Fun Times

I don't make New Year's resolutions. But at the beginning of a new year I do think about things I want to be sure to do better in the coming year. For 2020 one of my hopes was to do more things that have had a tendency to make me feel uncomfortable initially, but after having done them I found them to be fun and creative. Street photography is one of them. Most of my photography has always dealt with nature, landscape, and inanimate objects. Those are very comfortable subjects, ones that usually require set-up and planning for good composition. Street photography is kind of done "on the fly." You have to be quick to define your hoped for goals with the shot and take it because the street is typically a vibrant place and capturing life as it is happening is a huge challenge. Most photographers will tell you that photo shoots result in only a few worthwhile shots out of maybe hundreds that were taken. This, at least for me, is especially true when I am out trying to capture people doing what people do. Possibly this is because I have never spent as much time doing it, so I have not learned to look for the unusual or even mundane and know how to capture the essence of the moment. So my goal was to attend as many street fairs and festivals as possible in 2020. But for now there aren't any! And who knows when there will be? But it occurs to me that while life as we have always known it has been transformed radically for now, maybe I need to start thinking creatively and get out there with my camera and try to capture a bit of the essence of what life this year has been and still is for most of us. If I don't do this I may miss a once in a lifetime opportunity to save for posterity images of this unique time in history. Life isn't always "fun times" after all. Today's image was taken at the 2017 Dogwood Arts Festival in Market Square in Knoxville. It was entered in a photo contest that June and received both an Expert Commendation and a peer award.