thanks for the Blue ribbon :)
sorry about the title I was not expecting to win, it was all I could come up with that wasn't to long
Taken in Sydney at the Midnight fireworks display and was originally entered in the December free study challenge because of the time difference allowed it in there but then I saw the fireworks speed challenge so I moved it here
even though the shutter was 8 sec the exposure was about 4 sec as I held my hand in front of the lens till after the initial burst so the centers didn't blow out and that is why the small burst has a blown center as it happened after I moved my hand then I covered the lens when I thought I had enough light exposed
raw edit with rawshooter pro :
lowered color temp and raised tint to enhance the blues (back to what I saw on the night)
Increased shadow contrast +52 (to darken background)
lowered highlight contrast -24 (to fix bright city lights)
boosted saturation +29 and vibrance +8 (thats what you do for fireworks)
straighten and crop
export as tiff
edits with PS2 :
boosted saturation +14
lowered brightness -3
increased contrast +5
burnt using shadow setting to further darken sky and background
used sponge tool to saturate fire works only
lite sharpen
resize
output sharpen
add border
change color profile for web
save for web
there was to much detail in the shot so had to keep the size down to 680 square even then I could only save at about 70% quality
Statistics
Place: 1 out of 74 Avg (all users): 7.8225 Avg (commenters): 8.4516 Avg (participants): 7.3415 Avg (non-participants): 7.9263 Views since voting: 18992 Views during voting: 510 Votes: 231 Comments: 66 Favorites: 28 (view)
Congratulations on winning. A wonderful image and I find your write-up on how you took the photo with your hand in front of the lens very useful. Thank you for that.
I can't believe people are telling you that 2nd place is better than yours.
It may be the case and it may not.
Everyone has their opinions and are entitled to air them.
I just think it's bad manners to do so like that.
Guess congratulations are in order, even though for me personally I think the order of ribbons should be reversed in this challenge but that´s also saying a lot, I don´t give out many 8 scores and I still think this is ribbon worthy :)
Almost preternaturally crisp. I had a feeling this would do well, though I expected the yellow ribbon to actually be the winner over the both of us. Congrats on blue!
Keith.....Congratulations on the "blue" ribbon, as you so deserved it, with this image.....
I loved it and gave you a "10".
I love Sydney night or day, so you will always be a "winner" in my eyes, with shots like this.....
Congratulations, mate. I reckon Sydney puts on the best fireworks show in the world.
Totally agree...I haven't seen them forst hand, but the TV pictures are always spectacular...thanks for capturing a great image! congrats on the blue...go Siderni
This is a pretty good shot, well exposed fireworks and interesting backround. Only to nitpick, the building that is "peeping" into the shot in the lower left corner I could do without. One of the best in the challenge, 8 from me.
Nice composition, and restrained use of colour. Setting the black level high enough to eliminate any detail other than sources of light works well. And I like the way you've matched the frame with the colour of the star bursts - nice touch.
GREAT SHOT - Only gripe would be the effect of the white bridge making it look like a sloping horizon. Still does not effect my score for this great image - 9
Can't decide if I'd prefer the border in the orangeish color in the center of the bursts. But anyway, even if I did prefer that, it's so much of a nitpick. This is a beautiful image.
And that folks, is a photo of fireworks, just the way it should be done. Loads of color, definition, and crispy focus. Beautiful job. The light is often so bright that a lot of fireworks go "hot" in photos, but these are saturated with rich color. Nice editing work. Small "dead" spot in the top left but that's all part of shooting fireworks. Like the framing as well. 9
Nice image, it's sharp and colorful. I would have cloned or cropped out the one bright light at the bottom and two to the left, it distracts a little. Maybe a little less contrast would help also. Otherwise good image, 7 from me. Happy new year and good luck!
AMAZING! the thin blue border is a perfect match for the colors of the fireworks. amazing timing, since with this many fireworks going off at once it is likely there were only a few moments in the entire show where something like this was possible, and you luckily caught it!!! (BTW, i'm biased towards images with beautiful representation of the color blue, but regardless this is a great image!)
Blue
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