aprichelle,
I suppose that others who have more experience than I do will have better advice for you, but one thing I can think of, is try not to position your subject in front of bright lights.
Seeing that you will be working in the evening, you are going to have a lot of dark areas and a lot of really bright areas. If you put your subject in front of a lot of bright background, your camera will try and expose for the entire area. If your bright background takes more area than your subject, your subject will come out really dark.
If you are shooting in those kinds of conditions, try using spot or Partial metering instead of Evaluative, and meter off your subject.
Another technique you can try, is if you are photographing someone on a ride, try slowing your shutter speed down to 1/60th of a second or so, focus on your subject and follow him or her through the air, firing off a burst of 5 or 6 shots. This is called panning, and you can read up on how to do that well. Look up in your manual about High Speed Bursts or Low Speed Bursts.
Your backgroupnd will be blurry, but your subject will be in focus, and emphasizes the notion of your subject flying through the air.
Steve Thomas
