The Last Night of the Skystar

Back in October of 2018 I took some shots of the Cincinnati skyline with the Skystar Ferris wheel, thinking at the time it was going to be leaving Cincinnati in a month or two when its time was up. You may remember this one:

The Skystar, after all, has always been a temporary Ferris wheel that moves from city to city. However, it was so popular that Cincinnati and the company that owns the Skystar struck a deal to keep it in the Banks area for longer. Its become a well-known fixture in the South view of the Cincinnati skyline.

Fast-forward to last week – the Skystar was finally set to leave. It’s next destination? San Francisco. Given the knowledge that it was leaving and wanting to shoot it “differently” than I have in the past, I headed down to Cincy on Saturday 2.29.2020 for the last night of its running. With me was fellow Dayton photographer Doug Brand and his friend Hung who was visiting from out of town.

We arrived there at 5:30 and got a good vantage point across the river for the impending 6:30 sunset. Unfortunately the sky was cloudless so we weren’t treated to a color show that evening, but still the blue hour was pretty fantastic.

I shot the majority of my shots on my RB67 ProSD with a slightly modified 220 back and adapters to allow me to shoot a wide panoramic format with 35mm Kodak Ektar film. I also have a custom mask that I drop onto the viewfinder that shows me the field of view between the sprocket holes on the 35mm film. This gives me the ability to compose correctly in the nearly 1x3 ratio, and, as a bonus, if I end up with something interesting with the exposed area around the sprocket holes I can use that also depending on the work I am doing at the time.

I really like the panoramic format and thought that shooting and composing for the Skystar with the format would be interesting.

After sunset and into the swing of the blue hour and forthcoming night, we began to move across the bridge shooting from different vantage points. There was a lot of traffic that evening so we were treated to some great long exposure shots with light streaks.

I recently picked up a 37mm WIDE lens for the RB67 so this night I was able to make good use of it combined with the panoramic nature of the 35mm film in the 220 back. This makes for some great, wide, angles of view. It takes a little more work in post sometimes to correct for the distortion at the edges, but its not bad, and I am really into the look. The image at right is what the scene above looked like before cropping to 1x3 without the holes and correcting for distortion

Once in closer I was able to focus on the wheel itself and make it the major focus of my images. This is something I really haven’t done very much so it was nice to do that versus only shooting from across the river.

After shooting for nearly 4 hours it was time to head home. I shot two rolls of Ektar for a total of 32 shots, plus a few on Ektar in 120. I developed the film the next day and was super happy with the outcome.  

I’m super happy that I was able to make it down there on the last night and also am very appreciative that Doug and Hung came along for the ride. It’s always nice to shoot with other photographers and talk about geeky things like reciprocity failure and pushing/pulling film.

I’ve had several people ask me about shooting 35mm film with my RB67 for that panoramic look, so in the near future look for a post on how I do it, what’s needed, and the in’s and out’s of the process.

Thanks for reading!

Jeremy