This weekend was the annual Bear on the Square festival in hometown of Dahlonega, GA. I called up my friend Dobbin Buck, the master of ceremonies for the event, and did a little quick coordination, gathered my gear together and off I went to shoot the musicians and the venue.
It was totally awesome! First, the acts that played in the main event tent were fantastic; I mean, really fantastic. There was delicious food everywhere if you got hungry or thirsty and the town square was a seething organism of humanity. There must have been a dozen groups of musicians playing on every corner of the square. Literally, every twenty or thirty feet impromptu jam sessions were occurring. There were more guitars, banjos, fiddles and big huge bass guitars than you could shake a stick at.
Vendors were selling instruments, mountain crafts, bottled and canned foods, lemonade, dulcimers, banjos, books; well you name it, it was there in abundance. But it was the music and the colorful musicians who came from all over that made this such a wonderful event. The weather was beautiful; blue skies with big puffy white pillow clouds floating by and plenty of sunshine and moderate temperatures. In a word it was glorious.
I hope you were able to attend, but if not, I really wish you could have been there. However, since you might have missed it, I have put together a small slide show to share the experience with you. The slide show is accompanied by a wonderful piece of music from one of the performers in the big tent – Curtis Jones accompanied by his good friend from Denmark, Martin Norgaard. It's called Holly on the Mountain and I could not think of a more appropriate piece of music that communicates how I felt during the festival.
The very last image in the slide show is the great Norman Blake, a legendary bluegrass performer. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down at a sanctuary that had been set aside for the performers to warm up, the Dahlonega Community Center. While I sat and sipped a bottle of ice cold water, thanks Dobbin I owe you, I was able to listen in as his group warmed up and snap a few shots. Norman and his wife Nancy, Rachel Bryan and her father James went over a few tunes before the show and their music carried me away. It was beautiful that I almost forgot to pick up my camera and shoot a few images. It was a wonderful experience, almost a religous experience, and one I will never forget. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this small sampling of sixty images. I captured almost 1,500 images throughout the day and processing them will be a labor of love and a reminder of a very glorious day.
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