A Cornhole Board – Independence Day Edition
I took this photograph in Boston on July 4th, and for me, it captures a small but telling fragment of the day’s celebrations. No fireworks, no parade—just a simple cornhole board dressed in the American flag, surrounded by scattered red and blue beanbags on a sunlit brick pavement. It’s an image that speaks to the quieter, more tactile traditions that sit alongside the grand spectacle.
Compositionally, I let the board occupy the upper right of the frame, its diagonal placement adding a sense of movement and inviting the viewer’s eye from the legs toward the target hole. The wooden box in the foreground balances the frame and anchors the bottom left, preventing the image from feeling too top-heavy. The scattered beanbags act as visual stepping stones, leading the eye between these two focal points.
The light on the day was harsh, with midday sun broken by intermittent tree shadows. I exposed to preserve detail in the highlights of the board’s painted surface without letting the shadows collapse into featureless black. The American flag motif could easily have blown out under the white stripes, but the exposure holds the texture of the wood grain beneath the paint. The interplay of sunlight and shadow on the bricks adds texture and rhythm to the background without overwhelming the subject.
Technically, sharpness is consistent across the frame. The depth of field is deep enough to render both the board and the box in focus, which suits the static, observational nature of the shot. The colours are saturated but natural—the reds and blues vivid but not over-processed, which keeps the image anchored in realism rather than veering into the overly celebratory.
What I like most about this frame is its groundedness. It’s a scene that could have taken place in any number of towns and cities across the country that day. The board is festive, but the scene is casual—beanbags missed, shadows creeping in, a moment between plays. It’s Independence Day not as a spectacle, but as a lived, shared afternoon.
