Experimenting With Exposure

I toted my kahuna camera around all day at the State Fair for one reason and one reason only: The Midway.  Or for you folks that don’t call it that back home: the carnival rides.

I don’t experiment with long exposures very often – I find it challenging, hate carrying the tripod and I’m often disappointed with the outcome.  Instead of showing movement or having a beautiful glowing effect from still objects, I usually end with something that just isn’t.  I prefer manipulating the depth of field to “tell the story” instead of the shutter.  And I love the bokeh effect.  But the State Fair was a chance to go outside my creative boundaries and try something new.

The trick was I had to have a shutter speed that was slow enough to capture the movement of the rides but fast enough to not capture the movement of this unbalanced gal.  Like I said, I don’t like to carry tripods.  Besides, do you know how frickin goofy I’d had looked carrying a tripod all day?  Right.  Abby probably would have walked 10 paces in front me.  And I couldn’t have left it in the car because we didn’t have one – Officer David gave us a ride into the Fairgrounds.  It pays to be friends with Abby.  Anywho, I think I had success.

The composition suffered – it didn’t help that I left that 50mm slapped on there, had to zig and zag around bystanders and didn’t really take my time setting up shots – but I was more concerned with movement.  And movement I got.  Mission: Not Impossible.

The midway offers more than just carnival rides though – tons of carnival games.  And creepy carnival workers that talk you even though you ignore them.  I would hate to have that job.

Sadly, we did not spend our dimes on games as we had already spent it on cerveza.  So sorry.  I got priorities, you know.