It’s All Just A Ride

I just finished processing all the photos I took at the Harvest Festival in Bannister. I decided to take it easy this year and just do stills, especially since I haven’t given my camera a workout in a little while. I like how some of them turned out, but I got more grain in many of them than I had expected. The weather was pretty overcast all day, so that may have had something to do with it.

Here is the link to the Flickr slideshow for the photoset.

Some little anthropological nuggets I gleaned: While many assume that in ethnic communities the elder members would be keen on passing down an important element of heritage like language, my mother said that her parents reserved speaking Czech for times when they didn’t want the children to know what they were saying. It also seemed like there was a clique there that was composed of first/second generation elders who spoke the language. This makes me curious if keeping language as part of the heritage was ever a big concern, or if it is and there just aren’t the resources to teach it, this being a primarily working-class community.

Coming to me via Del.icio.us is a link to a fabulous photo gallery featuring some stunning portraits of Tibetans circa 2004 and 2006. Some of these images are just gorgeous. Favorites include #10, 13, 14, 23, and 27. #10 actually gives you a pretty good idea of what a typical modern Lhassan dresses like.

This is a montage of footage I took at the Czech and Slovak Harvest Festival in Bannister, Michigan. Initially I wanted to do more with the subject, but I didn’t plan ahead enough, and the rush I was in shows. Not only did I bring a broken clip-on mic, but I got to the festival late due to some horrific car troubles.

As a result the audio during the audio interview is awful, and I didn’t have time to set up as I’d have liked. In the end I decided to just compile this fun little tribute in lieu of a more traditional documentary. Enjoy.