The Light of the Great Big Wheel at the Minnesota State Fair

Today is 6/5/2025,

I love the Summer! Now that Spring is finally over, I can get the time to actually work on some of the hobbies that I am interested in.

My favorite season in general is Autumn, because Autumn has that nice mix of being both, hot and cool at the same time.

Anyways, this post is about a Lightroom edit I did for a photo that I took in August 2024. This photo is of the Great Big Wheel at the Minnesota State Fair, where it's light pierces the night sky, and permeates across the entire fair.

I thought it's majestic light radiated elegantly, so I decided to take a sexy-ass picture of it.

This is the original photo, non-edited:

And yeah, the light of the Ferris Wheel is cool, and all, but I thought to myself, "Why not make it better? Why not use this as a way to get better at adjusting light in photographs to make it even more elegant?"

And that gave me the idea to take it up to lightroom, to turn this photo into an art piece, and to get better at photo editing.

Photo editing is an artform; We can take a photo, and adjust it to make it more vividly interesting, we can adjust our photos to fit themes suitable to our aesthetic preference, and take something minimal and extend it's potential into becoming something much more extraordinary!

That was my plan with this photograph, and my plan was to make it's light much more vividly piercing.

I wanted to give the lighting of the Great Big Wheel, a much greater emphasis to really encapsulate the overall beauty, and the dreamy, nostalgic aura it radiates.

As this is my first ever Lightroom project, I wanted to make it extra special... so I did my best to adjust the photo's settings to better manifest my creative vision.

I wanted to also give it an additional misty filter to really give it a musty lens so that it would look much more dreamy. For the lighting, I would say that my biggest inspiration would be taken from those Neon LED signs you'd see at the Karaoke by the beach.... that was the vibe that I was aiming for.

This is the end result that I had accomplished, and I'm pretty proud of it!

Now it's time to share my edits. These are the settings I adjusted the photograph to.

LIGHTS

For the colors, I wanted to touch up the exposure, and place a big emphasis on the shadows to contrast with the striking colors of the Ferris Wheel. I didn't want the contrast to be too strong, and I still wanted to give it a authentic, realistic feel to it - so I adjusted the settings accordingly to what I determined to be as realistic as possible, whilst also maintaining it's dreamy aura.

CURVES

For each of the curve settings, I aimed to create a balanced and cohesive contrast across all colors. My goal was to enhance the photo while maintaining a realistic aesthetic. I avoided overly dramatic or unnatural contrasts because I wanted the image to still resemble how the Ferris Wheel might appear in real life—edited, but still believable to the human eye.

These are the curves edits as follows:

CURVES WHITE

CURVES RED

CURVES GREEN

CURVES BLUE

Colors

For the colors, the only colors that I wanted to really emphasize were the Purple, and Pink. I wanted to focus on these two colors because, as stated before, I was trying to keep the edit as authentic, and minimal as possible to maintain realism.

And the best way to do that is by solely emphasizing the natural colors radiating from the light within the photograph.

Color Grading

For the color grading, I wanted to keep it extreme - only because I wanted to place the major emphasis on the colors stemming from the lights of the Ferris Wheel.

Effects

Finally! For the effects, I wanted to give it less clarity, and place an emphasis on the dehaze to give it a more dreamy, and nostalgic look! I think things look better when there is a misty, subtle blurriness to it, and I hope you'd also be able to recognize the beauty of the dreamy look, the same way I do.

CONCLUSION

If you made it this far, I appreciate your dedication of interest in my journey into photography, and photo editing. I had a ton of fun editing this photo, and if you like the presets as well, feel free to use them in your own photos!

I personally think my edit could be better, but for my first ever edit - I really like it either way! And honestly, the fact that that it isn't super "perfect" gives it more authenticity that I like.

Thank you for reading my post! I hope you enjoy the image!

With love,

- Devv

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