Storytellers

I had an opportunity to shoot the storytellers at the Second Annual Pike Piddler's Storytelling festival in Troy, Alabama, on Jan. 26, 2008. My mother is heavily involved in historical preservation and spreading that idea to the community. She came up with the idea for a local storytelling festival three years ago, and recruited me to do the photography for their future promotional material. The event was held on the main campus of Troy University in the Trojan Center Theater. I really hate shooting events in theaters because the lighting is so bad. You just have to deal with it as best you can.

Still, I was lucky enough to hear four of the nation's best storytellers. The photo above is of Donald Davis, nationally know as the Dean of Storytelling. Other "tellers" included Andy Offutt Irwin, Shiela Kay Adams and Alabama native, 90-year-old Kathryn Tucker Windham.

I was really hoping to get more out of this excursion than just shots of the storytellers, well telling stories. There's really not much backstage stuff with the storytellers, all of the set-up is done by festival volunteers. They just get picked up at the hotel and come tell their stories. When they get done, they sit in a reserved seat and listen to everybody else tell their stories. Between sessions, they go eat or visit with the people attending the festival.

Overall, it's extremely boring to shoot, but exceptionally entertaining to be a part of.

Where I was hoping to really get some good HDR shots was of the university and the Pioneer Museum of Alabama. Unfortunately, it was one of those days where the sky is completely gray with no breaks in the clouds. So I packed it in and hoped today would offer a better opportunity. It didn't.

I've been battling a cold, so I took some medicine after lunch and it pretty much put me asleep for three hours. When I woke up there wasn't a cloud in the sky. I really need a partly cloudy day to complete the HDR shots I have planned. Until that happens, I'll be patient as death.

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