From the course: Photo Essay: Coney Island

Getting the ideal shot of a ride lit up at night

From the course: Photo Essay: Coney Island

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Getting the ideal shot of a ride lit up at night

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- Well, we finally made it to the destination. This was the ride that I had scattered out earlier that I wanted to capture. And when we got here it was getting kind of dark. But that was cool, because this ride was all beautifully lit up with different colors. This wasn't about capturing the faces as far as I was concerned, it was capturing the feet. Because that's what you saw, you saw these flying feet as it revolved 360 degrees. (ringing) It was getting dark, but it was very beautiful. I'm in Auto ISO because I want to have a minimum shutter speed, but because the light was dimming down, I actually vaulted my ISO so that it would go up to 6400 instead of 3200. On these cameras, it's incredible the quality you're going to get. The noise doesn't really bother me, and sometimes if you pixel peep you'll see the noise. But the reality is by the time you post your picture or print the picture, that noise is not an issue and there's also some things you can do to lessen the color noise if it annoys you. So I ended up waiting a few rounds. Now, unfortunately because it's so cold and there are not that many people here, it wasn't a full ride, but that's okay. So I was focusing on the areas where the feet were there and I don't know exactly what we're going to get but I'm hopeful that there's something from this particular situation. You got to wait, you got to be patient, I think that's something you're seeing over and over again. If you wait, you will be rewarded, and in my experience as a photographer these many years I find that the more patient I am, often I'm rewarded. It's a bit of a numbers game, not every time will you strike gold, but more often than not you will. If you wait it out, good things will happen.

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