View Full Version : Happy Independence Day
My favorite holiday. Let the carpers carp and the whiners whine; I love being part of this great American project.
Yep! I'm just vegging today after doing some decluttering. Had to bring files home for two air freight shipments that are arriving today and being picked up tomorrow morning early, before I'm in the office. I had nothing planned. Will maybe watch A Capital Fourth on PBS' app if it's being streamed.
I love watching A Capital Fourth.
I live on the side of Mount Constitution here in Washington State.
Here's a photo of one of the fireworks shot off down in our village, 3 miles as the eagle flies from my deck where I just took this:
https://i.imgur.com/ztNhwVW.jpg
iris lilies
7-5-24, 8:32am
Stunning, bae! Wow, just wow!
Behind the scenes:
https://i.imgur.com/TIr23vL.png
wow. You should submit that photo of the firework to someone. Not sure who, but that is amazing.
iris lilies
7-5-24, 4:15pm
wow. You should submit that photo of the firework to someone. Not sure who, but that is amazing.
Agreed. It is extraordinary.
How many photos of fireworks have we seen in our lives? This one is unique.
Agreed. It is extraordinary.
How many photos of fireworks have we seen in our lives? This one is unique.
I really get to cheat with these.
They begin the show here each year when it is "dark", down in the village, at sea level. But I'm at a considerably higher elevation, and I can still see the sunset from up here, and it is nicely aligned with the direction to town on the 4th of July. In addition, from here, I can see the muzzle of the launching tubes on the barge they launch from, so I have a decent hit rate of catching the whole pyrotechnic.
Further cheating, I can set up the camera while it is still light. I use purely manual mode, and focus on the barge by hand while it is still light out, and then don't fuss with it at all. I try a variety of different exposure times however, as each pyrotechnic is different, and trying to catch the whole thing requires a bit of luck and guesswork. Somewhere between 1 and 8 seconds usually gets something interesting.
The final cheat is using an absurd medium-format camera that has a very sensitive low-light sensor that is huge, both in physical size and resolution, coupled with a very good lens. This lets me use a very low ISO setting (ISO 100 for these) at night, as the sensor allows me to easily recover the shadows when developing the raw image. I expose so that the brightest fireworks are just *slightly* underexposed, that way I don't lose any data when I develop. It's sort of how I do astrophotography as well.
So it's 90% planning/setup ahead, and 10% sitting on my deck sipping my coffee watching the show.
Really nice. I agree that it is unusual and stands out among the usual firework photos.
bae, Thank you for the description of your process. Quite an art!!!
bae, Thank you for the description of your process. Quite an art!!!
Yes!
Beautiful, bae! Thanks so much for posting!
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