It might appear that I packed my cameras, donned a space suit, and talked NASA into putting me on a rocket and flying me to two entirely different planets.
If you look at my photographs from my last two posts, shot just five days apart -- images from the Fourth of July celebration here in the small Seattle-area town where we live; and photographs I did yesterday at the annual Oregon Country Fair near Eugene -- you’d probably draw the conclusion that the human beings who attended the two events could not be more different. The parade pictures look All-American, red-white-and-blue-star-spangle-bannered; the images from the festival in Eugene have a feeling of a blast from the past, a 1960’s-style hippie gathering.
I personally am not inclined to make too many assumptions about the personalities or values of the people I photograph. I learned very early in my career as a photojournalist the truism about the word “ass-u-me”...that it “makes an ass out of you and me.” If you go around looking for black-and-white in people, you’re missing all the wonderful shades of gray or even color that human beings bring to their lives.
Mostly, I’m just happy that people let me hang around and take photographs of what ever it is that they’re doing. The world outside my door is pretty damned cool and I move around in it with my eyes and my mind wide open.
