All the Fun of the Fair

So the beginning of a new week is upon us and as usual I’m wondering where the weekend went, Mondays just come round far too quickly for my liking! This weekend we were quite busy but I still didn’t get everything I wanted to do ticked off my list.

On Friday evening my husband Dave and I took a trip to the fair, there was a travelling fun fair in town and I wanted to go and try taking some long exposure shots of the rides. I love the kinds of pictures you can get from them with the trailing lights in different colours creating a blur accross the dark sky. I did a bit of reading up before we went on what kind of settings I would need to use as it would be my first attempt at this kind of photography and it would also give me a chance to try out my new remote shutter switch which was one of my birthday presents.

When we arrived at the fair I was a little disapointed as it was quite small, there were only a few rides and most of them were aimed towards smaller children, were quite tame and they didn’t look like they would give the kind effect I was looking for. There was a Twister/Switchback, Waltzers and a ride which has a long seat where the riders sit in a line and swings from left to right before finally going all the way over the top and back down the other side. We were there already so I decided I may as well have a go!

My first attempt was at the Twister. I set up the camera on the tripod only to discover that I seem to have lost one of the securing bolts! Luckily this didn’t render the tripod useless but it’s something I need to sort out sooner rather than later. I had a play with the remote shutter switch and it was really easy to use, definitely something I can see myself using in the future.

I got myself all ready and then I just had to wait for the ride to start moving which took a while as it was quite quiet. Once it started I just tried a variety of different settings to see how they altered the resulting photographs. Even though the pictures from this ride have come out quite well I think you get a better result from the rides that tend to go up in the air rather than the ones that stay at eye level. Here are a few of the shots I took, you can see how they vary.

As you can see the longer exposure creates a series of coloured trails from the lights on the various parts of the ride.

This wetted my appetite to try some shots of the other ride as I had a feeling it would give a much better effect, the ground was quite uneven and these could do with a bit of levelling in Photoshop but you get the general idea.

As you can see the lights on this create a circular effect as the ride goes up and over, the second picture has a shorter exposure so the circles aren’t totally complete. I much prefer this effect than the trails on the Twister – what do you think?

Lastly I tried taking some shots of the Waltzer – my favourite ride. This didn’t really create many trails due to the lights being fixed and not moving with the ride. I did get some nice star shaped bursts from the static lights though.

After this I decided to pack up the camera and enjoy the fair by going on the Waltzers. As it was almost the end of the evening the ride seemed to go on for much longer than usual and by time we came off both Dave and I were staggering around and feeling dizzy hahaha!

Now I’ve had a bit of a practice and feel a bit more confident about which settings I need to use I definitely want to try this again but next time for a full evening shoot. The next time the fair comes to town will be the end of October time ready for the local fireworks display, it will be better then as it is a much larger fair with better rides so I am already looking forward to that – hopefully I will be able to get some better pictures next time.

I shall update you on the rest of my weekend tomorrow as I think that’s enough for today. As always thank you for reading and please comment if you’ve enjoyed it.