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There's a kind of bewilderment that comes with looking up at the sky. It's a fascination that we, as a collective people, are in love with. Stars, billions of miles away from our little rock hurtling around our sun, seems to be the embodiment of our curiosity of something greater out there. Whether or not there exists an answer to that sense of wonder, we find ourselves fixated on staring at the sky.
None can be more true than The Lights, an organization that creates the opportunity to be in that moment of childlike wonder through the lantern festivals that occur throughout the country. I had seen a friend and her family on Instagram attend a lantern festival in Las Vegas, and I had always been itching to go see one of these events in person, myself. Perhaps it was the romantics from the movie Tangled that influenced this, or maybe it was this innate desire to just release any outlying stress that life has, forget it exists, and to be in the midst of thousands of lanterns filling the night sky.
Whatever the reason may be, I found an advertisement for a festival in Sacramento, and so, as a photographer, there couldn't have been a better opportunity to capture this. All in all, many of my friends that I proposed to attend the event with me were unable to go, and I decided to just go by myself (also, I had eagerly bought my ticket so fast before any of them could get back to me).
Yet, as I arrived in a field out in the country, I was met with thousands of people and their families. Each of them wrote their hopes, dreams, and ambitions on the paper surface of their lanterns. As the sun fell and became time to light them in unison, it was as if they were being carried so that they may be read and reached by a higher power.
I found that, by going by myself, I was able to self-reflect that day on where I was in life, and where I was going. I stared up in these artificial stars that carried the hopes of other people, and projected my own dreams too on to them. As they dimmed out inevitably, and people began making their ways back to their cars, I understood that everything I could have ever wanted can't be relied on just wishing for it to happen. It all begins with an active stance to fulfill that.