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Ferris Wheel – Photo 52 Project [Week 32]

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The Illinois State Fair is in town! The traffic is terrible. The food is greasy and costs more than printer ink. The rides are operated by people you normally wouldn’t trust to park your car, let alone control your fate while locked inside a swirling, diesel powered death cage. There are ill-behaved, latchkey boys running around everywhere, doing everything they can to impress a 14 year old girl dressed like a Reno gutter skank. The sun will sizzle your skin like a smattering of sausage on a slice of Sbarro (I am not proud of the preceding sentence).

Really though, it was fine and we had a good time. I burned through nearly all of the cash I had on me but the Fair only comes around once a year I suppose. It’s not like I can just make a Jamaican beef patty or a Vose’s corn dog, or a fire roasted corn on the cob dipped in butter at home! If I dipped my corn in a vat of melted butter at home I would labeled a sociopath, and shunned by my community. Do it at the fair and I’m just simply supporting hard working Illinois farmers.

I took most of my pictures around the rides at the midway because, you know, they’re shiny. I used my super light, super cheap travel tripod and it seemed to work ok with a 2 second timer. I would prefer to work with Jesse’s Manfrotto but it is a lot heavier. I felt bad, there were a lot of very considerate people who would stop before they walked in front of the camera and I would just wave them through. Since I was taking so many long exposures it didn’t really matter. For every one idiot who sticks their face in front of the camera, there are 2 dozen more who politely walk around you and don’t want to ruin a shot. I don’t mind those odds at all.

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Stars – Photo 52 Project [Week 31]

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Mari Ann and I went on a float trip in Missouri this weekend. We had never been on one before and didn’t quite know what to expect. We arrived early afternoon on Friday and setup camp. There were 8 of us in our group so we had several tents and a decent amount of manpower for pooling supplies and getting things done. Several of the guys, with more man points than me, went to gather firewood. We also built a force-field of tiki torches to keep the bugs at bay. There were dozens of large groups with big camp sites, and people would wander from site to site to see what was going on. There was music playing almost the whole night and people were having a good time, away from civilization and away from their normal responsibilities and expectations.

It was cloudy for most of the day and night on Friday but after midnight, the stars came out and they were as bright as I’ve ever seen them. I setup the tripod and began shooting. I could barely see the milky way with my naked eye and I used a long exposure to bring its hidden colors out into the frame. The sky was clear except for right above the horizon. There were storms in the direction where the camera was pointed and that area would intermittently pulse with milky light. This shot was actually the very last one I took before packing the gear in for the weekend. For some reason that seems more satisfying than when I capture my best shot in the first few photos.

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Labor – Photo 52 Project [Week 30]

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I was going to do a little home improvement project and fix a rotten door frame. That turned into a whole new door, and that led to ripping out part of the kitchen floor. A little water got in and that turned into a lot of damage we could only see once we had the door out. My Dad was onsite to assist, and I am very glad he was. All in all, the whole day was shot and spent working on this.