Fourth Of July Pics
I had a great time over the 3-day weekend. I graciously accepted an invitation to be part of the Lubbock parade as part of the TV station that David works for. That was alot of fun! I had a blast hamming it up with the people in the crowd...especially the kiddos. Later that evening, we got a VIP pass, thanks to the TV station and David, to a great viewing spot for the Lubbock fireworks display. It was really pretty cool and very well choreographed with some creative effects. The weather was perfect with a nice, cool breeze and no annoying flying critters to deal with.
I FINALLY had a great result with photographing fireworks. Prior efforts were ptitiful failures with ISO/stop settings, shutter speeds, focus, or just poor positioning. I'm very happy with the results this time.
For those wondering, I'm using a Canon Digital Rebel XT 350D with Canon "L" series lens 17-40mm. I was shooting at ISO 100 with fStop of 6.4-8.0 using the "bulb" setting and remote cable release. Average shutter speed was about 4 seconds depending on the intensity of the fireworks. Alot of my manual shutter control was pretty much spontaneous on my part trying to capture a certain aspect of the fireworks at different stages of the explosions. It helped to have some good amateur fireworks going off nearby to practice before hand to get a feel for it.
I shot about 80 pics in total and most all of them came out very good. It was tough to choose my favorites as I have so many. Someday soon, I'll get a gallery together to show them all off. So, I picked out a few to show. I reduced them to 500px wide, so the quality, detail and clarity is abit subdued compared to the full size versions.
Mine and David's vehicles all purtied up with the colors.
I borrowed some of David's glass chalk to try my hand at a little tornado art. ;-) The color match with my vehicle was cool.
Check out the "spider" effect.
Palm trees?
More "critters".
Big ice cream cone?
I FINALLY had a great result with photographing fireworks. Prior efforts were ptitiful failures with ISO/stop settings, shutter speeds, focus, or just poor positioning. I'm very happy with the results this time.
For those wondering, I'm using a Canon Digital Rebel XT 350D with Canon "L" series lens 17-40mm. I was shooting at ISO 100 with fStop of 6.4-8.0 using the "bulb" setting and remote cable release. Average shutter speed was about 4 seconds depending on the intensity of the fireworks. Alot of my manual shutter control was pretty much spontaneous on my part trying to capture a certain aspect of the fireworks at different stages of the explosions. It helped to have some good amateur fireworks going off nearby to practice before hand to get a feel for it.
I shot about 80 pics in total and most all of them came out very good. It was tough to choose my favorites as I have so many. Someday soon, I'll get a gallery together to show them all off. So, I picked out a few to show. I reduced them to 500px wide, so the quality, detail and clarity is abit subdued compared to the full size versions.
Mine and David's vehicles all purtied up with the colors.
I borrowed some of David's glass chalk to try my hand at a little tornado art. ;-) The color match with my vehicle was cool.
Check out the "spider" effect.
Palm trees?
More "critters".
Big ice cream cone?
posted by Steve Miller TX at 7/07/2008 10:51:00 PM
5 Comments:
Steve, I gotta tell you, those are some FANTASTIC photos you got. I'm serious, those are some stunning shots! Glad you and David had fun in the parade.
Wow man, makes me sad I missed the show, those are great and it did turn out to be a prime viewing spot. Nice to have a place with no crowd to deal with eh? Perks can be a great thing.
Steve, Your fireworks shots are INCREDIBLE!
Thanks for the comments! I'm glad ya'll like them. I'm pretty proud of the results. I felt a sense of triumph after I got to look at them off the CF card. In fact, I was kinda surprised that I took those. LOL!! I've had nothing but bad luck and poor results in all of my previous efforts. It was nice to have not screwed up again. :-)
Like David said, it was a great viewing spot with the perfect distance. No crowds or obsturctions to deal with. :-)
Also, the wind was blowing about 10-15 knots, but perfectly from my back to the fireworks. So, I didn't get any skewing of the shape of the explosions. In fact, it helped with some of the graceful arcs of the bursts you see in alot of the shots. And, it also kept the resulting smoke from obscuring the view too.
The pyrotechnician crew also deserves alot of credit for a well choreographed and executed show. It was amazing.
Sometimes, everything just comes together for the perfect opportunity. This was it.
Have to agree with all the others - you did a good job. :)
And the chalk job really did match the paint job well.
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