4th of July at Kentucky Lake

Water skiing, a pig roast, and various other slices of Americana made up my 4th of July this year at Kentucky Lake in - you guessed it - Kentucky. I spent a few days in Kentucky with my lovely girlfriend and her equally enjoyable family, giving a summer lake house one last hurrah before her grandparents sell it. 

Most days were marked by light rainfall, but we had a cloudless 4th where I managed to make the most of the sunshine turn a fine shade of lobster red. There was a lot of laughter and storytelling and trying to surmise the experience in a short blog post wouldn't do it justice. 

The moment I found myself most lost in was the pig roast, where the white noise of countless simultaneous conversations allowed me the space to tune in with my camera and study a curiosity I'd never been a part of before. It was interesting to watch how everyone interacted with the pig in various ways, each of the children having their own curiosities and feelings about the pig - poking and prodding and looking it over. I found myself caught up in their explorations of it, thinking about the gears at work in a young kids minds as they explore the ideas of death and life and food. 

I had planned to post these photos much earlier but a whirlwind of a month followed the 4th and they fell to the wayside in the hustle of life. But, I'll save that for my July recap post.

Thanks for reading and looking.

Political Debates: Snapchat and the loss of meaning

©Justin L. Stewart

What happens when the general public stops having faith in the political process?

Last night, thoughts like that bounced around in my head before, during, and after the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Stumbling through social media, the oddly common discussion of drinking games for watching the debates lay strewn throughout my Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Posted in a Facebook comment.

A small sample of drinking games to apparently make debates worth watching.

I saw someone post a status of someone looking for a friend's place to watch the debate at (for the first time ever) with her son, not because she was interested in what either of the candidates would say, but because she was expecting it to be a trainwreck and thus, entertaining to watch. 

As the debate began, Snapchats with funny filters started popping up in my notifications on my cellphone and filling the Snapchat Stories section of my app. I got a couple chuckles in before becoming bored. Then I began to think about how I saw this happening all throughout the primary debates and how distracting of an action it was to take take one of these snaps during the debate. 

All these thoughts – the posts, the snaps, the memes, and everything else – started to merge in my head and weigh heavily on me. Was anyone actually watching the debate? Have we all become so jaded by politics and politicians' trained responses to questions that the political process has just become a dark joke that the everyman feels powerless in? Instead of focusing on what should be important discussions and debates surrounding our country's future, have we been relegated to make the best of what may feel like a powerless position by making drinking games and funny memes of politicians?

I don't know, but the thought is there. Along those lines, I made some snaps of my own last night for the purpose of making this post. I wanted people to think about why we're doing these things. Are they actually acts of frustration? Is this an action that makes the user feel more power, having made a person of power laughable through a photographic manipulation of their visage.

Here's a series of snaps I made last night with those thoughts in mind.

Debate Gallery - by Justin L. Stewart

Help

I'm entering three of these in a contest. I haven't been receiving feedback on any of them and so I'm just lost as can be when it comes to deciding which of the three I'll be choosing. 

Here's the "criteria" for images for the contest:

"
Center Forward


Photography, perhaps more than any other medium, seems inextricably linked to an increasingly complex modern world constantly unfolding in new and unexpected ways. Its ability to capture our cultural changes, the environments we inhabit, and the thoughts we keep play a vital role in giving us greater insights into our world and ourselves. In the 2012 Center Forward exhibit we are interested in exploring this unique quality of photography, therefore the theme is open and all subject matter is welcome."


Please help me figure out which three of these images I should enter.These are all rough edits. I will be cropping out the film edge but putting a black border around the images. Any opinions would be appreciated!

Thanks

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Abandoned Trailer Park