Best of the Triangle Party

Best Of The Triangle Party 2009 - Images by Independent Weekly

I just cannot seem to escape The Best of the Triangle assignment. Day after day following the completion of those 28 assignments and editing the massive amounts of photos that resulted, I waited to hear from my bosses of what they needed me to do next.

Nothing came. The photo requirements were light for each week. Finally, something broke: I needed to cover the Best of the Triangle Party celebrating the winners I photographed and the many more included in the paper.

From what I read, several vendors would attend and give out samples of their food, and the masses would flood in to wine, dine and enjoy music. My boss told me to just enjoy myself and snap photographs of people doing the same. Enjoying myself certainly sounded like fun, along with the abundance of free food.

It did pan out that way at the start. I ate ice cream, I photographed. I ate tacos, I photographed. I tried to figure out how people enjoy sound installations, I photographed.

The whole process soon became redundant, and I turned to the stairwells and to the outdoor concert for entertainment and photo fodder. While it gave me the varying the shots I needed for the assignment, the shifting temperature changes soon made me feel ill.

I asked my boss if leaving half an hour early would be OK, to which he said didn't mind. There was little point in forcing myself to photograph while sick because the results never turn out well. In fact, I'm mildly OK with my photos in the viewer (the others, as the footer says, are my boss's work). I did not record caption info for all of them, which makes me an awful photoJOURNALIST, and I only found few compositions I enjoyed.

In the end, though, I went home to rest and enjoy an evening of evenly air-conditioned rooms and talking with my friends online. It's just what the doctor ordered.