Spent the day at the 30th Annual Somersworth International Children’s Festival yesterday.

Let me preface this post by saying that “event photography” is not exactly my forté. Especially at events like this one, the backgrounds are busy no matter which way you turn, there’s next to no control over lighting situations (it’s not like you can ask them to move their entire booth over here where there’s nice open shade …), and if you blinked you missed it. Nevertheless I think I got some interesting photographs.

Here they are setting up in the morning:

The people came and looked:

The Humane Society had a booth where the kids could visit with dogs that need adopting:

There were ‘train’ rides:

A parade with Chinese dragons:

and clowns:

and this guy:

The Cub Scouts were there with a Pinewood Derby track:

Wipeout!

There were booths with face painting:

Clowns doing balloon sculptures:

“Make your own Princess Crown” kits:

Here the kids (and their parents) could learn about Pakistan:

This little leopard is checking out spices from the rainforests of Belize:

At another table there were traditional toys from eastern Europe:

Over here they could see marvels made by modern technology:

This young lady was displaying her paintings (can you believe she’s an EIGHTH GRADER!?!?!? What talent!):

In the “It’s a Small World” department, these kids ran into their favorite teacher:

Among all the other interesting people was this little diva, who just HAD to stop and pose for the camera:

and of course there was music:

and magic … gotta love Audience Participation performers!

All in all it was a great day! I didn’t even get sunburned!

I look forward to seeing you at next year’s event!

Thanks to my colleague Stacie Turner for reminding me of this most eloquent (and excellent) thought:

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

My friend and mentor Jock Sturges is publishing a special portfolio of his model (and goddaughter) Fanny, made over the course of about 20 years, featuring three never-before-seen images and several more that are high in their edition numbers or sold out (i.e. otherwise unavailable “new”).

The folio will contain 15 11×14 photographs, will be available in the fall for $10K, now for a limited time on sale for $6500 to help subsidize his work for the coming summer.