We went to the Nottingham Riverside Festival last weekend. It's a great event in the Nottingham summer calendar and takes part on the bans of the River Trent
I'd took my Canon 60D and sigma 70-300mm zoom, to photograph my daughter and her fiancé who were taking part in a charity "Chinese Dragon Boat" race event.
I also used the camera lens combo to photograph some of the musicians / bands performing on the "memorial stage".
As I walked back to my wife in the crowd watching the artists on stage I met Rachel and Marley.
Rachel had seen me looking up at the skyline and asked me if I'd seen the beautiful cloud formation.
We had a little chat about beautiful clouds and then I started stroking Marley. Rachel told me he was a rescue dog , part staffie and a really friendly dog. He had a twin sister in Hucknall but she had never met his sister. Marley was really friendly and liked the attention I was paying to him.
Rachel said I could photograph him if I wanted. I had to step back a bit to get him in frame and continued my dialogue with Rachel.
After taking a few pics of Marley I asked Rachel if I could photograph both of them for my 100 strangers project,
I normally like uncluttered backgrounds, bit this was impossible as Rachel was sat in the middle of the crowd enjoying the music.
So the shot was done "as is " with people in the background and in bright sunshine.
the Sigma 70-300 did give some nice blurry background for me at f5.6 .
I showed Rachel the pics on the back of the camera and gave her a contact card. As we left the festival at 6 pm (it finished at 6pm on the Sunday) i saw Rachel again and she introduced me to her husband who had joined her for the latter parts of thee festival.
I got an email from Rachel on Moday, telling me she enjoyed the shoot and she had been doing some baking on the Monday (chilling out after a long Sunday in the hot sun).
Thanks for being stranger 139 Rachel and I am pleased you liked the shots I took of you and Marley.
To find out more about the 100 Strangers project and see pictures taken by other photographers, look at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
https://www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
My own strangers can be seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/phil_howcroft/albums/72157657822400168
