This past April I received certification to fly my drones at night. And while I have flown a number of night missions, they have lacked the dynamism I hoped to capture. With the advent of the 2021 Colorado State Fair, I saw an opportunity to finally shoot something other than “another building at night.”

My initial plan was to shoot the State Fair fireworks, but that idea went by the boards when I learned that there’d be no fireworks show this year. So I went with Plan B: the midway at night. I’ve always been intrigued by carnival rides, so I scouted locations along Prairie and Mesa Avenues and plotted two routes I could fly.

Then I realized I could fly those routes three or four times to illustrate the progess of the fair’s midway being put into place. So I did. Monica and I walked the midway and collected audio on the fair’s final night to add an air of authenticity. And “Making The Midway” is the end result