Celebrate the Magic of Fireworks: Method #2

In the last posting I talked about photographing fireworks using a tripod, remote release and time exposures. Oh, bother. Who (besides me) wants to go through all of that nonsense when what you really want is to just go have some fun at the local fireworks and maybe come home with a few nice snapshots. Last year I went to three fireworks shows and I think I was the only photographer there with a tripod (and I kept hoping no one would trip over a tripod leg in the dark). OK, I admit it, taking a tripod to the 4th of July fireworks is a bit of a pain.

But fear not, there is a simpler way to get good fireworks shots and it has worked so well for me that, believe it or not, unless there is a really important foreground that I want to include (see yesterday's photo) I just leave the tripod in the car and shoot hand held. I still feel insecure and unprepared without a tripod (as I would in almost any situation--especially at night), but I'm sure with time (and therapy perhaps), I'll get over it.

The method for photographing fireworks using a hand-held camera is simple: just raise the ISO speed to around ISO 800 and put the camera in the automatic or programmed exposure mode and shoot. Piece of cake. Even at that fast speed, however, you may find yourself shooting at slower shutter speeds than you feel comfortable with. There's an old rule for deciding what is a safe hand-held shutter speed and that is to invert the focal length of the lens and use that fraction as the lowest shutter speed you can safely shoot without a tripod. If you're using a 100mm lens, for example, try not to shoot at a speed slower than 1/125 of a second (the closest speed to 1/100 on most cameras).

Of course, with image-stabilization technology you can probably sneak by using a shutter speed even two or maybe three stops slower than that. So, again, if you were shooting with a 100mm lens, you could probably (probably) shoot safely with a shutter speed of 1/30 or even 1/15 second. (The traditional sequence of shutter speeds in that range is: 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, etc., but many digital cameras have additional in-between speeds, as well.) I was not using image stabilization for the shot above, but managed to get a pretty sharp picture at 1/8 second because I was resting the camera on the open window frame of my car.

The wider the lens you use the better your odds are at not chopping part of the bursts off and also at capturing large bursts. I shot this photo with an 85mm lens (127mm equivalent in 35mm, roughly) which is kind of long, but I was shooting from the roof of a parking garage that was a bit far from the actual event. Still, it took me a few wasted shots to figure out just the right zoom setting to fill the fame without a lot of black space.

In terms of exposure, I've had pretty good luck using the auto-exposure modes. My D70s and D90 bodies amaze me at being so accurate in such tough situations. But if the fireworks seem to be getting over-exposed, reduce your exposure either by using exposure compensation or by switching to the shutter-priority mode and reducing the shutter speed. I try to keep the lens at about f/5.6 or f/8 and only adjust the shutter speed.

Experiment. The beauty of photographing fireworks (and almost any night subject) with a digital camera is that you can check your compositions on the LCD immediately and make the necessary adjustments in both exposure and framing.

Improvise Lighting for Night Subjects

The night-blooming cereus is one of the most beautiful and mysterious flowers I've ever seen. The flower blossoms are the size of dinner plates, they have a heavenly scent and one of their most fascinating qualities is that the blossoms only bloom for one night and then they're gone.

I have several large cereus plants growing in pots in my yard and you have to pay close attention as they get ready to bloom, because they only start to indicate (by a curling of the flower stem) that they're going to bloom on the night they bloom and they don't begin to open after dark. Then by dawn the huge flower heads are folded up and hanging limp from their stems.

Normally I try to keep a close eye on the plants and try to predict when they'll bloom, but this night I was taken totally by surprise when I went out to check on its progress after midnight and found this blossom almost totally open. I took this shot at 3 a.m. and because I wasn't expecting it to flower that night, I didn't have the energy to design and set up a real lighting plan. Instead I brought out an odd mix of small lighting components and reflectors and improvised a somewhat Rube Goldberg-like lighting set up. I tried just shooting with the built-in flash on my Nikon D70s for the first few shots but the light was, predicatbly, very flat and even. So I think placed a small Morris Digital Mini Slave Wide (it operates on AA batteries) behind and under the flower to separate the rear petals a bit. I also placed a silver-foil reflector (just aluminum foil on a sheet of foam board) in front of the flower to bounce some of that light back into the face of the flower.

The shots were better, but the blossom still looked kind of flat. Since the flower looked like it was at its peak and I didn't want to go find a better flash set up, I just grabbed the flashlight that I was using to find may way around in the darkness with and tilted its adjustable head to toward the flower. Because it had a fairly focused beam, I was able to point the flashlight across the center of the flower and just light individual petals. It's that flashlight that is creating the warm highlights toward the center of the bloom. It still wasn't the best lighting job I could have done, but at 4 a.m. with raccoons skittering around me and a skunk digging grubs in the next yard a few yards away, it was all the effort I was going to make.

Every year I promise myself that I'm going to design a multiple-flash set up and give these incredible blossoms the lighting they deserve, but every year the night they blossom takes me by surprise and I end up improvising again. But don't discount your ability to light things acceptably, even nicely, with whatever you have at hand--slaves, flashlights, penlights--they all provide light. Whatever your night subject is, all it takes is a little experimentation, some fresh batteries and a stick to keep the raccoons away and you'll create some really interesting night shots.

In an upcoming posting I'll introduce you to some of the coolest night photos that you'll ever see--and tell you about the fascinating guy that shoots them. Stay tuned!

Improvise When All Else Fails

A few weeks ago I was photographing a friend of mine, the great blues guitarist Jim Weider in concert. As is typical of most nightclub settings, the stage lighting was very dim and overly saturated with red lighting. It's a frustration I've been dealing with since I first started photographing concerts back in the 1960s. (Wow, is he old!)

Anyway, I spent the first hour or so of the concert trying to get sharp, well-exposed photos but I could tell that Jim was moving too fast and my shutter speeds were too low--even with the ISO cranked up to 1600 (the top speed of the Nikon D70s that I was using--but my new D90 goes much higher, thankfully). I decided to throw caution to the wind and instead of trying to get sharp photos (since I wasn't getting them anyway) to experiment with long shutter speeds and letting the action become a part of the shots. So I switched to the shutter-priority exposure mode and reduced my shutter speed to 1/2 second. Then I improvised and experimented with all sorts of camera-induced motion--I jiggled the camera, twisted it, zoomed the 70-300mm lens in and out, etc.

The shot here was made by zooming the lens from it's longest focal length to it's shortest during a half-second exposure. (See the tutorial on the night-photo techniques on my main site for detailed info on zooming.) I really love the way the lights create a wired-up atmosphere that echoes Jim's very electric blues music.

So next time the environment isn't cooperating with your photography, just blow-off your plans (and reality) and improvise--you'll be surprised how much you like the results.