The annual Merchant City Festival 2009 just ended yesterday and it also happened to be the first time I attended. It was a good opportunity to give my DSLR a whirl. Fortunately, it wasn't raining so I managed to get some shots during Saturday's parade.

The parade was gathering at Nelson Mandela place and the police were already there to keep order.

Quite a crowd was gathering to watch too.

Started off at half 12 as scheduled with one of the ladies from Carnival Arts leading the way with an extravagant green costume.

Carnival Collective, a group of musicians from Brighton. I really couldn't hear much of the music because of there was more than one band...

Puff Uproar and the Shimmering Affair behind them with more vivid colours from Carnival Arts. I like those huge figure costumes!

Those colourful dresses really brighten up the cloudy day!

Kings of Mucumba. Now these guys I think I heard when I arrived in town early.

The ambulance and police following close behind in case there were any accidents of course.

Going right round George Square and in front of the City Hall. Hard to get a clean shot with so many people trying to take photos too and the 3x zoom on my lens didn't provide quite enough reach.

The Seagulls... Cute outfits. Reminded me of the seagulls from Finding Nemo actually - The ones that say nothing but, "Mike! Mike! Mike!" ^^;

And the tail of parade ends with a display from Carnival Arts.

There were many other events on - some paid, some free but it was a little late by the time I found out about them. Would have been interesting to see what Mirror's Edge is like in real life parkouring.

Apparently there was also a fashion show where the models were performing in shop windows and in the streets but missed that too. I didn't have a polariser with me to minimise the reflections on the glass anyway, though ^^;

Saying that however, there's a few photos on Flickr already.

What the guide for this year looked like just for the record.

On another note, it looks like it's nearly a good time for some autumn colour photo shooting.