I might be blowing my own trumpet a bit here, but I’m delighted by this picture, and I can’t stop looking at it.

It was taken at Festival of Circus Artists in Oleśnica, Poland and it shows a group of eager children and their (not so eager) parents waiting to have their faces painted.
I don’t know any of the people in the picture and if I’d been challenged while taking it, I don’t speak enough Polish to explain why I found the scene so fascinating.

The young kids are all desperate to see the catalogue and choose their designs, before having it applied to their face.
The parents are bored but maybe enjoying a moment of peace while they wait.
The artist seems to have too tight a grip on the top of the head of the girl who’s taking her turn, perhaps wondering why she agreed to give up her Saturday for free.
And the girl with the pigtails… for me, her awkward stance away from the others, and her gaze off into the distance tells me that she’s wondering if perhaps she’s too old to have a sparkly butterfly daubed across her cheeks…

You can see it a bit bigger on Flickr