Muse of the Day: Photography Meet-up at the TN State Fair

A while back I was chatting with my colleagues about how difficult it is to make new friends as adults outside of work, particularly when you move to a new city as most of us have. Which is why we've all began using the Web site http://www.meetups.com./ It's a site where you can find other people who share your hobby or interest in your area, and get together. One of my colleagues invited me to join her at her jewelry making Meet up a few months ago, and I learned how to make silver clay jewelry. I really enjoyed it, but I do so many different arts and crafts already, the last thing I need is to add jewelry making.

What I am interested in developing (no pun intended) is photography. And it just so happens that there is a Meet-up group of over 300 photographers in the area. I went to my first meeting yesterday at the Tennessee State Fair. I had been to the fair last year on my own--having never been to a state fair of any kind I couldn't resist. But this time I was focused (I swear, I'm not trying to do these puns) on taking photos.

It's interesting how the standard conversational questions can morph when you get a group of people with a single interest in common. For this group it was, "What are you shooting with?" My reply was, "Um, just this little Kodak." Everyone else said letters and numbers, like we were playing Bingo--or rather, "Dingo" since they were all "D-70" or "D-32." So, we were all standing in a circle--and I happened to be the only woman there--and just before heading out, the nine men of the group brought out these huge cameras from their camera bags, each one with a bigger lens than the one before. And there was I, with my dinky Easyshare Z7590 in my purse. I think of it as my "big" camera, and it is, compared to my pocket size Cannon PowerShot SD850 IS. But I was not going to be intimidated. And just as we were leaving, an older woman drove up. So not only was I no longer the only female, she had a regular 35 mm camera smaller than mine.

We started out shooting the Midway, and as usual I tried for photos of the rides without people in them. I mentioned that later, to the surprise of my companions. And after seeing some of their great shots of people, I think I might have to try that subject. As you may have noticed from my photos on this blog, I'm more interested in animals. So we moved up the hill to the livestock exhibition (the group was very patient as I tried to get one last shot of a chicken who wouldn't stay still), and checked out the photography exhibit as well where we were able to cool off in the air conditioning.

The highlights of the day was seeing my first (and hopefully last) eating competition. It was 2 pm, and we hadn't stopped for lunch, which turned out to be just as well because this was the nastiest thing I've seen in recent memory. There was a 100-pound woman (I know, because the MC kept telling us) who just stuffed Krystal burgers in her mouth while it was still full, getting food all over her face. Surprisingly, most of the contestants weren't obese, but rather very muscular. There was one huge man, however, from New York who was apparently the favorite. But my favorite was a mild-looking man on the end who spent the competition calmly dipping his burgers in Kool-aid and taking methodical, neat bites, as if he was just eating his regular lunch. Maybe he was....