State Fair - Midway miscellany

Nikon D7000, 48mm (28-200), 1/125, f/4.5, ISO 800

The best part of the fair – for kids and photographers alike – has to be the midway. As the sun goes down, the rides and booths become a festival of fascinating images. They also become a festival of tricky technical challenges.

This close-up of a trash can lid gets in tight to reduce the face to abstract form and color. It also brings out the surface texture and the glittery paint.

Nikon D7000, 135mm (28-200), 1/1250, f/7.1, ISO 800

The colors everywhere were wonderful. Booths full of stuffed animal prizes provided no end of bright patterns.

Nikon D7000, 200mm (28-200), 1/125, f/5.6, ISO 800, cropped

As usual, I had two cameras with me. I put a fisheye lens on my D3000, but I didn’t use it anywhere near as often as I expected to. Here’s one spot where it produced a good result:

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/80, f/2.8, ISO 400

I took two photos of this basketball booth, one from the front and one from the back. This one proved to be the more visually interesting of the two, the strong backlight giving the scene an almost ghostly feeling.

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/80, f/2.8, ISO 800

As usual, I found that when I carefully planned shots that I ended up with something completely unexpected. My plan was to shoot this large ride with a slow shutter speed, letting it paint long streaks of light in my image (as I did with the Scrambler). Though I got a few shots that captured what I was aiming for, I ended up liking this relatively still image the best. I loved the strange combination of table lamp and War of the Worlds Martian death machine. I also liked the blue color the lights spread over the whole image.

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 1/20, f/4.0, ISO 800

When I first started editing the State Fair photos, I didn’t care much for this one. But Amy liked it, so I gave it a chance. And she was right.

Nikon D7000, 28mm (28-200), 1/60, f/5.6, ISO 800, cropped

My initial objection was that the lights in the background were blurry. But that lends the scene a quality in which the prosaic foreground full of vendors is set apart from the dreamlike realm of the midway.