Ride The Mighty Waltzer

If you can’t take great pictures when you’re at the fairground, then it’s time to take up philately.

This post is all about the funfair. From the little details, to the spectacle, to the personal. As a kick off, here’s three of my best friends – my wife Marie, my stepson Devon, and my father in law John – relaxing on the truly mighty Waltzer, at Skegness fair in August 2008:

 

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 32mm, 1/400 sec at f 5.6, ISO 800, hand held no flash. I couldn’t be happier with this shot. I pushed up the ISO as it was quite dark inside the Waltzer, and I needed a fast shutter speed to freeze the action. But I got a great expression on all three faces (Devon ALWAYS gives good face). The thing was moving at what looked like 500 miles an hour, so it was a complete lottery – but this was the very first picture I took in the Waltzer, and the best. Love it! I used the reliable Nikon 18-200 VR ’superzoom’ more or less throughout the day, it’s all you really need for a day out like this.

Now, here’s the science. I applied a custom Setting to the the pic above, and applied the same Setting to almost all of the pics in Ride The Mighty Waltzer, in Adobe Lightroom 1.2’s Develop module. Basically I de-saturated Reds and Yellows by 50%, applied a 50% Recovery setting to bring back some of the overexposed areas, and increased the Colour Temperature by 25%  to warm everything up. I then took it into Paint Shop Pro, applied a slight boost in Clarify, and gave it a final, quite modest Sharpen. I’ve done that across all but one of the pics in this set (I’ll say which one), to give it a nice, coherent look. I thought it would be nice not to overload this set with highly saturated colours, as is normally the way with funfair pictures. Instead, the colour palette is quite reserved. I’m pretty pleased with the results, creatively.

End of science. And now to the fun, where we join Devon and his Auntie Maxine on the chuffa train:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 170mm, 1/250 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Just one of those lucky moments again, I spotted Dev and Max waiting for the train ride to start, and gave them a shout. Got it spot on, nice and sharp and a lovely smile from them both. Notice the lad in front, on the right, who by his haircut is a tad too old to be riding this particular train without an 8-year old to make it cool. Either that or he’s one scary looking little kid.

This is the picture that I didn’t apply that fancy Lightroom setting to, by the way.

Talking of scary kids, this is ours, contemplating life with a group of eight adults who, within thirty minutes of arriving at the fairground, already wanted to stop for fish and chips:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/400 sec at f 3.5, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Looks like a dark vignette around the outside of the pic, but it’s nothing artificial, just the way the light fell off a bit at the edges. But I love this sort of natural light portrait, it makes a mundane moment into something a bit more memorable.

There are some fantastic chippys in Skegness, this one’s right at the heart of the pleasure beach. Devon’s just got his motor running, and all the grown ups seem to be obsessed with food. Despite his protests, the wrinklies put their foot down and we settled down at the trough. Devon ate a few chips and watched the other kids outside having fun.  Gritty urban portrait of a child wishing he was spinning around on some death defying machine, rather than listening to the sounds of lip-smacking and “Byyyyy this fish batter is reyt nice”. 

He perked up when he spotted that he had his own brand of tomato sauce:

 Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 24mm, 1/125 sec at f 3.8, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Six months later, at Stamford Fair in 2009, we found more Devon Stile tommy sauce by our favourite burger van. We like burgers too much.

Back outside at last, it was my (Andy’s) turn to hit the rides, so John (Marie’s Dad) grabbed the camera, and within minutes produced one of the shots of the day, curse him:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 112mm, 1/2500 sec at f5.3, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Note how I am paying respect to my mother in law in time honoured fashion, and note also how we are all being very soft by cowering like girls at the bottom of the water slide. Great picture, John.

And here he is proving how tough he is after a circuit of the Ghost Train:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 22mm, 1/160 sec at f5.6, ISO 640, hand held no flash. Looking well, John. Easy to look so confident on a kiddy ride mate. Let’s see you up on the bungee trampoline like your wife… You can see the effect of that custom Lightroom setting here, the car was actually rather redder than that.

Up on the Surf Rider, Devon was trying to stay calm:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 75mm, 1/2500 sec at f5.0, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Great fun taking action pictures on a sunny day – you don’t have to worry about shutter speed and as long as you’re focusing right (easy with these great modern lenses) you can freeze it perfectly. This thing was travelling at a heck of a speed, notice how cool Max is compared to the other three. She lives in Skegness and that’s a far scarier thing than any fairground ride.

Here’s how high it goes:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/8000 sec at f5.0, ISO 400, hand held no flash. Really great exposure, if you look at the original there’s plenty of detail in people’s faces. You can see the terror in Bev’s eyes.

Once again, here’s the difference between Bev and Maxine. Try and take a guess why my wife Marie is so feisty:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 200mm, 1/800 sec at f5.6, ISO 400, hand held no flash. She doesn’t half pull some faces, that woman. And once again, Max looks like she has just taken something lovely out of the oven, rather than screaming towards imminent oblivion in the rickety Skegness Pirate Ship. Note that I was sponsored by SkyCaddie for this trip to the fair.

Marie really hates the way her nose looks in this picture, but I had to include it as it’s just an incredible freeze-frame given how fast they were going:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/1250 sec at f4.5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. They were flashing by on this terrible machine, you simply can’t imagine how fast unless you were there. These great mechanical arms shove them out to the edge, and pull them back in, spinning the cars round at an unbelievable speed… it looks dead unsafe, and a really bad thing to do after a big plate of fish and chips, but Marie was game for it as always. Any road, just have a look at how sharp this picture is, it’s pretty unbelievable. Once again I am in awe of what you can get out of a good camera. I just stood there, wound it back to max wide-angle, and snapped away, grateful to not be sitting in there with them. Eagle eyed viewers will notice a slightly queasy looking John Oakley at the bottom-right. At this very moment he was regretting that visit to the chippy, and that lovely, tasty batter.

And finally, here’s one of my father in law with a handbag:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 112mm, 1/800 sec at f5.6, ISO 200, hand held no flash. He likes to try it out sometimes, you know, it feels nice and they’re really very useful, you can put your money in them and everything, and why shouldn’t a man carry a  bag anyway? John it’s nothing to be ashamed of. His weekend name is Wendy you know. And here also, at last, is Uncle Al Shepherd, Bev’s brother, partner to Max. They always look after us well when we come to Skeggy for a day out, roughly once a year. This was a great day, great fodder for taking pictures, lots of laughs, brilliant food, warm and sunny. Who needs Disney?