Picking Up the Camera Again
The Deseronto Pow Wow, Summer 2025
It had been a while since I had gone out with a camera simply to take photographs.
Not pictures for a project, not documentation, not something I needed for a website or a drawing — just walking around with a camera, looking at what was happening around me and trying to capture a little bit of it.
Sometime in July or August of 2025, Kevin and I headed to the Deseronto Pow Wow, and it turned out to be about as good a place as I could have picked to get behind the camera again.
What struck me almost immediately was the colour.
The regalia, beadwork, feathers, ribbons and patterns were extraordinary. Everywhere you looked there was something worth studying through the viewfinder. But after being there for a while, you realize that simply photographing the colour and detail doesn’t really tell the story.
The movement does.
The dancers brought everything to life.
Traditional dances, drums, voices and the movement of the regalia completely changed the atmosphere. A still photograph can freeze one fraction of a second, but standing there you experience the rhythm, the sound and the energy surrounding it.
And then there was the sense of spirit.
That’s harder to photograph.
You can capture a dancer in motion. You can photograph the workmanship in the regalia. You can catch expressions in the crowd or the beat of a drum.
But there are things a photograph doesn’t completely explain.
There was a sense of community and tradition that you could feel simply by being there. Generations were together. Children were watching and participating. Elders were present. Traditions weren’t being displayed as something belonging to the past — they were alive and happening right in front of us.
For someone arriving with a camera, that also comes with a responsibility.
This wasn’t a costume show put on for photographers. The regalia, dances, songs and ceremonies have meaning, and being allowed to watch and photograph parts of that deserves some respect. Sometimes the right photograph is the one you take. Sometimes the right decision is to lower the camera and just experience what is happening.
I found myself doing both.
Kevin and I wandered around, watched the dancing, took in the atmosphere and enjoyed one of those days where there really wasn’t much of an agenda.
And I took pictures.
For the first time in quite a while, I remembered how much I enjoyed doing that.
Photography changes the way I look at things. Once the camera is in my hands, I start noticing expressions, textures, light, movement and little moments that I might otherwise walk right past.
The Deseronto Pow Wow gave me plenty of those moments.
Some photographs are technically better than others. That’s photography. But looking back through them isn’t really about whether every shot was perfect.
They remind me of the drums.
They remind me of the dancers.
They remind me of the colour, the traditions, the families and the feeling of the place.
Mostly, they remind me that Kevin and I went out for the day and experienced something genuinely memorable.
And somewhere along the way, I rediscovered something I hadn’t realized I’d been missing.
I enjoyed carrying a camera again.
Deseronto Pow Wow — Summer 2025
Photography and words by Tom Rutledge
