A Fair to Remember

Ahhh...what would summer be without corn dogs, funnel cakes and fairs?  I was never much of a fair goer as a kid.  I don't remember doing them very much.  I remember parades more vividly. My youngest years growing up were spent near or on Air Force bases in Ohio, Illinois and upstate New York.  That is Fair and Parade country.  If ever there was a place for fairs and parades it was the midwest and the upper northeast.  

As soon as we moved to northern VA, those pretty much stopped.  The fairs were really fly-by night operations that holed up in some sad parking lot for 4 days, charged way too much for really bad stuff, and all you really saw were a bunch of teenagers trying to get away from their parents to make out behind the moonbounce.  I don't know if my brother and I expressed a disinterest in going back to these or my parents put a stop to it.  It wasn't long before the summer fair was replaced by one epic, marathon day-trip to King's Dominion.  This was before they were Paramount's King's Dominion.  So it wasn't quite the same.  And I had to trudge uphill both ways to school, blah, blah, blah.  Life wasn't so bad.  It was a little more simpler as I remember it.  Man, I sound old.

So anyway, back to the Fairs.  This was a bit of a rediscovery for me recently.  The first time I went to a fair as an adult was when I was working part-time as an intern for The Potomac News in '06.  Something the staff looked forward to, especially during the dog-days of summer, which typically provided very little news coverage, was the Prince William County Fair.  Thus, I was introduced to my first rodeo.  I loved it.  Unfortunately, I didn't make it back for a couple years, until this year.  So, when the Loudoun County Fair rolled around two weeks ago, I had to go and see. 

Without any deadlines, or assignments I tried to look away from the SYA ("save your ass") shots that you have to get for any paper.  It's that panic I get in my gut, "I have to get a picture, I have to get a picture...", and I find a kid sheering sheep, stick my wide angle in there and get a picture that I know will run.  I calm my nerves and then look for other things. 

Ok, so I still grabbed a couple "typical" fair shots.  But I still enjoyed doing it.  At this point I was in a little bit of a rut, walking around for a few hours, not finding what I wanted, and just figured I'd shoot my way out of it.  Sometimes, really just picking up the camera and making something gets the mind going and snaps you out of a funk.  So sheep shearing and funny animals was the order of the day at the moment:  a cow, who at the sight of me and my camera uncontrollably began slobbering and licking his nose.  Everyone around thought it was pretty funny.  So this is Bojangles, the cow.  And the rabbit is an Angora Rabbit, raised for their fur...for shearing, not as in rabbit fur coats.  Interesting, no?  I had no idea rabbits were raised for anything other than their meat and skin.  

But alas, I think I snapped out of it, and began to "see" how to use my Crown Graphic.  So one night I grabbed a portrait of Bill Clopper, a man who's been working with this fair for 18 years. Wow.  And now I look back at it and wish I had shot it a little differently, but this was the best of the few that I took of him.

And one morning I bumped into some very nice people (there were many of them, these just happened to look photogenic to me), who I set up for a couple 4x5 snaps.  

I don't know if there are lessons learned about going to a fair, but I felt a little less "city" and a little more "American", whatever that means.  What I saw were a group of people that weren't interested in how many megapixels you have, or what your internet speed is.  I didn't see anyone with their "crackberry", or people walking around talking into their earpieces about whatever "important" conversation they must have at that moment right next to you.  These people, it appeared to me, were very much more into the moment of just enjoying a day out, watching market sheep judging, and that was enough.

The rodeo was the final climax.   Which seems about as American as it gets, with cowboys, insanely patriotic lead-ins to the National Anthem, and general mayhem in the ring.  The eventual winner of the rodeo was Carlos Garcia, a 19 year old (10 years he's been riding bulls!), with a broken arm in cast (see below).  

Carlos Garcia, prepping for the rodeo in some nice light

Someone getting thrown, right in front of me.

Someone hanging on, during the rodeo.  Not too many people made the 8 sec. ride.

But beyond the rodeo was one of the craziest things I've seen.  They took 4 audience volunteers to play "Bull Hockey" (2 on each team).  They spray paint two circles in the dirt on opposite sides of the ring to represent "goals".  The object was to lure the raging bull into your circle (at least two hooves counts), and you get a point.  I thought for sure they would bring in some little calf, and it would be all laughs.  During what I thought would be a good interim to pack away most of my gear until the final round of bull riding, in charges a slobbering 1200lb horned monster.  holy crap.  And in moments, the bull absolutely flattened a woman who had volunteered for the game.  He stomped around and by some miracle had missed every part of her with his horns and hooves until a clown chased him away.  She stood up, everyone cheered and the game went on for a few minutes.  That's when I grabbed a couple digital frames (in color below).  In a country where it seems more people are worried about who's at fault for who-knows-what, I just saw, 10 feet in front of me, a woman get bulldozed and no one batted an eyelash.  The city slicker in me couldn't believe this was legal.  "Who would be liable?"  All these dumb questions kept pouring through my head.

But it was a rodeo at a county fair, and everyone was just trying to have some fun. 

Get out of the way man!