The objective of this photo shoot was to capture a day trip the Poly Photography Club took to Sedona as well as explore the Mexican culture at their annual Day of the Dead Festival. All shots were taken on a Canon 60D with either a 50mm f/1.8 or 70-200mm f/4 lens and then processed in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

The day began with a stop at a scenic pull-off toward the entrance to Sedona. During this stop, I took an array of landscape and macro nature shots. In order to get extremely close to the subjects, macro shots were taken with a technique called freelensing, where I held my 50 mm lens up to my camera body by hand in order to control the depth. 

We then explored the Day of the Dead festival which included acrobatics shows, vendors selling food/sugar skulls/etc., as well as altars set up to honor the dead. Through my discussions with the vendors and others attending the festival, I got to learn more about the importance of altars to the Day of the Dead as well as the customs of dressing up in costume. 

We concluded the day by watching their fire dancer show, which was the highlight of the festival. These shots were achieved using a high shutter speed to capture the flames with an external flash to add additional light to the scene.