Let's be Civil about this....

More Period Clothing, originally uploaded by Ryan Wenner.

Also at the Drake Extravaganza was a Civil War encampment.- 150th P.V.I. out of Meadville.

Spot On!

Let Your Light Shine Down, originally uploaded by Ryan Wenner.

David and I have worked together on quite a few jobs in the area. Thursday was another one of those times for the Nitro Show at Drake Well Park. Here Dave is up on the scaffolding, preparing to use his years of experience as Barrow Civic Theater technical director to run a spotlight for the Nitro Show.

Cool Guys Don't Look at Explosions

nitro, originally uploaded by Ryan Wenner.

The way this photo turned out, wasn't what I was going for...we'll call it an 'accident' even though many photographers won't admit those happen from time to time. However, straight out of the camera with no photoshopping or even color correction, it was interesting enough to post here. This was the end of the Nitro show at "Drake Extravaganza Day" at Drake Well Park during the Oil 150 celebration.

Don't forget that cool guys don't look at explosions...

Period Clothing

period clothing, originally uploaded by Ryan Wenner.

During the "Drake Day Extravaganza" there were quite a few people dressed in period clothing...I thought the festival's organizers did a good job of pulling this together. This little girl was playing on the ropes of a manual well drilling rig at the park.

Just beat it

Just beat it, originally uploaded by Ryan Wenner.

Thursday the 27th was the 150th anniversary of the first successful commercial oil well, here in Titusville, PA. If you are from the area then you are probably sick of hearing about this. If you’re not from here, then you might have no idea what I’m talking about…So if that’s the case I suggest going on over to the Oil150 website and checking it out. I was involved with the lighting/sound production for the Nitro show at Drake Well Park, but during the day I had some downtime so I went around shooting photos.

I had no idea that Venango County has a blacksmith association, and that they had a shop/display here at the park. Back in 1859, being a blacksmith was probably one of the most bad-ass jobs you could have… second only to the guy who gets to torpedo oil wells with nitroglycerin. I’m sure blacksmith conversational exchanges often went like this:

“What do you do for a living?”

“Well I take this red hot piece of metal here and hammer it between two other pieces of metal to make something bad-ass, like a knife or sword!”

I digress…anyhow, blacksmithing is demonstrated on a regular basis at Drake Well Park, and there is even work available for purchase, so I suggest you head on over and check it out.

Farmall 1456

Farmall 1456, originally uploaded by Ryan Wenner.

I haven't posted in a while...so here's another random photo from the Clarion County Fair a couple weeks ago.