50 days of 50mm #47

With the welcome return of some of my most anticipated yearly events, today’s visit to Torbay steam fair is one I have looked forward to for some time.

It is another day of cloudless blue skies and hot August sun, a reminder perhaps of that summer of ’76 when I was just a ten year old with seemingly endless weeks of summer holiday ahead of me.

The photographer in me would love to see a few more clouds in the sky, the realist in me is just so glad to be back at an event that I have always enjoyed, a comment that would be said more than once today by fellow spectators and exhibitors alike.

The event sprawls over two very large fields, with an array of classic cars, motorcycles, tractors and traction engines, as well as a number of fairground rides and various food stalls.

My sense of smell is working overtime, the aroma of fried onions from a burger stall has to compete with the delicious aroma of Indian spices from a curry stall, that in turn over ridden by the smell of coal and oil from the stars of todays outing, the traction engines.

Using a 50mm lens for such an event is certainly challenging at close quarters , these iron leviathans soon fill the frame, so I decide to get closer still and pick out the detail shots of the engines and their owners as they work on their machines.

My camera has worked hard today, a good few hundred images will take some sorting but here are a handful which hopefully capture the essence of one of the highlights of my photographic year.