Ryan B. Genone:

Great shots Mike. That picture of your ladies in particular is incredible. So often, that type of shot can look staged and unnatural, but the face and eyes of your wife and daughter have immeasurable depth!

Mike Sakasegawa:

Thanks Ryan. :)

ElJay:

That looks so different from a visit to a Midwest pumpkin patch. It makes me wonder how much is what you chose to take pictures of and how much is really different. (Obvious differences: it's a lot flatter here and I had no idea what the cotton seed slide hill was until the second picture that showed the sign.)

Mike Sakasegawa:

There's a lot of variety in California pumpkin patches, in my experience. This one is at a dairy farm, and I think it looked more or less like this. But, of course, I wasn't really trying to depict the place itself so much as reacting to certain images and feelings I had while I was there, so I guess it's not necessarily a great representation.

There's another one we go to in a different part of San Diego county which is at a nut farm, and that one is a huge to-do, with an arts-and-crafts fair and several bouncy castles and a bunch of food vendors and what not. And, of course, there's one in the parking lot of the local high school.

By the way, I'd never even heard of a cotton seed slide until we visited this particular pumpkin patch. But then, as far as I know, cotton isn't a very common crop in California. Certainly not in the part I grew up in, anyway.