Painting With Light #1

Every year, I look forward to the State Fair which comes to town during the month of October.  For many, it's a time to enjoy the sights and sounds and... great tasting food! Yes, for me, it's all those things and more... it's also the opportunity to really creative by shooting at night, without a flash. You can view it as using light as as your paint brush!

The fun images below were produced with minimal equipment: Cannon 10D camera, a lens or two (wide angle preferred) and a sturdy tripod.  One of the keys to getting exciting and creative images is to select slow shutter speeds.  How slow? Well, that depends on the ride you are shooting: but one starts getting dramatic images at around 1/30 second.  The 'bulb' setting is best for photographing fireworks.

You can get really nice results from shooting stationary objects with lights but most of the fun can be had by  shooting rides which are in motion! Here are a few of the images I captured (without any editing in Photoshop):

f4.0 at 1/250 sec (ISO 400)

f8.0 at 2.5 sec (ISO 100)

f16 at 4 sec (ISO 100)

f13 at 2.5 sec (ISO 100)

f13 at 2.5 sec (ISO 100)

f16 at 1 sec (ISO 100)

f16 at 3 sec (ISO 100)

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