I have been photographing the GrassRoots Festival in Trumansburg, NY over the past couple of years in exchange for free admission to the festival. So, though I am being “compensated”, it feels like I’m shooting for free.

Rightly or wrongly, this “feeling” leads me to take liberties when deciding what to photograph–i.e., I tend to photograph whatever I find personally interesting or compelling, along with the more “standard” photos I believe the festival organizers actually want from me. (Shooting both types of photos almost in parallel has become quite natural for me.)

Here, then, are the photos the organizers are fairly unlikely to use, but which capture aspects and scenes that I find personally entertaining and which keep me going back to photograph the festival each year. They are a reflection of my skewed and maybe slightly jaded perspective (:p), and are in roughly chronological order.

(On a side note: in general, I think my 2014 GrassRoots photos turned out better, and the cause is probably 2-fold: 1) the heat this year negatively affected both the festival participants and me, and 2) I was having some equipment issues that will inform my equipment choices next year! I did, however, get better photos of the GrassRoots Happiness Parade this year with an equipment combo that now seems obvious. Those are coming soon…)

(click an image to see them full size..)

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