Ferris Wheel, Foster City

 
Tech Info: Nikon D300s | Tokina 12-24 @12mm | ISO 200 | f/16 | 5s
 
A shot of the Ferris Wheel which was put up for the Arts & Wine Festival in Foster City.
 
Arts & Wine festivals are conducted every year around the cities here and I’ve managed to find some reason or the other to not be present for it. The very first year of my stay, I wasn’t even interested in it. After getting a camera, I’m wondering what had kept me away for so long, though I still have to visit one. Hopefully next year I’ll make it.
 

We were taking a family vacation to Yosemite last weekend and I was supposed to leave early on Friday night. Due to some late office work, I had to post-pone our journey to next day and was busy getting the vehicle ready. As I headed out to fill the gas, I noticed this Ferris Wheel rotating and wondered whether they were just testing for the event on saturday. Quickly headed back home, told my wife that I’ll be back in about 10 mins and went to this place to find out that they were actually in use. There was very little crowd and most of them were school kids, having loads of fun.
 
The weather forecast had predicted rain for the night, so I was in a rush to get one shot of this giant wheel of colorful lights in motion. After a few clicks, I could feel the drizzle and had to clean out the little drops that made onto the lens. Since I was parked a long way from this place, didn’t wanted to take the risk of keeping my gear out in the rain. Out of the 3 shots I took, this was the best of them.
 
Processing:

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image with some basic adjustments to white balance and exposure.
2. One curves layer to lighten the areas of the wheel and background
3. A slight crop
4. Resized the image for web and a smart-sharpen filter.
5. Added watermark and saved as a 8 bit jpeg file.
6. Used Bridge to add keywords and metadata.

 
Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.