There was a lot going on at Pine Island on Sunday night. Larger groups than are probably supposed to gather were clustered at the various picnic tables. Delicious smells wafted by on the breeze, while kids played and chased those gulls, and a photo shoot took place in anticipation of a new addition to a family. One group erupted in a chorus of ‘happy birthday,’ and the drummers of the drum circle kept up their beat, while the dancers twirled and swayed.
When I took the feature photo I had no clue how much I would like it, and how many directions it took me as I looked at it. My friend and I had watched the girl in the hammock and her two friends as they struggled to get the hammock successfully anchored between the two trees. It was comical and I thought that I ought to be shooting video, and now I wished I had. But in going through my pictures I didn’t single this one out to start with, but eventually I saw that the girl was sitting up so I started to crop it to be just her and her two friends. But then I thought I saw two more pictures in that one image; the two guys over to the right, standing beside their cooler, each with a bottle of beer. And also the two girls way over to the far left, one pointing back over her shoulder to where the sunset would be happening shortly. Even the man walking past, head down, staring at his phone, told another story. I didn’t want to crop the photo, I wanted to keep it as it is. I liked the thought of so many separate people, each with different joys and sorrows, all choosing that moment to escape their every-day lives and come out and enjoy the sunset. Together, yet separately.
I thought I was done with this post, but I went back through the photos with an eye toward ‘street photography’ and this one jumped out at me. The photographer, the drummer, the biker whose shirt matches his bike, the beer drinkers still drinking, and, way over to the right, on the far side of the retaining wall, the photographer and his baby-shoot subjects. Hmm, I thought I needed to go to a city to do street photography, but I stand corrected.
That guy is still on his phone, missing the whole thing!
A Snowbird's Life Through the Lens 