Julia and I went to this last year and got a few photos of the lighted floats. For such a small town there were quite a few floats, many decorated very well. Night shots are difficult but great when they come out.
The parade was nice with about 20 floats and groups. The floats tended to have bright lights around the sides and tops with, relatively, poorly lit people and objects inside. I had to go to 1600 ISO, large aperature, and 1/10 second exposure to capture the floats without a flash. Since the floats were moving, albeit slowly, I couldn't use a tripod so they're almost all a little blurred and have too large a range of brightness to capture well. I found that slowly moving floats are harder to track that fast moving Porshes and motorcycles.
Then I used my on-camera flash which helped show the lesser lit subjects and fixed the blurriness but tended to wash out the Christmas lights on the floats. I'm sure my camera has a way of toning down the flash but I haven't learned that part yet. I'm not sure the participants, or the watchers, appreciated my flash going off all the time but at least I wasn't the only one (just the brightest one).
Helpful hints from anyone who's mastered this would be greatly appreciated.
Where: The parade starts on Diamond Street.
Details: The 13th annual Parade of Lights offers the community the chance to kick off the holiday season.
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Julia and I went to this last year and got a few photos of the lighted floats. For such a small town there were quite a few floats, many decorated very well. Night shots are difficult but great when they come out.