Fun at the Arizona State Fair

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 55 mm, f/11, 0.8 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

The Arizona State Fair began in early October and continues for the whole month. For years I didn’t go to the fair because my vestibular system couldn’t handle the rides, but when I got into photography, I found a new reason to go to the fair…actually two reasons. 🙂

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 31 mm, f/18, 0.4 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

This was my second time practicing photography of the fair rides at night. It’s a great way to play with settings to blur the light and colors to show movement in photographs. I joined a couple friends and we went on a weekday night thinking it wouldn’t be as crowded. We looked for rides that moved fast and had bright colors.

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 60 mm, f/11, 0.6 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

Sometimes we isolated portions of the rides to capture the movement. In order to get a blur of the colors, we had to slow down our shutter speed to 1-2 seconds and even as slow as 3-4 seconds to capture a specific look. For the image below, we needed to slow down to 4 seconds to capture the circle of color when the ride was at its peak speed.

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 24 mm, f/20, 4 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

It was hard to get decent compositions for some of the rides due to other lights in the background but we moved around to work the scenes as best as we could.

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 24 mm, f/14, 1 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

For the ferris wheel image below, we shot it up close since the scene below the ride was too chaotic and there were other structures in the way that prevented a decent full shot of the ride. The lights on this ride were white so it lent to a black and white image.

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 32 mm, f/16, 0.8 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

I also converted my top image into black and white since we are nearing Halloween and it created an appropriate mood for the holiday.

Image: Arizona State Fair rides. Nikon D750, Nikkor 24-70 mm at 55 mm, f/11, 0.8 sec, ISO 100, on tripod.

Lastly, my other reason for visiting the state fair was to see how my images performed in the photography competition! I’m excited to share that all 5 that made it into the competition placed! Woo hoo! Each image represented a place I traveled to last year and they placed in various categories (wildlife in color-Antarctica, landscapes in black and white-Iceland, wildlife in color-England, landscapes in color-Greenland, wildlife in black and white-Florida). The photography on display at the state fair is worth a visit!

To view more images, please visit my website portfolio: Here.

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