Year of the boar

First draft of this year's Chinese New Year's photos here.

Update: A few people have questioned whether or not these pictures are "Photoshopped." No, this is actually a technique I developed specifically for Chinese New Years. Of course I do a little color balancing, but no filters or plug-ins are applied. This is an event that I go to every year, usually with the kids. I'd never seriously photographed it before, but I always took a few pictures with one of my toy cameras. The straight photos, not just mine, but others I've seen as well, fail to capture the event as I experience it. There's just too much extraneous detail in the background and a sharp photo gives little, if any, hint of the movement, which along with the cacophony and color, is what makes the event what it is. Experience is inherently subjective. A lot of people don't like this technique, but it works for me and portrays, I think, a more representative reality.