I am not much of a street and event photographer. Back in the film days I shot a wedding when, in the middle of the ceremony, the shutter of my Nikon F3 released instantaneously upon winding the film-advance lever. Fortunately I had brought my large format camera, which then served for the official photos but was obviously useless in the church.
At a second endeavor, I went to capture an open-day event. I had planned for images of masses of people fighting to get into the exhibition areas. But the event was so well organized that the places looked rather sterile. That made me think: photography is a great hobby but a terrible job.
However, during a recent trip on the traces of the “Mille Miglia” in Italy, I accidentally dropped into a very photo-friendly event: the Italian Bike Week, supposedly the country’s largest open-air motorbike event, which was held on the shores of the Trasimeno lake in Umbria. I took out the Nikon D800E, mounted the 70-200 f2.8 lens, and put the Nikon Coolpix A into my pocket in case I needed a wide angle of view.