Most of the time, I am secretly a bit begrudged about my photography. I find myself perusing my images, thinking about many of them just aren’t quite there in terms of what I was after to begin with. I browse others’ streams and sigh with envy, wishing I had taken such beautiful shots as some of those I find on Flickr. I suppose that is a good thing, to never be satisfied; I suppose that is what drives us to be better.

But sometimes, every so often, I do manage a shot or two that I really like. Shots that I fall a little in love with. My previous post was one of those, and this one comes close too, primarily for its “cool” factor, and because the image represents the vision I had in my head while composing and taking the shot.

This is about a 1-minute long exposure - a self portrait, taken with my Zero Image 2000 on the merry-go-round at Pier Park. I hadn’t planned on visiting the playground that day in Pier Park, but while walking through I noticed the strong colors of this particular piece of playground equipment, and couldn’t resist experimenting. So I set the little wooden box up, started the merry-go-round spinning as smoothly as possible, and when it completed almost a half round I stepped up onto it myself. Considering all the moving that went on, and the fact that this merry-go-round has a bit of a “bump” in one spot every revolution, I was surprised at how very smooth it turned out. And at how much it actually resembled the shot I set out to take.

Oh! And I almost forgot to mention that it was taken with Fuji Velvia 50 slide film, and that slide film is less forgiving when it comes over or underexposing, and so I was also quite satisfied that I had gotten the exposure right. My first roll of slide film through the pinhole was, sadly, quite overexposed.

Go pinhole, go. ;-)