Due to a mutual mix-up with UPS, instead of having ten cartridges of packfilm for Sasquatch, I only had one shot for the entire music festival. Fortunately, instead of being bummed about this, I decided to be at the effect of the situation and look at it creatively as a challenge to see if I could sum up my Sasquatch experience in just one photo.
Of course, there was so much happening all at once all around me at all times and so many wonderful people and times, from hippies to hipsters, stoners to students and wanderers to womanizers, that I ran into a fair amount of self-doubt and frustration at potentially missed opportunities. After framing dozens of potential shots and doing dozens of exposure calculations only to hesitate at the last moment, it got to a point where I had to just accept the photo would happen when and if it was meant to and I would know when the time came, without any hesitation.
As the light of the last day started to fade into an early evening sky, I was sitting on the hill overlooking the main stage experiencing Cake's set. All at once, almost as if in slow motion, the scene depicted above unfolded, combining several intrinsic elements of the festival and summing up the entire experience of the past few days perfectly. After that, it was just a blur of calculating the exposure with the trusty Sunny 16 rule, setting up the shot and releasing shutter.
I still struggle a bit with irrational selfishness during the decision to give away the instant photos I take, however, as always, when I gave this photo to the group of friends, they were of course thrilled and extremely appreciative. It's important to keep in mind that art is meant to be shared and the feeling you can get from doing so is one of the best in this world. Of course, it can be tough to put so much effort and thought into a photo, only to give it away but doing so can help you get better at letting go and moving on. There's always more to create.
Speaking of letting go and moving on, later that night, somewhere on the way back to my campsite, I lost the negative of this photo. Normally that would've bummed me out, but instead I was stoked because it set me up to have a wonderful late-night conversation with a stranger and come away from that with a new friend. In the end, I may have lost the negative but I came away with so much more and will never lose the memory.
Shot on my Polaroid 110b on Fujifilm FP100c.
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