Today marked the annual Thaipusam festival in Singapore. A traditional Tamil festival where devotees, after undergoing a period of abstinence, demonstrate their devotion by undertaking a pilgrimage carrying kavadi of varying forms.
The festival starts with the preparation of the kavadi the evening prior, and the procession starting at midnight and progressing through to 6pm to allow all devotees to complete the pilgrimage path. The most elaborate of these kavadi involve piercing the body with spikes and hooks to help transport the offerings.
As a photographic exercise this can be quite challenging with the temple brightly lit with fluorescent lighting, tight streets with a bustling spectator crowd and a complex subject surrounded by supporters and a complex device that obscures the facial features of the bearer.
However, with the ability to push the ISO to fairly high levels and exceptionally powerful white balance and noise correction capability in post-processing, it is fairly straight forward to extract great images from difficult lighting circumstances.