The sign describes what this is, Country Club Plaza's 80th Annual Art Fair in Kansas City. Our trip out was on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Not a optimal time for photos. Good chance that many shots will have too much dynamic range. To avoid blowing out the highlights and losing shadow detail, I brought along a flash. The D300s and SB800 combination can do high speed flash beyond the normal sync limit of 1/250. So fill flash can help here. Where possible I encouraged folks to move to open shade - avoiding shooting in the direct sun as much as possible. You can see more from the day at the Kansas City Star here.

Dick Cunningham closes the deal. This fan of his work took two pieces...

Mary Andrews works in ceramics. She has created an interesting cast of characters... The next photo is one of her works...

A teapot. There is definitely an edge to the work.

Some of the browsers going down one of several streets filled with 240 displays of artists showing their work and several pubs, eateries meeting our more basic appetites. I had a bag of Topsy's Popcorn. Before filing my order, my server asked, "Would you like extra butter on that?" Of course I did. The popcorn was GREAT! Why? It tasted fresh, light, melt in your mouth texture and of course, it was buttery.

Many folks appreciated the art. But really this was an "event" a time to get out and mingle... see and be seen...

One of the darker images at the art show. More on the commercial side, there was great intricacy as characters from popular culture were pulled together in several pieces

These were the last images I took in the current spider series. For these I used a Nikon D300 with 105mm macro stopped all the way down. Lighting was the same set-up as I used for the shot with the Canon G9. Main benefit of the 105mm lens is that I had more room between the camera and the subject so I could get more light on the subject. Of these two images - the same photo but different treatments - the lighter version added some defocusing with minus clarity and desaturated the color.

This shell of a spider was sitting outside my office door. Over the years I have had an interest in shooting these critters with varying success. For this shot I used a tripod mounted Canon G9, a sheet of white paper and two white envelopes to bounce some light in to soften the shadows. The set-up was basically like this \ . /

The benefit of shooting static subjects - they certainly don't move...