Submitter's name:	Ken Norton
Title:	Hanging On
Gear used:	OM-4 + 24/2.8 (MC) + Winder 1
Diaphragm:	f8
Shutter speed:	Auto Mode, unrecorded, but approximately 1/4 second
Film used:	Ilford HP5+ pushed to 1600 and processed in Ilfotec DD-X
Technical information:	Handheld. Late evening at the park.  It was getting pretty dark and I ended up pushing the last two rolls to 1600 to keep the shutter times under control.  Scanned using Vuescan and the Nikon Coolscan II. Resized and sharpened in Gimp.
Subject information:	Girls on the playground's merry-go-round. It's times like these that I'm thankful I'm a photographer and a father.  I had visualized this shot for the TOPE event and shot nearly two 36-exposure rolls of film to get it.
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Comment left by: Olaf Greve (no e-mail specified)

Now this is brilliant! Very cool and original idea, and most lovely executed. Well done!

Comment left by: Wayne Harridge (no e-mail specified)

Great the way the girl's head near the centre is almost sharp.

Comment left by: Steve Goss (no e-mail specified)

Awesome. Ok, for all the super scientific types, based on the sideways shutter travel, can you tell which direction the merry-go-round is spinning?

Comment left by: iwert (no e-mail specified)

very nice picture, how did you manage to get the girl's head almost sharp, while the rest is spinning? ps I am not a scientific... but judging the direction the hair swings, and the girl holds the post, I'ld say counterclockwise (widerskin?) - but tell us what this has to do with shutter travel.

Comment left by: The Photographer (no e-mail specified)

The shutter would have travelled too fast to show curvature in a straight line in this photograph. The steel bar in question is actually curved. But she is looking in the direction of rotation.

Comment left by: Lama (no e-mail specified)

Great! You were wise to shoot it many times and the result is absolutely worth the film cost. Her face is so close to the center of rotation that it's angular velocity (hence blurring) is much less than her feet. It works much better than if you had caught her face when it was completely vertical.

Comment left by: Ian Nichols (i.a.nichols@bris.ac.uk)

'scuse a lapsed subscriber butting in. Great shot ken, clearly visualised & well executed, if difficult to get perfectly. I wouldn't try to guess rotation direction from straight bars being apparently bent - not with a rotating subject. However, I would expect to see a difference in apparent length of arc between the top and bottom of the picture (though the perspective will tend to make judgement difficult). Allowing for the reversal of the image by the lens, my best guess is clockwise in this case. Which turns out to be wrong. Oh well.

Comment left by: Wayne Shumaker (om4t@zuik.net)

Sometimes I get lucky too, but I never tell anyone. Whether or not this is luck, it is a great shot anyway. A commment in the latest LensWork magazine editorial: 'Whether a photo was easy or difficult to make should not determine its artistic merit' (my paraphrase). This has artistic marit.

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