A picture is worth a thousand words

If the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words" is true, then I'm going to bypass at least a hundred thousand words today. If the entries come close to what we had last year in the Bonner County Fair open class photography, I'm sure to avoid a lot of verbosity by having the world portrayed through the lens of a camera.

Once again, I have the pleasure AND HARD WORK of judging the photographic entries. It's a good gig, but it does get fairly confusing because of limitless categories and infinite possibilities for awarding ribbons. I don't know how many championships they're expecting, but I do know that when it comes to selecting those, the job is never that simple.

I love photography just like I love those hot brownies with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup that they serve down at Jalapenos. Both feed my senses in pleasing ways, although visually devouring dozens of esthetic photographs is much easier on my figure.

Last year's overall champion photo was a color image of a silhouetted cowboy seated on a board fence. It was snapped by a young Sandpoint woman who attends the University of Idaho and who worked at All Seasons Nursery this past summer. That's where I finally met her and learned that she's had a lot of mentoring from local portrait photographer extraordinaire, Ruthie Eich.

That came as no surprise because Ruthie's been seeing good photos since her days of supplying her phenomenal talents to our Monticola yearbook back in the late '70s. She's even passed that talent and skill on to her son who also went through the SHS yearbook class a couple of years ago.

Ruthie's student who won the fair championship last year has the passion necessary to snap those winning photos. As soon as she heard about my fancy antique manure spreader, she was asking where I lived so she could check it out for photo possibilities. I was impressed because not too many 19-year-old women get off on manure spreaders.

I love to snap pictures myself, but I have great admiration for those artists who can find the angle or who can see the unusual in the world around them. These are true photographers because they provide the rest of us with perspectives we'd never dream of seeing. They view the world differently and, thankfully, they often preserve that vision for us with their talents.

So, today ought to be a delectable day at the fair. I'll struggle through the piles and piles of photos---organization-wise but will fill my senses with esthetic pleasure. I'm looking forward to seeing what this year's entries have to offer. And, while I'm at it, here's a commercial for one of those talented picture snappers who has some nice additions to her photo blog this week: check out (www.nnlove.blogspot.com).

In the meantime, I'm going to repeat the information about another photographic accomplishment so that anyone who'd like to see "Jenny's Journal" at the Panida will know what's necessary to get a ticket. Also, there's a story in today's Spokesman-Review newspaper. It can be found at (http://www.spokesmanreview.com/idaho/story.asp?ID=145873) See ticket information below:

IPIFF (Idaho Panhandle Film Festival Info, regarding "Jenny's Journal" and purchasing tickets. Info from film producer Jeff Bock: Now, here's the info for people buying tickets. It's a bit confusing...but here goes.

1) They are ten dollars each.

2) You CANNOT get them right before the screening of
"Jenny's Journal," which is at 5:30 pm on Thursday Aug
24th. You must get them prior at the box office which
is apparently at WINE SELLERS or maybe at the PANIDA
itself. Anyway, you must get tickets before the BLOCKS
of movies start. So as TREVOR (he who runs the
festival) told me, you can get them at 10:30-11:00am
or at 3:00-3:30pm on THURSDAY. I know, they don't make
this particularly easy, do they?

3) You DO NOT have to sit through all the screening in
the WILDFLOWERS block (in which "Jenny's Journal" is
included). They will have short intermissions between
films, and people will be allowed to enter prior to
the next film starting. So you can let your family and
friends know that showing up by 5pm will be
fine...it's just that they have to get tickets ahead
of time.