This past weekend was the 2024 edition of Blink, an arts festival that bills itself as “the nation’s largest public light and art event.” Dozens of buildings throughout Downtown Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky’s urban neighborhoods are illuminated with projection mappings that magically brings those buildings to life. Other exhibits scattered throughout the urban core included everything from new murals to a pop-up skate park to a piano that illuminates lights suspended from a tree as you play it.
It’s also–and I mean this in a positive way–largely about the vibes. Over 2 million people visit Downtown Cincinnati for Blink, bringing along their glow sticks and light-up sneakers. Restaurants and bars stay open late, and many set up outposts on the sidewalk selling street food to passers-by. While the major streets are closed to automobile traffic, the streetcar continues to operate (led by a police escort to help it get through the crowds of pedestrians) with record ridership. Overall, it makes Cincinnati temporarily feel like a city with 4× its normal population.
This year I decided to head out into the festival with only my Fujifilm X100V and mostly avoid photographing the actual art on display throughout the event (there are plenty of people doing that on Instagram already), as I wanted to largely take it in the art through my own eyes, and take snapshots throughout the event that captured the energy of the urban core and the festival’s attendees. I also wanted to take the opportunity to experiment with the camera’s built-in film presets, so I shot JPEGs in Film Simulation Bracketing mode rather than my typical RAW files.
