State Fair – The Screamer

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/15, f/8, ISO 400, adjusted

For the next month or so, the blog will feature photos I took at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia in August. Most of the photos will be examples of “street photography” of people. But a few, such as the ones we’ll start with, focus more on technical issues.

The picture at the top of this post is The Screamer, one of those rides that takes folks more adventurous than me for a long, upside down swinging ride. I took the shot just as the car full of riders was speeding past.

This provides a good example of motion blur. If the entire image is blurry, then the photo looks like a mistake. But if you can avoid camera shake and freeze the parts of the shot that aren’t moving, the parts that are on the go give your viewers a strong sense of motion.

For what it’s worth, this is what the ride looks like at rest:

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/80, f/3.8, ISO 400

I took several pictures in this series, because at shutter speeds this low I tend strongly to get a lot of camera shake into the shot. Of the pictures that came out with un-shaky foregrounds, this one is my favorite:

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/15, f/8, ISO 400, adjusted

The framing is slightly better than the one at the top of this post. I also like the ride attendants looking on.