Capturing Fireworks through the lens.

A Fireworks show dissipates in a matter of minutes in mere flashes. It's just memory and smoke soon afterwards.
Here are a few tips to capture it on camera.
Location Location Location!!! yes it applies to shooting fireworks as well as buying a good piece of land.
Find a location away harsh light or street lights that might strike your lens and point the camera against the dark sky (as majority of fireworks show start in the dark).Reason being,stray light on the lens will produce unwanted distraction in your final image.

A tripod is a necessary requirement for this kind of shooting as the exposure can last several seconds through possibly several bursts.

Type of camera - an SLR is ideal. But these days a compact camera will provide several seconds of exposure.
Type of lens is entirely up to you, depending on how much of the fireworks show you would like to capture. If it is an SLR, do not use auto focus, as the lens would start to hunt for focus.
Wait for the fireworks burst to start and focus on a couple of bursts and fix the camera position on the tripod. From here you are just a few easy steps away from shooting some interesting fireworks with your camera.
If you have an SLR or and advanced digital compact camera, set the exposure mode to either manual or shutter priority and in either of these modes you would set the shutter speed to bulb (keeping the lens open). It would be immensely helpful, if you would have at your disposal a good size black cloth or a big enough black card board cut so that it can completelt cover your lens.
if your camera has a cable release fix it else it is the kind triggered by a wireless remote adjust the camera so that it would respond only to your wireless remote control. This is done to eliminate any possible vibrations induced from pressing the shutter release using your fingers.

Once the above steps are taken care of click to keep the shutter open as the fireworks show is going fulls steam ahead. Capture several bursts while the lens is open, to accomplish this, Wait for the first burst to be captured, cover the lens with either the cloth or the black card board until the next burst gets ready to explode. Uncover the lens till that burst disappears. Cover the lens again and repeat the process until you are satisfied you have gotten several bursts. Its time to close the exposure by either clicking the shutter release or if it is an advance digital the max exposure would be 30 secs to a minute. Hence it will close on its own accord.

This is not an exact science. It is more of trial and error. The above is shot of fireworks was captured in stone mountain park Atlanta GA. This was the second show of the evening. I had the advantage of watching the first one to get an idea of the sequence and waited for the second one to capture it in my camera. The above shot captured several bursts using the technique described above. Experiment all you can with a digital camera you have nothing to waste and a lot to learn.

Going to the Movies

There was a time when I was quite regular going to the movies. Of late, there are not many movies that pull me into a movie theater. Hence I have settled for the comfort of my home theater. However, there still lingers the irreplaceable charm of going to the movies to watch a movie.
So, whenever I head out to this movie theater in my neighborhood, I stand back and watch the life outside the theater, which could be interesting in itself.
The interesting element of this movie theater is the smokestack on top of the box office with its neon lights accentuating it like glass of soda with a straw sticking out. I exposed this shot for a few seconds to capture the light trails of a few passing cars. If you like this shot dont hesitate to leave your comments.

Tarmac Watching

It happens to all of us some time or another. we are stuck in the airport and the flight is not scheduled for another 2 hrs. It happened to us at Houston Hobbby airport on this day. If you don't have anything to read or have no one to talk to. you settle down to an entertainment of people watching. I on the other hand am fascinated by life as such on the tarmac. It is more entertaining to watch what goes on there than anything else. On the other hand it is a tough job for the ground crew and the flight crew. I was lucky to have a telephoto lens on my nikon and waited to capture at least one take off or landing. After missing a few landings, I was lucky to shoot a landing. In the meantime I shot anything that moved and out there and the shot above is that of a tractor hauling luggage and the other where one flight is helped by the tug for taxing while another approaches a nearby gate. Pretty soon it was time for us to head towards our gate. In the end, Tarmac watching turned out to be more relaxing than sitting down with a book or talking to some one or watching people.

Foggy Night

Continuing on from yesterday's post this is yet another scene of a foggy night at La Centerra retail center in Katy TX.
This picture is an HDR merge of 5 shots taken at +_1ev +-2 ev and 0ev.
I had the flower pot in the foreground left and the wall to the right illuminated by my car's headlight to add some shine to it. It funny how the street lights have weired flares. It was a chilly night almost drained the juice in the camera battery.

Christmas lighting in HDR

Yeah I know, its a little too late to be posting pictures related to Christmas in Jan. Still better late than never. Not too long ago I stumbled upon the whole phenomenon of HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography. It was a huge discovery for me.
If I were to explain HDR to a layman, I would say with a it comes close to resembling the nuances in shades of light that we see with our naked eyes. Where as a single photograph reproduced by a camera can see a small range of shade.
HDR Photograph is a result of digital post processing using a photo editing software such as photomatix or adobe photoshop cs2 or cs3.
In a nutshell (slightly bigger nutshell, bare with me), The process of producing a HDR image from any conventional camera involves merging a series of pictures shot in different exposures (preferably raw) or using a single raw image saved in different exposures using a photo editing program and merging them using blending modes in any software that supports an HDR merge.
Here is an article that explains how such a merge could be performed using photoshop CS2 or higher. Check out some cool HDR pictures in Trey Ratcliff's site.

To try out my first experiment with shooting a high contrast scene in HDR, I headed to La Centerra a retail shopping center in the quaint neighborhood of Cinco Ranch. Christmas decoration were pretty decent and not overly done. Since it was a cold foggy night there was hardly anybody around.

The two pictures above show the opposite end of the perspective in each. The picture with the tree in the foreground reveals all the lights including the bright light on the bow from a powerful overhead light while revealing the fog in the background. Such a contrast tends to be blown out or underexposed in any conventional photograph.
I shot a total of 5 exposures of each scene above at exposures 0ev +1ev +2ev -1ev -2ev. Merged them in Photoshop CS2 as explained in luminous light website.

Runway in the Valley

This runway does look like a ski ramp from where I shot this picture. It was late summer and I was driving through Telluride CO. Decided to stop and have a quick look see. The free cable car ride from the town of Telluride to the Mountain village was well worth the effort. In between you can get down mid way atop a mountain at a scheduled stop. if you do get off at this stop, You can then absorb the alpine scenery at a local restaurant or hike around or start on one of the many ski trails during winter. We love the place so much and wanted to spend more time around. Guess what, the hotels were all booked and what was available was way beyond our meager budget. The locals said that during ski season this town is packed and the rental real estate is booming and availability scarce.
However, there was plenty to shoot around ( pictures I mean).

Telluride Regional Airport, located only seven miles from the Towns of Telluride and Mountain Village. That late sunset provided some interesting color for me to choose this shot for this post.