I've had a touch of the writer's block lately so I've been going through some of my older photos instead. Usually if I'm good and blocked it means I'm trying to force something a bit too much and had best go do something else for a bit. Anybody know if there's a term for the photography equivalent of writer's block? Photo fatigue is what I call it when I've looked at the same photos so many times that I start disliking all of them.
Oddly enough, the times when I get stuck are some of my most productive. As long as it's not what I'm supposed to be working on I'm good. Since covid came along the state fair hasn't been too high on my list of priorities and I've largely ignored the photos from state fairs in years past. Now that its starting to look like we might have one this year I had to go back and edit a few. Unless I am mistaken these are all from the 2018 and 2019 Kentucky State Fairs.
In case you can't tell from the photo, the guy in the second photo was making ice cream. At least that's nominally what he was doing, I'm not quite sure what he was doing when I snapped that shot. The state fair is normally one of my favorite times to play around with street photograph so I was more than a little disappointed last year when they cancelled most all of it except the livestock competition and closed it to the general public.
After more than a year of masks and social distancing it's a bit odd looking at photos of pre-covid mass gatherings. It wasn't until they all went away that I realized how much I'd taken mass gatherings for granted. Now that they're starting to come back I'm curious to see how much goes back to the pre-covid normal and what all has changed for good.
With covid still going strong in many parts of the world we may be getting ahead of ourselves in chasing a sense of normalcy but then again this is the land of 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!' There's only one way to find out so I guess I'll get to wait and see with the rest of you. In the meantime, drop me a comment with your thoughts on what will/won't go back to normal. Anybody got a covid related change that they hope stays with us?
Until next time, May the Farce be with you!
