Del Mar Fair, 2012

In the summer of 2012, I took my Hasselblad H4D-60 (medium-format digital camera) to the Del Mar Fair (aka San Diego County Fair). My intent was to capture the essence of the Fair with high-resolution, color photographs. After shooting a couple hundred photos, I was disappointed with the result. No single image really captured the carnival atmosphere, the diversity of people and experience, and the complex essence of the Fair.

The solution was two-fold: i) combine two or three photos in an overlaid "collage" so that the bottom photo could be viewed through the photo(s) on top; and ii) covert the color images into sepia images to capture the timeless nature of the Fair.

Each image shows more than one perspective, more than one flavor, of the chaotic fairgrounds. Here are images not seen by anyone at the Fair in a single glance -- collages that present together the “Coppertone Girl and Fish Tacos;" a young man espousing "Greed" and an ATM machine; “Relaxation” turned on its head by a carnival ride, and much more.

Click on the thumbnails to see the full images.