Bull Run Festival of Lights

The Bull Run Festival of Lights in Centreville, VA, is an annual holiday event. For us, it was our first time visiting. We rescheduled a couple of times and finally made it on the last day of 2025.

The 2.5-mile drive

The weather was somewhat cold and dry, and not as windy as the days before. Snow would have been nice, but you can’t have everything. I got our ticket for the first time slot. Traffic was light, and we arrived a bit early. There was already a line of cars waiting. The event opened right on time, and off we went into a winter wonderland.

The light festival is a 2.5-mile-long drive with light displays on both sides of the road. As shown in the photo above, there are two lanes. You’ll be reminded to drive at 10 miles per hour. Slow enough to see everything, but sometimes a bit fast to take photos. And no, I was not driving. Some installations went across the road, with deer or squirrels moving from one side to the other. We also saw scenes with homes, animals, and snowflakes. It was an enjoyable outing. Something different to do.

Below are photos from the Winter Wonderland section. It looked more impressive in person, since the falling snow was animated, running down the trees. Then we have some lovely stars and a light tunnel.

The Carnival

Ferriswheel
Fujifilm X-T5 | Voigtländer Ultron 27mm f2 | 27mm (41mm) | 1/40 sec | f/2.2 | ISO 250

At the end of the 2.5-mile drive is a small Carnival with rides for the children and the young at heart. There is a Ferris wheel and other fun carousels, as well as places where you can win stuff when you throw balls, etc.

If you are hungry, there are some food options. We had the freshly hand-cut fries. Those were the best fries I had in a while. They were thin and crisp.

A couple of tips to get your best photos

I do not often take photos in Christmas lights or carnival-type environments. Before we went, I searched for some tips for myself. Below are my notes.

Tripods and the like

Since this was a drive-through experience, tips like bringing a tripod or similar did not help me that much. Having a tripod or something to fasten the camera to would have been nice in theory. I do own two tripods, but neither would have been practical here. I did not buy anything to attach the camera to the car. Once your camera is connected to some item, flexibility goes out the window. Handheld it was.

Manual focus vs autofocus

One tip was right up my alley: use manual focus instead of autofocus. I decided to bring my three Voigtländer manual-focus lenses. I also thought about the kit lens at some point, the 16-50mm one. But I don’t like to use modern autofocus lenses in manual focus mode. Fly-by-wire focus is not my thing. Nothing feels right about it. Why manual focus, you might ask. Autofocus lenses could focus on the wrong things. After all, this is not your average photographic scenery. You have many light sources, and you’re sitting in a moving car. But as always, do what you feel will work best for you.

Focal length

I started with my 50mm Nokton, but realized quickly that the focus length (75mm field of view) was a bit long for the drive. So I switched to the 35mm Ultron, which has a 50mm field of view. This worked well for me. The 27mm Ultron (41mm field of view) would likely have been good as well. Both Ultrons worked wonderfully at the carnival. I did not feel tempted to use the Nokton. The Voigtländer Macro APO Ultron 35mm f/2 is one fantastic lens. Some places recommended a longer zoom lens to capture details. I don’t think so, at least not for this environment. Maybe when you walk around and take your time to compose with a longer lens. I was glad that I did not bring any longer lenses, zoom or otherwise.

Exposure and ISO

I set my ISO to AUTO and let the camera decide. I figured that it won’t go very high most of the time because of the bright lights, and I was mostly right. For those with high ISO (above 4000), there is denoising in post-processing, if needed. You can see the ISO underneath each image.

I almost always use aperture priority. I’m used to it since I mostly use manual lenses. A habit that I find hard to break. The Ultrons perform well wide open; the Nokton likes to be stopped down one or two clicks to produce sharp images. That’s what I did.

I let the camera decide on the exposure time, but to tame the highlights, I set the exposure bias to -0.6. This allowed me to post-process the images exactly how I wanted them to look.

Post processing

I use Lightroom Classic to catalog and post-process my images. Sometimes I use something else for post-processing, not this time. The photos looked quite good without doing anything. Several have been blurry (mainly from the drive), some were not composed well enough (carousels in motion, for example). Those went to the trash bin. The editing was mostly adjusting highlights and shadows. Highlights down, shadows up, and the white-and-black adjustment. A few photos needed denoising, and it worked really well. The image with the ISO 8000 is one of them. It looked OKish before post-processing, but afterwards, the noise was visible, and not very pretty. Denoise to the rescue.

Post-processing did not take long. After culling the photos, it took about 3-5 minutes per photo on average. I took a bit more time on these photos since the environment is more extreme, with very bright lights and dark shadows.

Last thoughts

The trip to the Bull Run Festival of Lights was fun. It allowed me to take photos of things I usually don’t see, at least not in that intensity. The Carnival was a nice ending to the trip. The fries were delicious, but we did not try any of the other food options. I enjoyed the carnival quite a bit, watching people on these rides. I also came to appreciate my camera’s ability to stabilize the images. I wouldn’t buy a digital camera without IBIS.

We had a great time on the last day of the year 2025. Wishing you a 2026 filled with joy, health, and success!