Timing is Everything - Christie Style

She will probably kill me, but this is one of my favorite shots of Christie, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it is a wonderfully silly picture caught at the perfect moment. I did not realize that she had stuck her tongue out at me until I looked at the image after the ride. And that leads to the second reason: I was in a moving tea cup when I shot this, as well. If you are familiar with the set-up, there are several circles of tea cups that rotate within a rotating main floor. Within the spinning circles the several tea cups rotate independently from each other, spinning fast or slow or maintaining some semblance of non-motion by the application of human power to spin the cup from a central post. Tina was trying to maintain a minimum spin while Christie and Mike were having a great time spinning wildly. I was tracking with the Canon A80 Powershot, which has a time-lag in shutter depression to image capture. In short (reason three), I had to "lead" the target and anticipate the right time to take the shot to get a good image, all the while moving myself...at night. Amazingly, I got several decent shots, but this one was great. Not only did Christie perfectly frame out Mike, making her the uncluttered focus of attention, but the blurring of the rest of the image, with the colorful paper lamps, also emphasized the motion while zeroing in on the subject. Add to that Christie's spontaneous burst of silliness and the image is complete. Not bad for a little A80!