Recently I had the fortune to photograph the Coyle family decorating their tree submission for the annual Festival of Trees held at the Maryland State Fair Grounds.
Christmas has and always will be my favorite time of the year. So naturally when the photo editor at Patuxent Publishing asked if I was available for a Christmas-related assignment I hoped right on it.
I arrive at the fairgrounds, call the family and we approach a very small and restricting space they had in a giant room filled with hundreds of others decorating their submissions.
I navigated around the tree and tried to find the best perspectives to show all three members of the Coyle family enjoying themselves while they decorated.
The tree was unique in the fact that it was decorated with photographs. The father of the family John Coyle was a local photographer and they decided to fill the tree with some of his framed work.
As a fellow photographer I loved the idea. I started to make some detail images of just the photographs, but they lacked dimension. Even as they would reach in and adjust the frames on the tree it needed something else.
Toward the end of their decorating they began an assembly line type system of passing the ornaments. I set up to get both the framed photographs on the tree and the hand off. When everything lined up and I fired off a few frames.
Although it only shows a small section of the assignment, the moment was in the details.
Until next time, take care!