Chinese New Year Parade

Yesterday was the Chinese New Year parade in Jacksonville Oregon.

We have attended the New Year celebrations before but never made it early enough for the parade. This year we made a point of arriving early. We were not disappointed.

It was pretty cold out. Our hands and feet were going numb from the cold but we stuck it out. We were rewarded with the presence of 2 wonderful dragons!

I adjusted this picture in Photoshop Elements 5.0. I put some movement into the background using a motion blur. Otherwise the dragon just got lost in the crowd on the sidewalk.

With this picture I also did some adjustments. I used a radial blur to change the background. The dragon was in shadow (as was I -- freezing my butt off!) while the background across the street was in full sun. I just couldn't get the picture to look the way I wanted so I completely distorted the background to lessen the impact of that bright background.