I spent the day at Kingsbridge show yesterday. this is a yearly event where farmers and locals come to show their animals produce and compete in events from horse riding and dog shows to the best chocolate brownie.
There's some lovely characters and a real sense of the strong local community around here. Its good to see people enjoying themselves so much. I decided to try and get some portraits fo the various people at the show and also catch some of the details of the event.
Of course the characters are not just people at events like this, there are many interesting animals too.
I decided as there was hardly any light and i wanted to really consentrate on the characters i was photographing to try and use my 50mm 1.8 at about f2-f2.2 most of the time, this made getting the focus in the right place in the shots very difficult, especially when the character was a very animated one. out of the 10 frames i took of one person only 2-3 were useable because the rest were so vastly out of focus. but with a depth of field so small when you get it right the outcome just looks gorgeous! (One major inspiration for this type of shooting was Benoit Paille on flickr who has some gorgeous shots of strangers that really stand out due their processing and lovely out of focus background.)
For more shots see the whole set from the show on flickr.
