Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Duck Day

Naugatuck, Connecticut

Duck Day (and Duck Race) is a fund-raising event and general street party held in early June each year. I spent several hours there last Sunday. They close down the broad Maple Avenue roadway between the river and Church street and fill it with activity. There's a bandstand with state of the art (and very loud) sound equipment and very good local rock/pop/blues bands. The main event is a sort of raffle: people buy numbered tickets, then numbered rubber duckies by the thousand are dumped off the Maple Avenue bridge into the Naugatuck River by a front-loader. They then "race" down the river to a barrier where the first forty ducks are collected as winners.

There are loads of vendors, food trucks, amusement rides and commercial tents for the sponsoring businesses. Plus, street performers. This butterfly on stilts was impressive, maneuvering with ease and sometimes dancing in time to the music.

When I'm out shooting, which I do a lot in the towns along the Naugatuck River, I've noticed that the percentage of people who are talking on their phones, all the time, no matter what else they are doing, is almost as high as it is in Manhattan. But here, more people were taking pictures with their phones than talking/texting on them.

3 comments:

scott kirkpatrick said...

We're no different here in Israel. My guessed statistic is that at least one person in three on the street (and some in there cars!) has there phone out. But do you see street shooters with smart phones taking shots of people they don't know, or just personal note-taking, including selfies? This may be something that aggregators like Instagram actually know.

Carl Weese said...

This was mostly selfies or pictures with the street performers. Very few simply taking pictures of the scene.

lyle said...

When you are taking 'real' photos, you have to use the iPad. I also find it interesting going to a restaurant and the at the next table finding two people who spend the entire meal texting. And by the way, another GREAT crowd photograph....