I was photographing the annual bluegrass festival, a tough one to photograph for a good picture. The lighting is bad, their is alot of stuff in front of the musicians that is distracting, the lighting is bad(did I say that already?), the backgrounds usually don't help, its in a conference room, nobody gets up to dance and in case I didn't make it clear before, the lighting is bad. So each year I end up with a very similar picture, a close-up of one of the musicians which is a passable picture, but really doesn't cut it for me who wants to find something of a story within a story. It gets compounded by the fact that we can't stay long due to either deadline or another assignment(it falls on the same weekend with the Meadville Hockey tournament and the Saegertown wrestling tournament. The real story to tell happens after the musicians are done playing and head back to their rooms. Here is where they all mingle and jam. These are not only good times, but good music. Last night this man who videotapes the event every year came up to me and held out this piece of cut glass that was prism like with a hole cut into it. He seemed excited about showing me this piece and telling me what it does. I asked if he used it for still photographs and he said he didn't know if it would work. So I tried a couple frames after figuring it out a little and got the picture above. I forget sometimes to get excited about such things and even though the picture is neat, it isn't my cup of tea, but it was fun talking with this man and seeing how excited he got from a simple filter and what affects he could achieve with it. Its nice to have tools to try and then use. I almost wish I had one of these myself now to see what else I could do with it. Meadville Tribune photograph by Richard Sayer