Holy cow!! Two blog entries in one day? What's next? Three?

China
(July 29 2006 10:16 PM)

During the final week of July and the first week of August Vancouver plays host to the Celebration of Light fireworks competition. (Web Site Link) It's a pretty spectacular affair with four different countries competing and simultaneously amazing upwards of 400,000 fans lining the beaches of downtown Vancouver. This year the festival played host to:

Italy
China
Czech Republic
Mexico

Mexico won the festival but personally I think China, shown on the left, delivered the better show. I mean come on. They invented fireworks rights? On top of that, having watched all but one of the shows since 1991 I feel eminently qualified to judge.

Afer years of frustration with taking pictures of fireworks I've finally figured out how to get some pretty spiffy images. As with most things learned via the school of hard knocks in the end the tricks are simple & straightforward:

• Go digital. If you haven't your missing out.
• You'll need a camera that can be set to full manual. This is where you control both the shutter speed and aperture setting. When you are shooting fireworks you'll be adjusting both settings, reviewing the images, adjusting some more, etc. If you've never gone manual with your camera or can't then trying to photograph something like fireworks will be more frustrating than it's worth.
• The camera has to be mounted on a tripod and you'll need to connect a shutter release cable to take the picture without shaking the camera.
• Volume, volume, volume. With today's digital cameras and large capacity media cards you can shot hundreds of photos during a 25 minutes show. This year during China's performance for example I shot just under 170 images or roughly 7 shots per minute. Out of those 170 I liked 30 or so and out of those 30 I really liked 6.
• Remember, when you are taking pictures of fireworks you're painting with light. Use the LCD on your digital to review what you just took and prepare for the next image.
• Try as many different ways of taking pictures as you like. Increase the length of the exposure, fiddle with the aperture, etc. Eventually you'll find the groove and if you are lucky you'll find that groove before the fireworks end.