Ferris Wheel on the Island

2016, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The Island is a fairly new development in the heart of Pigeon Forge. It features shops, restaurants, a water show set to music an...
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2016, Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. The Island is a fairly new development in the heart of Pigeon Forge. It features shops, restaurants, a water show set to music and this giant ferris wheel. To get this shot, I took a series of 7 exposures on a tripod at sunset, then combined them all in the HDR filter in LR6. Even with 100 ISO and the lens stopped down all the way, ambient lighting was still too bright for the 25 sec exposures, so I added a polarizing filter to darken the scene. The fun thing in this is that the colors in the wheel and fountain were constantly changing, so each of the 7 exposures was different. By leaving out even one exposure in the HDR process, the final look would be totally different. I was hoping that there would be more of a sense of motion, but even though the water jets were pulsing up and down and the wheel moving, the sense is more of a still shot.
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