The Greatest Show on Earth

Valentine's Day was spent in downtown Philly at a circus. It was performed by The Ringling Brothers who perform all over the USA, and around the world. That makes their logo, The Greatest Show on Earth.

So recently I got a new Canon camera and the circus was the first place I was able to explore the settings of the camera. I did a mistake by not taking my bigger lens because using the bigger lens would allow me to zoom in closer from a father distance. In all of these pictures below, I was at my highest zoom (55).

Taking pictures in a dark, indoor setting took a few test trials. I kept my shutter speed high so it could freeze the fast movements. I had to make sure there was enough light, so my ISO was kept at 800. This allowed enough light and clarity for the picture without a lot of grain.

The tight ropers are doing their final stunt in this picture. Unfortunately, I found it cheap that they tied down the middle of the rope. The middle of the rope is the trickiest part because it has the least support. It would have been a much better performance if they hadn't tied it down. It bothered me a little but by all means, if they need support, let 'em take it.

 Here we have the elephants, which also happens to be my favorite animal. The elephant trainer made them do all sorts of stunning tricks. Who ever knew an elephant can do it's own version of a headstand! This domino-climbing thing was their final act. If only that black rod wasn't in the way of my view.

These were some Mongolian stunters, who say they took years to perfect this one final act. If you look closely, it's a balancing human pyramid in which they said weighs 800 pounds in all. They also had this muscular man who lifted 500 pounds only with his teeth. You can kind of see him in this picture. He's the man wearing silver who has his arms up, looking at the sky, right behind the pyramid. It seems believable, right?

Here were other stunt performers. These peoples would fall off that top ledge and fall onto the trampoline. You can see one person already at the bottom of the trampoline ready to come back up. So they would do some crazy jumps and tricks with that basic idea. It looked like it took a lot of coordination because there were two of them who had to be synchronized. It should be a sport... synchronized trampoline jumping.  

Right after them were the BMX bikers. They did all sorts of tricks and spins and turns and jumps. Here, the guy is doing a 360 backflip. It took me a while to get a decent picture of a flip because I had to take the moment when they were upside down. Otherwise, you can't tell that they did a flip.