St. Martin's Walk

Last night I went on my first St. Martin's walk, which is a big seasonal event for kids over here. The little people go out on a walk from point A to point B carrying a paper lantern on a stick with a candle in it. In the case of Liam, this was done in cooperation between the two day-cares of the village, with Point A being the first daycare in middle of town, and Point B being Liam's daycare.

They sing lantern songs and march along and there is some religious significance to the whole thing, which goes with the story of St. Martin. Claudia was not able to really elaborate too much on the whole thing. I think basically it is something fun for little kids to do. They generally spend some time before making their lanterns and then they enjoy the walk. At the end of course there were snacks to be enjoyed.

I did my best to take photos of the event, but I am not so experienced in night-photography. I did not just want to use the flash since that would just look like people standing around in the dark, so I tried using a rear-sync flash, which would freeze people in focus at one point, then let the ambient light of the scene still appear. Since everything was moving around, this made some pretty funky looking effects and light trails.

Here is the group singing a little song:
Now a montage of Liam and his lantern walking around. I think some look pretty funky, click on the photo to enlarge it.