For the past 34 years I have had to try and capture the local town fair where I live as part of my job. I put way too much pressure on myself to deliver good shots and I have missed out on family time there because of this. Well this year I decided to ride my bike out on the last night to just relax and shoot a few frames for myself. I strapped all my photo gear on to avoid the parking/traffic nightmares and I had two possible shots I wanted to try and the one shown here was my main goal. I got there at dusk to set up and wait for lower light and I chose a wide angle to avoid all the junk piled around. I wanted to play around with motion and color and this ride was very colorful.
I literally just finished setting up my tripod and doing two test frames when this younger mom comes up to me and nicely asks what I am shooting? I respond nicely some time exposures to get motion blur. Well suffice it to say the conversation quickly went downhill when she told me she is not comfortable with me taking a picture of her kid and then says she does not believe me and wanted to see the images on my camera. Well since I only had two test shots taken and wasn’t in the mood to be interrogated, I told her forget it, thats not happening. She walked away but could not let it go and for the next ten minutes she kept pacing back and forth with her phone to her ear. I figured she was trying to get the police involved and finally a fair worker stopped to check and all was good. The crazy thing was there was a whole crew of models and photographers roaming the midway with soft boxes etc to shoot various scenes and no one bothered them at all. It seems these things always happen just when the light is getting good and then I end up being distracted when I need to stay focused. I am pleased with the swirling motion of color and light despite the drama.
