A fish-eyed perspective of the Great Darke County Fair
About a week before we went on vacation, the husband got a gadget that allows him to put a macro (ie., “fish eye”) lens on an iPhone. “Hmmm,” I thought, as he stashed the gadget into the bag he carries with him to work every day. “It might be fun to get a different perspective on the pictures I take with my camera.”
When we got to Ohio and decided on a day to hit the fair, I asked him if I could use it. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “I have another camera I can use. Why not?”
GLEEEEEEE!!
So we went to the fair and I covered from the perspective of a very, very tall fish.
There were lots of people.
…and fried things….
Even some things I would have sworn couldn’t be fried.
(We found a description of fried Coca Cola. No offense to those fried Coca Cola lovers out there, but *gack*. Seriously… *gack*.)
It was a bright, beautiful day. It hasn’t been raining much in that part of Ohio so everything was dry and dusty. The animal-allergy-prone husband decided to pass on going into the animal barns. I bribed the child to come with me by buying her a lemonade.
“What’s that, Mom?” she asked as I pulled out the funky lens.
“It’s a lens for my camera. It makes things look funny. Want to see?”
I attached the lens and turned my phone around so she could see. She cackled with delight.
“Can I take a picture?” she tittered.
“Sure,” I said.
“That’s cool!” she giggled
“I know,” I said. “I’m going to take pictures of the animals with this.”
“Can I do it, too?” she asked, her lemon-sticky fingers reaching toward my phone.
I popped off the lens and stuck in my pocket. “Nope.”
“Aw, man.”
“Yeah,” I said, wiping off my own sticky fingers. “Life’s tough. Want to see some chickens?”
“Not really.”
“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun!”
She trailed after me, whimpering quietly as we passed fried food booth after fried food booth toward the decidedly not fried chickens.
“Want to come in?” I asked.
She wrinkled up her nose. “They smell bad. I’ll wait out here.”
I sniffed the air. “Honey, you don’t know bad chicken smells. This isn’t bad at all. Are you sure?”
She nodded.
“OK. Well stay here at the entrance where we can see each other.”
Then I went in to photograph some chickens and I learned some things about “fish eye” photography:
- In order to get the photo you want, you have to put the lens right up against the chicken — practically touching its beak.
- Chickens really, really don’t like weird shiny things getting pushed right up to their beaks.
I was, most often, presented with ruffled tail feathers…
…or wistful stares in the opposite direction…
…or suspicious, sideways glances…
…or just plain mother-hen-ish “get that weird thing away from my chicks” shrieking.
There was only one chicken with the cojones to stand his ground. I called this guy “Dirty Harry”.
Harry scared me… just a little bit.
Anyway, with all of the shrieking and scurrying around cages and making the wood chips fly everywhere, people were starting to stare, so I collected the child and we went into the cow barn.
She wrinkled her nose up again. I didn’t want to leave her outside. “Oh look,” I said, pointing toward a so-dark-you-can’t-really-see stall just inside the barn. “Babies!”
The child lit up. “Babies? Really?”
Sucker
“Yeah. Come in and let’s look at the baby cows!”
Well, there were baby cows, but all we really could see were the butts so we moved over to the pretty Jerseys.
“Hey, child,” I said, giggling like a teenager. “Do you know what a ‘cow pie’ is?”
The child rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom. It’s poop. Can we leave now?”
I shrugged. Next stop was the dogs. She brightened up a bit. We stood outside to see the last dog agility trial of the day.
Since the dog competitions were pretty much over, there weren’t many dogs left. We petted a miniature poodle who had been dyed pink and was miserable beyond all reason.
I’m guessing he didn’t like pink.
“Let’s go check out the goats!” I said. “Goats are always fun!”
Goats are always fun. They overflow with livestock-ish personality.
“Hey, baby. You come here often?” he seemed to say. “Want to come up and check out my etchings?”
This goat just LOVED his curtains.
He loved them so much, he was trying to eat them.
This little fellow just wanted a new friend…
…because the guy in the back farted in his sleep and he just could not — could NOT — take another night in this pen with him.
“Hey,” she seemed to say, “I like that shiny thing you are shoving in my face. May I eat it? Please? Pretty please?”
Onward to the bunnies.
The bunnies reacted to my fish-eye lens in much the same way that the chickens had.
The ones who were awake anyway.
Ouch. That’s going to leave marks.
They had a couple of bunnies out to pet so the child got wrapped up in that until I dragged her out.
“We need to find a cash machine,” I said. “I need some money for an apple dumpling.”
“Whatever,” she said. (I’ve been getting a lot of “whatevers” lately.)
We found the cash machine over by the grandstands. I immediately pulled out my camera (minus the crazy lens) and snapped a picture. The people in front were waiting for a parade and thought it was hysterically funny that I wanted to take their picture.
Actually, I thought it was hysterically funny that the ATM behind them was in a re-purposed port-a-john.
I got my cash and my apple dumpling, found the husband and (after a few nervous minutes searching for the car in the huge field that served as a parking lot), we got back to my parents’ house to share what we had seen.
I proudly showed my mother the unusual photos I had taken, explaining that I had used a new lens on my phone. She nodded and patiently paged through several of the pictures.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think,” she said, handing the phone back to me, “that you need to throw that lens away.”
Hmph.
