I hate theme parks.

I’m not anti-people-having-fun or anything, they’re actually ok and I’m just a bit over-dramatic. It’s the rides. Just something about getting chucked about upside down and getting dizzy isn’t for me - which is fine not everything is for everyone.

What I do like is managing to get into theme parks after they’ve all closed and everyone has gone home. There’s a real stillness verging eeriness to a place that’s usually rammed with screaming weans, loud music and thundering rollercoaster carts.

I managed to not only catch the theme park in this state but also on a warm summers evening just as the sun was making its way towards the horizon.

This is a small collection of photos that I took on that evening. They’re also the first cohesive group of photos that I photographed on 35mm film. Everything up until this point was just trying to get my head around moving from firing off 100 photos on digital to realising that I had to really think about what I was doing. Measuring light, no auto-focus, composition, you know the stuff that fries your brain if you think about it too much.

The good thing about me is that I tend to just shoot now and ask questions like “why the fuck did this come out so bad” later, so I didn’t linger too much on trying to get everything perfect. Just good enough.

These were shot on Fuji C200, the first (and I think only time) that I’ve used it, through my 2nd film camera I’ve owned the Pentax K1000 with a 50m lens.

I love the colours that come out of the c200. You can see that I slightly over-exposed the shot to the right with the slides, but it still retains so much of that warm orange glow. The blues and greens were washed out a bit more but you can even see a bit of the red on the sign and on the Tornado rollercoaster pop alongside the fiery glow of the setting sun.

With the two above of the Tornado you can see where it shines with correct (or almost) exposure. More of that fiery amber glow on the structure of the rollercoaster, cutting across the grainy clear blue sky.

But this isn’t a gear review so moving on.

Everything came together on the evening I took these photos. The weather was perfect, I got there at the right time, no employees around, and no thrill seekers either. Just a symphony of good luck. Which I suppose is what I took away from this - you just have to get lucky sometimes. Or just keep a camera on you just in case you find yourself at the right place at the right time, with the right conditions.

Thanks.