Texas Star Ferris Wheel
The Texas Star is a roughly 65 m Ferris wheel at Fair Park in Dallas, the centrepiece of the State Fair of Texas midway since 1985. It stands year round but only turns during the fair and a handful of private events, so plan your visit for late September through mid October if you want it lit and moving. The wheel carries 44 multi-coloured gondolas wrapped in stainless steel tubing, and that mix of colour and metal reads well against a clear sky in daylight. The strongest shots come after dark. The wheel runs a computer-controlled LED show, and because it spins slowly you can drop to a low ISO, stop down, and pull long exposures that turn the rim into clean rings of light. Bring a tripod for this. For a foreground, walk to the Esplanade reflecting pools nearby, where the Art Deco fair buildings and the lit wheel mirror in the water on a still evening. The Fair Park itself is full of restored Art Deco architecture, so you have plenty of structure to frame the wheel against or to lead the eye toward it. Golden hour works if you want warm light on the gondolas and the surrounding crowd, while full blue hour gives you a balanced sky behind the LEDs before it goes black. Access means paying State Fair admission, and the grounds get busy at night, so a compact setup is easier to manage than a full kit in the crowd. (Dallas, Texas, USA)
