Thursday, July 5, 2007

Thursday Arch Series

No comment necessary.

TOMORROW: It's supposed to be fun. Lots of fun. Why isn't the man having fun?

17 comments:

Janet said...

Spectacular!

Olivier said...

Voila rambling round a tout dit : SPECTACULAIRE. Une vraie carte postale. Bravo



Veiled rambling round said all: SPECTACULAR. A true postcard.

pusa said...

wow! amzing photo!

Sasha said...

Absolutely fabulous photo! You're a fantastic photographer!

Went to Webster today and got some decent ones myself. I'll be putting them up over the course of the next week, I suppose. I certainly wouldn't mind if you came and gave you opinion!

Hope you had a happy and fun 4th!

Sasha - STLdailyphoto

iBlowfish said...

I second that, Spectacular!

R&R said...

I was searching for a true Dutch word, but spectaculair is like the french and fantastisch is like the german. Oh well, they both fit anyway, a super shot in any language!

lv2scpbk said...

Wonderful photo. I love the arch and the builing in this photo. I took some photos of fireworks but my camera only wanted to see red. You can see those by clicking on personal blog here if you'd like, http://www.lv2scpbk.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Very nice and very fortunate photographer -- the right place at the right time and all. Wow.

Abraham Lincoln
Brookville Daily Photo

fr said...

No comments your right. AMAZING!

BundaWAH said...

A big OWOW. BRAVO ! love it

Michi - Fotoblog said...

WHAT A GREAT SHOT!!! WHOW

Bob Crowe said...

My thanks to all of you for your kind comments. A few notes of my own:

I had never shot fireworks before so I did some research beforehand. I’d like to share some of what I learned and my experience from last night.

This cannot be done with a point and shoot camera. You need an SLR that can do “bulb” exposure. This means the shutter is held open as long as the shutter button is depressed.

You need a sturdy tripod and a remote shutter release. Just the act of pressing the shutter button on the camera body may jiggle it enough to affect quality.

Portrait usually works better than landscape. Fireworks are primarily vertical. This is not a rigid rule, especially if you want to include a landscape in the shot.

Use ASA 100 to maximize image quality. The fireworks look better and you avoid any chance of digital noise in the sky.

Use manual focus. Your autofocus will never read the changing light patterns. I found that setting the focus just a nudge back from infinity worked well.

Timing is tricky. The general rule seems to be to open the shutter just when you anticipate the burst and hold it open until it starts to fade. The exposures on my better shots were between 3 and 7 seconds. This takes practice. I got many shots in which I opened the shutter to soon, too late or not long enough.

F stop may vary with conditions. I read somewhere that you should open the lens to its widest setting. I started with f 4 but the building in the foreground, lit by floodlights, was getting blown out. I stopped the lens down to f 8 and got better results.

These points may be of some help to you. I expect to see some spectacular shots from our French friends later this month after Bastille Day!

Felicia said...

Spectacular shot - looks unreal! Thanks for your fireworks photography tips, could have used them myself last night!

isa said...

Absolutely Fabulous! ;-)

Anonymous said...

oh, such an awesome photo!

Victoria said...

Gorgeous!

NorthBayPhoto said...

Great composition!