SoFoBoMo 2010 Update

Well, its been over a month now since I announced my book project for this year, so I guess it's time for an update. The plan was to photograph the local fair grounds in a 5 county area, try to emphasize the unique differences of them, use film in a medium format camera and complete a book on the 31 day time frame. Didn't happen.

I started out great. You may remember, I jumped the gun by a couple days to take advantage of the Memorial Day weekend. The first fairground went great. I went to Allegan for the the monthly antique show, photographed that, wandered around a bit and found a horse show also going. I was somewhat pleased. 4 rolls of film down, about 50 photos. If I could continue to do that, it was going to be easy.

It went downhill from there.

I tried Kalamazoo the same weekend. It was packed. Some event was going on, I couldn't even get near the fairgrounds without paying an entrance fee. From what I could see from the road, and what I remembered, the grounds themselves were not very unique. I decided to come back if I got the chance, but I wasn't going to sweat it.

One thing I hadn't counted on when starting the project was how busy fair grounds are during the summer. Access to the local fair grounds was available, if I wanted to pay an entrance fee and if I wanted to fight crowds. While crowds are certainly part of a fair experience, I wanted to photograph the empty grounds, or almost empty. While some people photos were expected, I wanted a view of these venues the way most people don't see them, empty or almost empty.

Plus frankly, early June was really busy for me personally as well. So what next?

I going to start a new project to be done by the end of the month. I need to get permission first for access to the land, so no big announcement at the moment. If that doesn't work, I'll have to think of a plan C.

More later.