Vicente, circa 2006...

This is Vicente. He has worked at the State Fair for a LOOOOONG time. It's been a while since I talked to him last, but he is always a welcome smile at the State Fair of Texas crafts building. I took this quick portrait back in 2006, when I was covering the fair for a national publication called American Profile.

I just had a Canon 20D and my 540 flash on me at the time, so it was a pretty simple shoot... nothing fancy or complicated. And it was shot with my 20mm f2.8, camera settings were 1/40 sec and f4.9 according to the data saved with the image file.

I took a lot of pictures that year, including my first portrait of Bill Bragg, the voice of Big Tex. After sending off the images to my editor, I didn't do a thing with the pics. They just sat on a disc, filed away for the last three years.

I've thought about this photo of Vicente for a long time. I don't know why, maybe because he's such a colorful character. I never did anything with it, because I never cared for the glare on his glasses. I've even thought about retaking it every year since then, but never have. I think I will do a proper portrait next State Fair season. Vicente deserves it! For now, you can enjoy him as is. Next year, he'll look even better, sans glare.