Jim Casey the TOCC TV reporter hits another benchmark with this presentation of Huntsville’s Christmas parade last night that was live streamed in real time on Twitch! It’s been several years since I attempted to even photograph a Christmas Parade in Huntsville because I felt the still images didn’t do justice to the nighttime show. Since I started live streaming again, I’ve made some adjustments and fine tuning and I’m very pleased with the overall quality of this video presentation.
Huntsville’s Christmas Parade has been at night for several years now and I can remember when it was in the daytime and I used to think wouldn’t it be wonderful if they would hold it at night so they could show off all the pretty lights. Of course, I came to a different conclusion when I started photographing the nighttime event. The nighttime lights are great to see but I’m still ambivalent about the time. When it’s afterdark, the weather can be more of an issue, and some younger kids might not get to stay up that late.
Well, I say that because it seems to me the parade used to last about two hours. This parade was only thirty minutes. In fact, it wasn’t my intention to video the entire Parade. I thought thirty minutes would really just be the beginning and so after a little while I decided to move down the parade route and exit back around to take a look at some of the tree lights in Big Spring Park. And then – there was Santa Clause bringing up the rear!
In spite of the brevity of the event, there were a ton of people along the parade route, so there’s still a lot of interest. Apparently over the years, maybe owing to the changes in time, new sponsors and the fact that last year there was no parade due to covid, there has apparently been a falling away if not a falling out. You never know about these things unless you’ve got an inside line, which I don’t at this time. If anyone would like to shed some light on that send me at email at editor@tocc.tv.
Merry Christmas to all and a special thanks to hosts and sponsors and all the participants – especially Santa Clause – ho! ho! ho!
The Mix 96.9 Von Braun Center Downtown Huntsville Christmas Parade was presented for the seventh time by Redstone Federal Credit Union!
©2021 – Jim Casey
*Editors note: This video was originally live streamed on Twitch and is available there in it’s entirety and without the other enhancements applied here.
Typically, I run any video through a stabilizer before presenting it on my website and in this case it does seem to have had mixed results. I also shortened this presentation to just the parade itself.
The watery affect is a tradeoff against camera shake but the glare and a lack of sharpness seems to have been made worse. And, shooting a still camera more often I tend to think I’ve already cleaned the lens before putting the cap on – lol. All complicated by the darkness of night.
Well, I guess it’s a variation of what seasoned live streamers call a “live learn.” Seems to be the story of my life. Well, it’s part of the story now and now I know from experience some more of the adjustments I need to make for my next live presentation – sometime next week!
