Monday, July 4, 2011

Independence Day 7-4-11

Happy Independence Day everyone!

On this day we celebrate declaring our independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776. It is an extremely important date that we should not take for granted! We live in a great country and we should be thankful everyday of the year, but particularly on this day, take a moment to fully appreciate that we are citizens of the USA. Honestly, stop, take a moment to ponder just how good we have it.

Independence day is commonly celebrated with parades, bbqs, picnics, cocktails, parties, family and FIREWORKS. Every year for the last 10+ years my brother has hosted a party to celebrate with family, friends, food and fireworks. His house literally backs up to a park where they have some of the best fireworks in town (Conshy!). The view from his driveway or fifty paces onto the field of the park, could not be better!

I love photography (duh) so my camera travels with me 95% of the time. I have attempted to shoot fireworks before with a point and shoot yielding only so-so, got-lucky results. So I decided to do some quick research on how to effectively photograph fireworks. One facet of photography that I love is the creative challenge of shooting different scenarios.

How were the pictures taken below?
-Tripod (A MUST)
-Camera on Manual Mode
-ISO 100 (yes 100)
-Aperture f16 (f8 works too)
-Shutter set to bulb

I found the most important aspect of photographing fireworks is setting your shutter to bulb. What does this mean? From the time you press your shutter (and hold) to the time you release it, the image burns to the sensor. A bit tricky at first, I found that pressing the shutter right as it went off, holding it, and releasing it when it was fully spread yielded the best results. The shutter speeds ranged from just under 1 second all the way to 6-1/2 seconds. A 6-1/2 second exposure without a tripod? Not possible.

Enough with the technical stuff, just wanted to share for anyone that may be interested.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!


















-Stay Classy USA!

1 comment:

  1. Can I buy a few of these prints for our new house? Amazing!

    ReplyDelete