade 2011

Took the Go Train from Danforth station to Exhibition, and arrived at the C.N.E. grounds just as it opened at 10am.

My main reason for coming was to shoot pics of the Warrior’s Day Parade. I like taking pics at this event because, a) who doesn’t like a parade? b) the pomp and pageantry is fun, and c) I like capturing the moment where a personality is revealed under the uniform. Also, it is a kind of homage to my parents, both of whom did their part in WWII.

I saw a couple of old WWI-era planes circle the grounds prior to the show, and I wondered if there was going to be a fly-by to help celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the parade. The answer was no as it turned out, but they were still fun to see, though I didn’t have my 300mm lens which would have brought them into focus.

Instead I brought along my heavy-but-fast (f/2) 200mm lens, which was its first outing at a parade. Figure I would trade off getting the types of close-ups I could get with my f/4 300mm lens but which would likely be slightly blurry due to motion for being able to freeze the motion of the people going past. For the most part that seemed to be a good strategy, and in some pics it is even possible to read the names on individual’s name-tags in the pictures I came away with.

I think the most moving for me was this one:

Am guessing that this is the father or maybe older brother of the soldier in the photo who was killed in Afghanistan. [Postscript: I was right, the photo the man is carrying is of Joshua Baker, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010].

Here is a selection of some of the many pics I took: