One thing I’ve learned over the years is that some of the best photographs aren’t always made during the event itself.
As a newspaper photographer, it’s easy to think in terms of deadlines—arrive, make the required images, and head to the next assignment. There’s nothing wrong with that. Those photographs matter.
But when I’m shooting for Northland Lens, I try to give myself permission to linger.
I like to stay until people begin putting chairs away, until conversations start replacing applause, until everyone forgets there’s still a camera around. Those are often the moments that reveal something you couldn’t have planned.
That happened after the Circus Smirkus Road Show in Newport.
Once the performance ended and the audience drifted away, the young performers stayed behind on the mats. They carried one another around, joked, wrestled, laughed, and improvised one last show that wasn’t meant for an audience at all. They had spent the afternoon entertaining everyone else. Now they were simply enjoying each other’s company.
These aren’t photographs of the circus.
They’re photographs of what came afterward.
Sometimes, if you stay just a little longer, you discover that the story isn’t over when the applause ends.
For more photos from the event, see photos published in the North Star Monthly and the Newport Daily Express.
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