Triad Pride 2009

I almost missed this one. I was asked at the last minute if I wanted to come shoot Triad Pride in Greensboro, and I said yes before I had time to think about it. It turned out to be one of the most important shoots of that early period.

It was my first Pride event and my first time photographing an outdoor gathering at this scale. After months of learning to work in the dark, mixed light, and tight quarters of Warehouse 29, suddenly I was outside in full sun with a crowd, a stage, performers I already knew, and hundreds of people just living their lives in public together. The camera had to adjust and so did I.

Among the performers I captured that day were Lawanda Jackson, Paisley Parque, Cherries Jubilee, Mykel Knight-Addams, and Gabrielle Berlyn, though the stage saw many more throughout the afternoon. What I tried to capture was not just the performances but the feeling of the day itself. The joy on people's faces, the color everywhere, the sense that this was a community that had claimed its space and was not going to apologize for it.