Mourning the Lake County Fair--Again

 

With one exception, I have competed in the Lake County Fair photography exhibit every year since 2015. That exception was 2020, when the entire Fair was shut down for COVID. Unfortunately, this year will be another exception. I had selected the photos (but fortunately not printed them yet) and sent in the entry form only to receive a letter saying that the photography exhibit is cancelled for this year because the building where it is held is structurally unsound. That wasn’t determined until inspected after a recent storm, so the fair committee didn’t have time to find a replacement location.

Although I compete in club competitions nine months of the year, I generally do better at the Lake County Fair. It’s also more fun because it requires a different kind of image selection process, with discrete categories and size restrictions. In fact, all photos must be 8X10 or 10X8, so sometimes it’s a challenge to decide what to leave in and what to crop out. Because of these differences between the club competitions and the one at the Lake County Fair, I was sorry I couldn’t participate in 2020, and I will also miss participating this year.

Since I don’t have the Lake County Fair as an outlet, I figured I would use this one to display a few of the many images I had planned to enter. They wouldn’t necessarily be the judge’s favorites, but they are mine.

The osprey at the top of this post was shot last month while it was flying over the Snake River in Washington. I would have entered it in the B&W Wildlife category.

Also from that trip is this photo of Multnomah Falls along the Columbia River in Oregon, which I would have entered in the B&W Scenic category.

One of the fun categories is called “Artistic Effect.” Most of the entries in it are photos that have been creatively doctored using postprocessing software, as I did with this one taken from a section of a pulpit in Mattias Church at Budapest, Hungary during a 2024 cruise.

This string of orchids was taken in Bangkok, Thailand in January.

The next photo shows a Portrait of a Vietnamese girl and was also taken in January. It demonstrates the dilemma created by having the 8X10 size restriction. Do I include her feet in the colorful sandals, which means I also have to include the uninteresting stuff on the left, or do I zoom in closer to her face to cut off the boring parts and lose the shoes as well? I would have tried it both ways before deciding.

This final photo would have been entered in the Human Interest category. The couple are my niece and her new husband at their farm wedding last August. (That’s my sister-in-law as the “limousine” driver.)

Entries must have been taken no more than three years before the fair, so all of these photos still qualify for next year. I would rather have entered them in 2025, though, to leave room for others I take before then.

But sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.