2011 French Quarter Festival

The 2011 French Quarter Festival opened on April 7th this year. City of New Orleans estimated over 500,000 people attended the event. This music festival kicked-off in 1984 and is considered one of the largest free music events in the South. The official site is French Market Festival.

There were nineteen stages through-out the French Quarter as detailed in this pic.

This is one really big free party. If you like all types of music (i.e., jazz, soul, blues, cajun) and you like to party, then this is the place to be.

Below is one of the main stages located on the Mississippi River. We arrived early on a Sunday so everyone was setting up. On Sunday, most bands do not start until Noon or 1pm.

Where else can you find good music, good food, and wonderful people! What better place to be? Here are a couple more shots of the festival.

This stage was in Jackson Square, by one of the most recognizable churches in the US.

A couple of the local musicians:

Everyone had a good time!

You can find more photos of the French Market Festival on my site

2010 Lunar Eclipse

I love taking photos of the moon.  Always wonder why my ancient extraterrestrials come from.  Anyway, here are a couple of photos prior to the eclipse.

All images were taken with my Canon EOS 7D:

	Image was taken with my 300mm f/4L prime lens with a 2x converter
	Again used the same lens setup.
	This picture I added a 1.4 convert giving an equivalent on a 35mm scale of 1344mm

You can see the original and additional images at my site, Mark Chapman Photography

Self Taught Photographer

I have been serious about photography since 2003. I host my photos on Smugmug. They have been pretty reliable as to up-time. I was reviewing Zenfolio's site and considering changing my host, but after my review I've decided to stay with Smugmug for right now. After learning CSS and Html it has become easier to customize Smugmug's site. Although, like most photographers, I would rather be taking photographs instead of customizing a site. However, I figure that once I have the site customized the way I want it, I can get on with taking photographs.

My equipment includes:

1. Canon EOS 7D  

2. Canon EOS 40D 

3. Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L lens  

4. Canon 300mm f/4L prime lens  

5. Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-5.6 wide angle 

6. Tamron AF 17-50 F/2.8 67mm Wide Angle  

7. Manfrotto Carbin Fiber Tripod  

8. Canon 2x and 1/4x converters  

9. Various other accessories