Carnival Photography

This week’s topic is about one of my favorite things to photograph – Carnivals! Taking photographs at carnivals has always made me extremely happy. There is so much you can do with photographs taken from carnivals or amusement parks in general. You can take photographs of the rides, the food stands (and the food itself), and the games. There are so many vibrant colors that you can capture in your photographs. However, one reason that I really love carnival photography is because you can twist it and turn it into something creepy, something that looks like it came from a haunted or abandoned area.

Here are my top three tips for getting amazing Carnival photographs –

1)      Try to avoid getting people in your shots – unless you want them there. This can be kind of tricky because people are all over the place at carnivals, but just wait for the perfect moment when there are fewer people in the area and snap a few shots. If you need to, you can always crop people out when you edit the photographs.

2)      Be mindful of other people, watch where you’re walking so you don’t accidentally bump into someone else.

3)      If you want to make the images look creepy, put a black and white filter on the image – or mess around with other similar filters. Darken the image up a bit to add a mysterious look to it. Also make sure to keep in mind what images you might want to have this look if you are planning on making the image look creepy. For example, with photograph 2 (the carousel) I took one look at those sculpted faces and thought they looked like the cherubs from the movie The Haunting (1999). That gave me the inspiration to turn this image into something else. I had to crop the image because there was people on the ride, and then I turned it black and white and darkened it up a bit.

What do you guys like about carnivals? The food, the rides, both?