I had a wonderful few days in Italy at the end of August - based in Ferrara with visits to Bologna, Comacchio and the wonderful Santiago Calatrava-designed train station at Reggio Emilia Mediopadana. There's more pictures of the latter to come soon but first I thought I'd share a few experimental shots taken at the Ferrara Buskers Festival.

I was trying to use the zoom effect, shooting handheld with a relatively long and definitely heavy zoom (the 70-200 f2.8), which meant I couldn't keep it steady at all. So lesson #1 is to use a lighter lens or a tripod (but I hate tripods).

Any other tips? It would be really helpful if you could spare a few moments to share your advice and observations.

Incidentally, the guy in the third picture is Paolo Borghi. He's playing something called the Hang, a beautiful, mellow toned instrument that partly resembles a steel drum but the sound is so much more gentle and entrancing. There are lots of great videos of Paolo on YouTube but here's one I found that was recorded during this year's festival, perhaps even on the same night that I took this picture.