The end of July, visually, is one of my most favorite times in Helena, Montana.
It’s the fair, really. The fair comes to town, the carnival, the lights, the dust, the tradition. Something about it makes me nostalgic, hell, I wrote an entire piece on how I’d always wanted to run away and join the circus. You can read it by clicking below.
Anyway, Helena does it right with the Rodeo, Stampede, and Fair, and we always go. Not for the rides, but for the photographs. One more quick thing before we dive in:
If Signal Fire's been worth the price of admission this summer, I'd love for you to join the Firekeepers — the fire could use a few more hands.
On to the fair, and the end of July!
Click to view on the website, which lets you view these bigger and scroll through the gallery.
As I said, Helena just does it right when it comes to the little fair. It’s at the Fairgrounds (obviously) and something about the dust, the fading July light and sunset pastel color, the neon lights, the glow, just feels good. It’s made for the Fuji camera, it’s made for random little snapshots of all that light in all that dark. Berto joined us, and along with Addie and Lady G, they all demolished some beautiful Acai Bowls first. Energy for the photographs we’d be taking, I think.
It was hilarious the four of all all wandering around with our Fuji cameras, a little team that should be sponsored but somehow isn’t. Cough HEY FUJI I AM TALKING TO YOU Cough.
I love the rides and how they show up on the frame, I love the games with the little pools of light that surround them. It feels like nothing else exists except for this little parking lot filled with shine. It feels like Stranger Things, and it feels like youth, but back when things were simpler.
It’s funny how long you can spend in such a small place, how many hours you can wander over and again looking at the same dozen little things and see them different every time. Again a lesson in this, again something to remember and to hold.
I think often of this, of how so many lessons hide in such plain sight. They all seem to fall back onto the same idea though, they all seem to add up to the same thing:
Be where you are, and nowhere else.
Be all the way there, allow yourself to see and not rush, allow yourself to find the silly little miracles in all that mundanity.
Just be.
After the fair, after the realization that once again, all those lights would be dismantled and trucked or trained off to another small city in this great big state, there’s always a tiny bit of sadness. The end of the fair feels like a precursor to the end of Summer, and while I’m not the biggest fan of this season in Montana with all its oppressive heat, it’s suffocating wildfire smoke, but it still pangs of melancholy when you know that soon enough it will be Winter again.
We also checked out (but didn’t photograph really) the amazing OokiSoraCon here in Helena. It’s a convention put on by our dear friend BJ that has grown to insane proportions from its humble beginnings, and now has people fly in from all over the world to celebrate comics, Anime, games, community, and art. It was inspiring and amazing to see how far BJ has taken it, and I’m in awe of her originality.
Wrapped up the month with a visit to Beavs and Toph, caught the amazing late-evening light they get every night in a neighborhood I once lived in, and the sprinkler catching the hazy sunset just felt so immediately nostalgic.
The final photo I captured of the entire month is the one of Sarah in black and white, and I LOVE it. It quickly became my phone wallpaper, for good reason.
That’s the month that was, that’s what my eyes saw, those are the little bits of beauty I had to capture, bring back, and share with you.
I hope you love them.
I love you all.
Be good.
Love the midway photos… thanks for that , as they bring back my childhood impressions of the transient and mysterious life of midways and carnies. They seemed to pop-up in barren fields, attract the starved attention of our mundane lives, and then disappear, leaving the field (and our lives) quiet again…
Midway
Bright lights, taste of sweets,
Midways spring from sleeping fields,
Look past—still again.
It helps when taking pictures of Sarah that she is SO photogenic ... so beautiful. Love the lights of the carnival and your captures.
And ... August into September has/is always been bittersweet. I have thought it was from all the years it marked the end of summer by going back to school, but I can feel the turn of the weather in the breezes already, and it's just a time of harvest and ... dying? ... as the trees change and the flowers expire. Even with the beauty of it, there is still a letting go that pulls at my heart. But the light of fall is so warm ... looking forward to what you capture for September.