How to take amazing pictures of fairgrounds

Words by Tim Gartside

For photographers, all the fun of the fair comes in the winter months, when, thanks to the shorter days, you can get some great night-time shots. So keep an eye out for posters telling you when and where they are visiting. If you can’t wait then there are many permanent funfairs like the Pleasure Beach at Blackpool.

If the funfair is local then a quick recce during the day is a good idea so you can look out for interesting angles and rides. It would also be a good time to get some candids of people eating candyfloss or queuing for a ride; a compact or a small DSLR with Live View may well be a more discreet option for this. As soon as someone knows they are being photographed any natural behaviour disappears, so shoot quickly.

Visit the fair at night and it comes alive with the all the lights and a real atmosphere. Arriving at least an hour before sunset will give you time to check out the area and get yourself set up for the first shot.

During the so-called ‘crossover period’, the 30 minutes when the sky darkens to a lovely dark blue, look to capture exciting shots with a mix of faint daylight and artificial lights. The darkening sky provides the ideal contrast with the colourful lights – even dull days are fine for this sort of work.

Choose a spot where there is nothing in the foreground to ruin the shot if you want to capture a ride as it moves around. You may need to study some rides for a few minutes to work out the best composition as they can move from horizontal to vertical, sideways – or any combination!

Take a variety of lenses including a wide-angle and a telephoto to maximise the range of images you can tackle. Get up as close as you safely can and angle the camera up, using a wide-angle lens for dramatic shots full of colour and impact. Then move some way back, even stand outside the fairground, and use a telephoto to pick out details. Colourful shapes and colours make interesting abstract designs.

Use a telephoto lens to shoot static funfairs at piers too. Try using the sea for a reflection shot. It’s worth shooting from the beach, at low tide.

Adding movement to your shots is one of the most dramatic and creative ways to convey speed, colour and excitement to moving objects. The most important factor to consider here is the shutter speed. You should be aiming for a speed over 1/2sec to create a blurred effect, but it does depend on the speed of your subject.

Even with a shutter speed above 1/2sec you can get some truly stunning and often unexpected results. A tripod is essential for fairground shooting, but handholding may produce some interesting results, especially with flash. It’s better to bracket your shots at different shutter speeds and experiment to get different amounts of blur. Most cameras shoot up to 30 seconds but if you require even longer times use the ‘B’ bulb setting [see last month’s To B or not to B article].

Getting the exposure correct is the trickiest part of low-light photography. Autoexposure modes can work fine but if you want maximum control shoot in manual mode and take a centre-weighted/spot meter reading from the sky or mid-tone area. With digital, you have instant feedback so do check the histograms of your shots. Bracket your shots manually using the shutter speed or with auto bracket, above and below your chosen meter reading in one-stop increments (-1, 0, +1). Auto white-balance is fine for most situations, and if you shoot in Raw you can alter it later. Raw will also ensure maximum quality.

Add detail shots to your ‘to do’ list and keep a constant eye out for little things like painted horses, stall details or hand painted signs. And don’t forget the zoom burst. Fix the camera to a tripod and move your lens through its zoom range during an exposure of one second or more.

UNDERSTANDING HISTOGRAMS

A histogram shows the exposure or range of tones in your image as digital information. The horizontal axis shows the range of brightness with dark tones (shadows) to the left, average tones (mid-tones) in the middle and light tones (highlights) to the right. The vertical axis shows how many pixels are allocated to each of these areas. Histograms on cameras and in software work on the same principle. They’re a handy way of seeing if your image is correctly exposed.

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