Fiesta

Our church has its annual fiesta every year over Mother's Day weekend.  The past couple of years, we've been attending all three days since my wife works one of the booths.  I end up walking around quite a bit taking photos of all of the different things that happen at the fiesta.

One of the things that I've practiced over the last couple of years since starting my 365 project is long exposures.  I've had varying degrees of success catching the different amusement rides with all of there colored lights.  Some that look very interesting don't turn out as well once they've been shot with a long exposure.

I think part of the reason is most of the rides now have long fluorescent light tubes as opposed to individual lights.  If they don't have a constant movement, like this ferris wheel did, the light becomes a very large blob and doesn't look very appealing.  It becomes very experimental while you're trying out different angles for shots.  

Yesterday, during the day, I scouted out spots where I wanted to take shots, then forgot to place my tripod at one of the spots I'd scouted out.   Not much to worry in the long run because the ride I wanted to take a shot of didn't work very well in other shots, so I'm pretty sure it would have turned out quite similar from that spot as well.

Because I've also started the 100 Strangers project, I was looking for possible stranger shots as well as general "Street Photography" type shots to take.  I think I did well with both aspects as I was able to take a photo of one of the concessioners talking with someone.  The tattoos on his arm, spelling out the word Knoxville worked really well in this shot.  He was very successful in plying money out of patrons' hands most of the evening.  The lure of winning a stuffed animal was big in a lot of people's minds and he played right into the lure very easily.

Overall, I was very pleased with many of the shots I took this weekend.  I have several other light trail shots on my Flicker account.  I also met Curtis, one of the concessioners at the fiesta.  He became my 37th stranger yesterday.  If you'd like to check out some of the other night time shots I took this weekend, check out my Night Photography album at Flicker.  I'm hoping for one more nighttime excursion before the end of the month to possible get some star trails as I'm in a blog challenge to take photos with the theme Night for the month of May.  I have a pretty good start on that challenge after this weekend.