Thursday 1 August 2013

A Deep Purple Classic

I was planning on calling this post 'Smoke On The Water, Fire In The Sky', only to quickly realize that I already had a fireworks related post called Fire In The Sky, and another called Purple On The Water.  So a change was needed.  The big theme of the night, for me anyway, was how the smoke from the already exploded fireworks turned my wonderful location into a cloudy mess within minutes.  Thus, the 'Smoke On The Water', and the 'Fire In The Sky.  As you probably guess by looking at the photos, this is another fireworks blog post.  These photos once again come to your thanks to the L'International des Feux Loto-Québec.  For those of you keeping track at home, there is only one show left, so don't miss out or you'll have to wait until next year.  The show on Wednesday night was put together by Italy and it was a pretty good exhibition.  The part that I saw through the smoke anyways. When it comes to taking photographs of fireworks, the wind is always a concern.  Since the photos you`re going to be taking have to be taken over a fairly long period of time, in the photographic sense, it is pretty important that your camera does not move.  If this happens, you`re obviously not going to end up with the picture that you originally wanted to take as the camera will not only pick up all of the light while the shutter is open, but it will capture any movements as well.  Be they caused by your own hand, or the wind.  This was an early concern that I had on Wednesday night.  The new location chosen for this shoot was a pedestrian overpass that goes over Highway 132 in Longueuil. When I got there with my Lovely Assistant, I immediately noted that the wind was pretty strong.   I was worried that the wind would cause my tripod to shake, thus ruining my photos.  When the wind suddenly died a few minutes before the fireworks began, I made sure to note how good my luck was.  I no longer needed to worry about the wind brushing my camera, just about when the overpass had been built and if good concrete had been used in building it.  Badum-dum.  My opinion about the lack of wind changed very shortly when after the first few blasts the large clouds of smoke failed to move away from the blast site. I was suddenly wishing very hard that the wind would come back, the sooner and stronger the better.  Sadly, the wind did not return.  I`m still think I took some pretty nice shots, it`s just that there is lots of smoke clouds in them.  As you may have noticed, I also decided to use a couple of different crop sizes again.  I used them in order to hide the street light that you see in some of the shots, but not in others.  We've reached the part of the post where we get a bit technical.  Time to discuss the settings that I used.  The first shot was taken at f/11, 6sec, ISO 100 at 70mm and then cropped to 12" x 8".  The second shot was taken at f/11, 18sec, ISO 100 at 75mm and then cropped to 12" x 5.5".  The third photo was taken at Shot number three was taken at f/11, 10sec, ISO 100 at 70mm and then cropped to 12" x 8".  The fourth picture was taken at f/11, 9sec, ISO 100 at 70mm and then cropped to 12" x 12".  The final photograph you see here was taken at f/11, 6sec, ISO 100 at 75mm and then cropped to 12" x 8".  I guess my biggest disappointment with these photos, is that the smoke clouds block out some of the light from the fireworks and also block out much of the Jacques Cartier Bridge, which I have been trying to get into my backgrounds since the fireworks competition began earlier this summer.  I don't want to seem negative, because I do like these photos.  If I didn't like them they wouldn't be here on the page.  I hope that some of you out there like them as well.

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