Play, Let Go, Have Fun

I made it to the County Fair last night. The festive nature got me in the mood to let go a little. Sure I brought a tripod and a camera and a few lenses, and filters, and a cable release and...

But after a while, a few hundred shots, and a lap around the area having seen and shot everything at least once - I started to play.



A few of the things this involved were - hand holding long exposures, taking shots were the horizon was not level on purpose, and then really tossing it all aside and zooming the lens during the exposure, spinning the camera during the exposure, and even doing both of those plus trying to pan on moving rides/subjects.

Landscape and Wildlife Photography - shooting, the gear, the techniques involved, it can all be so technical. Do this to improve that, try this to avoid that, make sure this or that is sharp, this is out of focus, etc, etc.



It was nice to for a brief while play around and see what the results were later. In around 4 hours I took just under a thousand shots. It was around shot 500 that I began to play more and more.

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I got to the fair about 45 minutes before sunset and it worked out perfectly. I was able to check everything out with some day light, shoot the sunset and rides w/ lights and then shooting everything in the night sky/dark.

It was fun.



I started the night bracketing shots 3 or 5 clicks per, then changed to shooting 2 shot brackets of 0ev and +1ev, in aperture mode. This helped by adjusting the exposure to the changing light as I went along, and by changing the amount of time the shutter was open without having to think about it too much. I adjusted the base EV to tweak the exposures a little, but still let the camera meter things. Most shots were taken with the Nikon 18-200mm VR and with the Vari-ND filter.

Original content posted at http://natureandwildlifephotography.blogspot.com/

Nikographer.com / Jon

Play, Let Go, Have Fun