As the sun was setting, I wandered over to the antique farm equipment and tractor displays and found some surprising colors for my “colors of the fair” project. The image here of the spinning red wheel is the belt driven flywheel of some arcane antique pump. This image was taken in low light, hand-held at a slow shutter speed to make the flywheel as transparent as possible as its belt chattered and the flywheel spun a some-hundred rpm. The sun was setting so I prepared for some nighttime time exposures I had in mind of the colorful rides over by the midway.
Walking around this warm summer evening soaking up the sounds of the fair—the shrill cries of the young girls on the rides, at least I think they were girls , the barkers on the midway luring passersby to play their “everybody’s a winner!” games, the songs of the rides—music from traditional calliope to rap and hard rock, with a back beat of diesel engines and hydraulics.
The sights of the fair’s colors and lights—florescent, incandescent, neon, stroboscopic—creating a wonderful moving kaleidoscope of competing attractions each trying to outdo the other for our attention.
The smells of the fair… A unique medley of cotton candy and popcorn, hot dogs and chili, beer and pretzels, mixed with the ever-present barnyard scents of hay and dirt in the background.
It was marvelous to revisit these sights, sounds and smells of a big fair and realize how little they have changed since I was a kid and first went to the state fair in Sacramento, CA more decades ago than I would like to admit.
For the techy ones…The images of the rides were all done with my widest-angle lenses, on the tripod at shutter speeds from 1 second to 3 seconds.
Lets start a poll here…how may want more technical information in these posts? Let me know… ~ Jerry
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