Ferris Wheel Light Show

Summer would not be complete without a carnival! Our city just celebrated "Strawberry Days" and part of the festivities was a carnival downtown complete with fun, food and rides. So of course we had to take the boys and enjoy the fun!

We lucked out and went to the carnival on the night that all the rides were only one ticket! So we rode on almost everything. This year one of the highlights was definitely the Ferris Wheel! The boys rode on the Ferris Wheel with me, and though they thought it was a bit scary at first, they loved it!

I loved the Ferris Wheel for a different reason. While waiting in line for a ride I experimented with TV mode on my camera and changed the length of the exposure while the Ferris Wheel was moving. When I got home and saw the pictures, I was inspired to go back with my tripod and take some more pictures.

I wanted to see what would happen if I set up my tripod and took pictures of the Ferris Wheel in motion. I varied the length of time the shutter was opened, just to see what would happen. I LOVE the pictures I ended up with!

First I set my shutter to stay open for one second. I ended up with pictures that I think look like fan blades, like the one above. Then I decided to go for even longer.

I kept changing the shutter speed and just kept snapping. I got some really cool patterns that I think look like flowers.

For most of these pictures I had the exposure set at 2 seconds.

Then I tried for some even longer exposures. The next two photos I left the shutter open for 2.5 seconds. Pretty cool, huh?

What a fun, Ferris Wheel light show! It was so much fun to experiment and see what kind of photos I ended up with.

I was actually trying to get a photo for the prompt "continuous circles". I got the pictures I was looking for at 2.5 and 3 seconds.

So in the end not only did I get the photo that I wanted, I also had a lot of fun and ended up with a ton of cool pictures. Next time I may have to give this a try on some of the other rides too! So fun!