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Writer's pictureedithnoble

Capturing Savannah's MLK Day Parade


Hi everyone! Today I'm sharing a gallery of photos that I've been passionately excited about for a while and I'm so excited to share with the world. A few weeks ago, my Intro to Photography class (yay! college photography classes!) took a venture out to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in downtown Savannah, equipped with our trusty cameras and ready to capture whatever we found interesting. It was such a fascinating experience to see more of the culture and character of Savannah, especially because I'm not from a town that celebrates MLK Day much. Savannah is such a beautiful city physically, but to see the people and culture that makes it up is just as beautiful.

The field of photography that I most want to pursue is photojournalism, as I want to document personal stories of people and places. This parade with my class was probably the most real photojournalistic experience I've had so far in my life and it was so valuable to get these experiences and be guided in how to do it right. At first I was just documenting the floats and people in the parade using the technical camera skills we learned as a class, but by the end I had fallen in love with documenting the people watching the parade instead. Watching the joy and intrigue that a parade like that brings to the people watching it was very interesting to me. Parades are primarily a celebratory experience and so to watch people navigate that space was inspiring. I especially enjoyed taking quick portraits of children and children with their mothers or grandmothers. The apparent love of a maternal figure keeping a child warm on a chilly day is heart warming and so special to me to capture. Documenting these people and this celebrating of Black America was so fascinating and beautiful to me, so I hope you enjoy the photos below.