pigskin pig-out (and a lesson on shutter speeds)

i love a good festival. and in greenville this weekend, we're having a GOOD festival. the piratefest is this weekend and is a great combination of the annual spring scrimmage game, a bbq cook-off, the international festival and uptown artwalk. talk about a full weekend! justin and i have made a point of going to the international festival for the past few years, and we went to the pigskin pig-out last year as i took pictures for the paper (i'll be photographing the international festival tomorrow). this year, it was just for fun and we had a great time walking around and visiting all of the barbeque team stations.
they also had carnival rides set-up, and i must admit--i'll visit a tiny carnival at night to practice shutter speed shots. it is the perfect place to figure out the right settings for that blurry stream of light!
we had several different rides to choose from...
and some were nice and colorful!
i did love the merry-go-round, too.
after running into several friends by the rides, we started to head back over to the stadium in time for the fireworks. as it turned out, the route we took the first time was closed off cause that's where they were launching the fireworks. i knew where i wanted to be for the fireworks, and it wasn't on this side of the baseball field! so we speed-walked around the field, with the fireworks starting during the middle of our walk. i decided to go for it and try to make it to "my spot" for the last 5 or 10 minutes of fireworks. you see, last year, i got this amazing shot--
and i was determined to get some more like it. i love the silouette of the pirate infront of the fireworks and i knew it would be worth running across the practice fields to get a few of them.

so i did get a couple of good ones...
but my best one was the last shot of the fireworks. the finale of "big boomers" that lacked color, but made up for it in brightness.
i was so happy with this one, i literally jumped up and down after i checked the screen. simply awesome. (i added a copyright just in case)

so then it was time for the parade of pigs, which is a fabulous event involving a refrigerated truck and about 100 pigs ready to be put on the grill. and cheerleaders and a small pep band.
this year the truck actually fit through the gate at the side of the stadium. last year, it didn't. and it was pretty funny to watch them pull the truck in through the middle of the stadium and then back up to deliver the pigs to the first half of the teams.

we always get a kick out of the team names....
and some of the more elaborate set-ups for the cooking teams.
they'll be cooking all night, and tomorrow afternoon, we can head back up to the stadium and get some tasty barbeque plates from the teams.
but for tonight, we'll leave dowdy ficklen and get our rest for the remainder of the weekend. excited about tomorrow's events--hope to see some of our good friends down there :)