Carnival in Indianapolis' Fountain Square

In yesterday's post, I presented photos of the Fountain Square neighborhood, one of six designated cultural districts in Indianapolis, as taken the early evening of May 15, 2012.

In that post, I decided to leave out shots I took of a carnival or festival going on in the open space behind Subway's sandwich shop on the west side of Shelby Street between Sanders and Morris streets. I'm presenting those for you in today's post. I was surprised at how well some of the high-dynamic range (HDR) treated shots turned out, especially those at night.

HDR was designed initially to resolve the quagmire photographers encounter when they want to photograph a scene containing dramatically contrasting light conditions: very dark and very bright. I have found that using it in nighttime photography is helpful as well to draw out detail you might otherwise lose because of the dark conditions. The trick is whether to continue to use it when there is motion in the photograph. Because HDR requires multiple exposures of the same scene, any motion that enters the scene is likely to create blur or ghosting. However, sometimes that ghosting or blur can be an interesting side effect.

With that information as a preface, I present to you my shots of the carnival scene in Fountain Square on May 15, 2012, in images taken before and after dark. The man in the image leading off this post saw me taking pictures and decided to make it worth my while. I appreciated his cooperation! He appeared in several other images I got into the evening, some of which I didn't realize until I pulled up the shots in post-processing. In other words, this guy was, in contemporary terms, "photo bombing." I didn't mind; in fact, I take my hat off to him. Again, I'd also prefer camera mavens over camera shys.