county fair

We no longer attend the Albemarle County Fair religiously each summer; it’s earlier than it used to be, and smaller, and without young kids, the thrill is sorta gone. But I still love to take pictures there. Lily was able to get her 12-hour “furlough” from camp on the fair’s opening day, so we headed to the fairgrounds, about 10 minutes from our house, right after the gates opened at 4:00. It was still light (in fact, we left at dusk), so I was able to shoot with the Holga as well as with my G-9, and I was pushed to see things differently since I couldn’t fall back on my usual cool-effect-of-rides-in-the-dark schtick. This week I got around to printing and scanning a few of my black-and-white images, and it’s still fun for me to compare the results from two very different cameras.

As usual, we wandered through all of the exhibit tents first; the animals are always our favorite, no question. Then we checked out the home-making and “special kingdom” tents before setting out in search of fair food. To our dismay, the food vendors were–well, I guess you’d have to say franchise fair food vendors…hardly any of the churches, ethnic groups, or guys-with-trailers who used to provide amazing barbecue, apple dumplings, and funnel cakes. Those things are still there–they just come out of a freezer, seems like. At least there was real lemonade, and the funnel cakes were huge.

Although we were practically sedated from barbecue and funnel cakes, we wandered on through the rides. Nobody wanted to ride any of ’em–but we had a great time taking pictures.

We’ve been going to this event since before Lily was born–23 years. We still run into old acquaintances, eat too much junk food, walk around the fields till our feet are coated with dust (some years, mud), and take pictures like we’d never seen it all before. I hope that each year, it still seems new.