June 21st, 2026

Canon R6 & EF 17-40/4L

The Jazz Blizzard. Or maybe The Jazz Rumble?

I mentioned recently that we had a hot weekend. Well, scratch that - the real heat from Western and Southern Europe is finally catching up with us. This weekend, temperatures pushing 35-41 degrees Celsius are going to be the norm. So, it's nice to look back at last Sunday. It was supposed to be boiling, but an incoming storm front brought a slight cool-down instead of the usual mugginess. It was an absolute lifesaver for the New Orleans Parade that took place that day in Bielsko-Biała.

Bielska Zadymka Jazzowa is an international jazz music festival held annually across Bielsko-Biała, Katowice, and Zabrze. The very first edition kicked off in 1999, and it currently ranks among the most important jazz events in Poland and Central Europe. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how long they’ve been doing the New Orleans-style parade as part of the event, but I definitely photographed it two years ago. From a photographic standpoint, it was great - hot as hell, but great.

Michał and I rolled into the city center and decided to hang around the starting point of the parade. The gig was supposed to start at 3:00 PM, and we showed up about half an hour early. People started gathering, the band started gathering, and - of course - other photographers started gathering. Once again, we were not in short supply.

Once the band and the festival elders assembled, it turned out the organizers were raffling off t-shirts featuring photos taken over the years by the event's official photographer. The shirts were drawn and handed out, and I managed to snap a glorious picture of some man boobs. With a flash, obviously. Because that day, I decided to be an absolute animal and blast people right in the eyes with my flash.

I made the exact same mistake with the R6 that I recently made with the R - I forgot to set a reasonable minimum shutter speed in Av mode. Or rather, I did set it to 1/250s, but I completely forgot that when you attach a flash, Canon doesn't cap it at 1/200s. Instead, it goes into its classic logic: "To hell with sharpness, as long as there’s no grain! The flash will freeze it anyway!" Because of that, I ended up with a bunch of frames shot at 1/60s or 1/80s, all while I was smugly convinced I was blasting away at 1/200s. By the time I finally realized what was happening, I switched straight to Manual mode. But thanks to my negligence, I ended up with quite a few heavily "artsy" shots.

---

You must gather your party before venturing forth!

A pretty sizable crowd had formed on the square in front of the town hall. 3:00 PM was approaching. The plan was for the procession to be led by a locally known band called "Walimy w kocioł". It’s a fantastic name. In Polish, it implies two things. First, it’s an idiom for partying incredibly hard (and frankly, drinking a lot of vodka). More literally, it means "we beat the drum."

I managed to capture some incredibly expressive facial gymnastics from one of the band members here. Suddenly, the band formed a column, started playing, and we hit the road. Behind the band were three vintage cars; behind the cars, professional dancers; behind the dancers, a dancing mob; and buzzing everywhere around them like flies... us photographers.

The concept this year was actually really cool. Much like a Corpus Christi procession, we had designated stops. At each stop, a young band was waiting. They’d start playing, and the parade dancers would start dancing to their music. For us photographers, this was brilliant because we constantly got a few minutes of breathing room in one spot, which made it way easier to fish out more interesting frames.

At one of the stops, there was a band of young guys just shredding some rock, and they were doing a pretty damn good job.

---

Frames with context... well yes, but actually no.

The whole event lasted over an hour, maybe an hour and a half. We wandered along the entire length of the parade, listened to the music, took some more photos, and chatted with old friends. Below, I’m dropping a few of my favorite frames.

That’s pretty much it for today. I’m definitely out of practice when it comes to mixing pure documentary with raw street photography. I also noticed that in these kinds of tight situations, I’ve really grown to like the perspective a 40mm lens gives you. In the past, I would have forced a 28mm, but in a crowd this dense, a wide angle rarely works the way you want it to. Either way, the EF 17-40mm f/4 gave me options, though I ended up living on the long end of it anyway.

Sending my warmest regards - until next time!

---