My friend Mike had been taking photos of various county fairs in the area all summer and invited me to tag along for the Darke County Fair – I haven’t done any photography like this before and I was excited to get the lights after dark, and honestly we had a really fun time! I learned so much about shooting at night, and this was one of the most successful single afternoons of shooting I’ve ever had.
If there is one thing I do regret somewhat, it's that this was during a period where I was experimenting with shooting only JPEG images instead of RAW. I was a bit tired of the editing process by this point so I wasn't super interested in going through all of these files, but I've since swung back and recognize the value of being able to put my own spin on it. But personally, I always value "composition over everything," so it was a valuable experience for me in experimentation and learning my camera better and I'll consider it a personal win that I was able to pull this off 🙂