[Leica] Shooting Fireworks

[sonc.hegr at gmail.com (Sonny Carter)]

On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 8:48 AM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin at 
gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> Those are absolutely great fireworks shots. Much better than the ones I
> usually get. How about giving us a tutorial on the way you make them.
>

http://sonc.com/look/?p=49

Thanks Larry.

The nice thing here in Natchitoches is that we get so much opportunity, that
I get a good deal of practice.

We typically have six to eight fireworks shows a year, most of them at least
ten minutes in duration, and sometimes up to twenty minutes.

Almost all of these are shot with a tripod, a couple hand held with a Pentax
with IS.

The success of most of these  lies in the location; the viewing area is
about 500 feet from the launch, and the State Fire Marshall limits the size
of the mortars and burst altitude for crowd safety reasons. .

Shooting fireworks is a real crap shoot in that you do not know in advance
the duration of a volley, how high it will go, and how bright it might be.

So you have to shoot a lot, and edit.   I usually use a fairly wide angle
lens, and vary the length of exposure, up to several seconds.

On a very few, I layered the shot with one copy of the shot exposed for the
dark areas, and another version exposed for the bright and then erased the
portion that was too bright, then merged the layers.   Other than that, most
of these are pretty straight out of the camera with appropriate cropping.

One of the elements that I find successful in many shots is inclusion of the
spectators, when I can.  In fact, I think two of my best ever include the
shot of Kathy, and the wide crowd shot.

So, I guess the real answer to your question is like any other kind of
photography.

You get good at it by taking lots of pictures and throwing the bad ones
away.

-- 
Regards,

Sonny
http://www.sonc.com
http://sonc.stumbleupon.com/
Natchitoches, Louisiana

USA