Carnies Part 1

So I felt inspired by my BFF the other night. We were chatting on Google and she told me about a list she’s putting on her blog- 29 things she wants to do before she’s 30. Some of the things on there were about photography. So it got my creative juices flowing and I wanted to go take some pictures!! My awesome friend, Janice, has let me borrow 2 lenses of hers that cost more than my car is worth- and I haven’t really spent much time using them. It was night time and I thought, what a great time to try them out!
So I figured I’d drive 5 minutes down the road to a parking lot. Since it’d be pretty lit up, it’d give me good enough light to play around with low light situations. So I headed down MacAurther Blvd in Irving Texas, looking for the Blockbuster parking lot. To no one’s surprise, I turned too early and ended up in a totally different, and dark, parking lot! So as I try to find my way out of it, I see some weird lights flying around. As I drove closer I discovered that it was a carnival IN the parking lot!! I just started laughing and was like, God- you have the best sense of humor!! Here I was going to settle for some boring parking lot signs and you brought me to a carnival! He is so crazy!
Anyhow, I loaded up my gear on my back and headed out. It was a pretty small carnival- you could cover the whole thing in less than 20 minutes. But I managed to hang out for about an hour.
At first I was shy to take pictures. Some people don’t like their pictures taken, so I’m hesitant. But one of the carnival workers (is Carnie politically correct??) started talking to me. And that helped me to loosen up a lot. Her name was Deb and she had a MOST interesting story! She inspired me to go around and talk to all of the carnival workers. The more I talked to them, the more fascinated I became by their stories. I was reminded of Diane Arbus, who was a photographer and ended up becoming so fascinated by Carnies that she lived with them and made her career photographing their lives.
So below are some pictures and stories from that night. I want to pour over the pictures I took, try to find some good ones from other photographers and get some good ideas to go back. Friday is Halloween and I think I can get some Really interesting ones that night!