Hillsborough Memorial Day Music Festival

At the last Pre- Pandemic Memorial Day Celebration, I made photos of the annual Hillsborough Parade, and I manage to capture a golf cart carrying the honored Veteran Of The Day while on route to the Music Festival. That photo was a nice contrast to the one of some youngsters planting flags at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno two days earlier. Those two photos ran as a pair on the front page, and summed up the spirits of both remembrance and celebration.

Now any photo that includes an army vehicle, a child, and a flag will always be a safe photo to submit. The top photo was one of the first I made at the festival itself, and it combined all of the key components, plus the tiniest hint of a smile on my young subject's face as he accepts the small flag. The shot is overexposed, but otherwise reasonably composed. 

With that shot "in the can", I decided to try to make a photo that emphasized some of the other activities enjoyed by the guests. I went looking for something different, and found that one of the local high schools had a robotics club, and they sent along their creations for a "show and tell".

My young friend can be seen controlling a small robotic rover using the smart pad he's holding. It's a fun shot, but in retrospect, doesn't have any Memorial Day context to help the shot along. I actually thought that this photo would be selected by my editor to run as the Parade Photo. It was ultimately rejected. Incidentally, the small rover is small enough to fit in the palm of an adult's hand.

The robotics club also brought out a rover that could scoop up two balls that were rolled to it, and would then randomly launch them in the direction of the crowd. I put the camera in burst mode, and was able to capture a sequence of shots of the ball (or balls) being caught.

If the photo was printed large, there would be lots of recognizable subjects that could potentially please a lot of families. This photo was the second rejected photo, most likely because it failed to bring the Memorial Day theme forward. Fun yes, relevance no. For the record these two photos were forwarded to the Robotics Club for their use, a good tactic for getting cooperation from those people who could actually do things to  help the process along.

I'm glad the first shot was made, as it gave me a "money shot" that I could always submit if nothing better came along. I still wince a bit at the exposure, but the photo told the Memorial Day story, loud and clear.