My kit for these type of days has been narrowed down to a simple setup: 1 old, fraying and duct taped backpack (it's the most comfortable bag in the world and I will not get rid of it until it vanishes into thin air), my BessaR Rangefinder with 35mm Voigtlander Color Skopar lens and a brick of Tri-X film, a few business cards, a sharpie and maybe a bottled water or two.
I have been shooting TriX film consistently for about two years now and I think it's nice to work with the same product continually in a variety of situations in order to really learn its characteristics, capabilities, limitations and advantages. I don't really experiment with a lot of films due to the diversity of atmospheres I photograph in and would rather stick with a couple specific film stocks for a long period of time and really learn how they react to as many scenarios as possible. That said, setting out for an entire day with one film stock keeps me grounded in a consistent look, feel, atmosphere and mentality no matter what situation I find in front of my lens.
The mentality turns to "Whoa, that's a cool opportunity. I'm using TriX how can I best exploit this film for this particular scenario?" Knowing my film (not just studying it on Flickr and getting a few test scans here and there of a couple rolls) helps me use it more effectively in different scenarios.
Take the similar yet different scenarios of the two Street Festivals I will focus on for this post. Both are outdoors, both are on the street, both are in DC and both were within a week of each other. But they pretty unique from there. To me, Adams Morgan Day is much more of a community based participatory event, with a lot more to see, do, buy, and eat. It was laid out in a much more logical way this year, with a majority of the food vendors corralled into one area so local businesses had more opportunities to attract new customers and smaller stages with diverse programming dispersed throughout the grounds. This year's H Street simply turned into the day that the streets were closed to car traffic so everyone could walk to and from their favorite H Street bars. There really wasn't a hell of a lot going on in the streets other than a dunk tank, a few stages and people walking to different bars. Maybe it's my Adams Morgan bias, or the fact that it was the second festival in as many weekends, but the H Street festival seemed to have lost a bit of its unique character of previous years.
I shot a LOT more photos during Adams Morgan day too, with 7 rolls in the can to H Streets 4, and upon review I think I had a more consistent hit rate as well. Unfortunately, in my eyes, I think I concentrated a bit too much on the people and performers that went into making the entertainment of Adams Morgan Day and not enough on the attendees. Looking back, I wish I had more keepers of people interacting with the festivals performances and my photos of the people working the festival stalls and stages were head and shoulders above the rest.
I even caught all three DC Mayoral candidates shaking hands and dolling out campaign hugs. Once I had two I had to track down the third. No point in not rounding the nut.
 |
| Muriel Bowser |
 |
| Carol Schwartz |
 |
| Daivd Catania |
No clue why I ended both sections with religious imagery, it just kind of happened that way.