Bev and I want out for New Year's Dinner at Abbraccio (where I will be having my first show in two weeks). After dinner, we drove to Camden for the New Year's fireworks. I had not shot fireworks in several years. I used my new sigma lens on the tripod. I was at a point right of the best view but was right at the waterfront where I was. I had no idea initally where the fireworks were going to be in the scene before. My thought was to have them over the Philadelphia skyline. Once the fireworks started I had to angle the camera left which ended up with the fireworks on the left of the frame and the skyline rather low in the frame on the right. It is sort of what I wanted but at least next time I'll have a better idea where I want to be.
Thanks for the ride, Bev!
Post: I had to do this make shift owing to not having full Photoshop yet. Sorry in advance for the cartoonish quality of the fireworks, I did the best I could. I chose three sucessive images where the frames were the same. I converted each image from Raw in PSElements 3.0 each with a +0.67 exposure compensation and changing the white balance from Pre-set to fluorescent as it gave more vivid saturated tones. Saved each image as copy and then stacked them using shift move tool. In order to get each layer of fireworks in the image, I used the difference blend mode at 100% on the top two layers and then flattened the image. Once that was done. I made some distortion corrections for the bottom of the image to staighten the buildings and then cropped. I think I did some regular layer adjustments but I know I played with the sliders in the Power Retouche Dynamic Range Compressor. Sharpened. Resize. Sharpen.
Each of the three images used were f/19, 6 seconds, ISO-200. Just in case I forget, I used DSC_9559-60-61.
Happy New Year.
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this is an absolutely stunning photo, imo, but i do not see how time lapse photography was used in its creation. it just looks like long exposure to me.
Combined long exposure with time lapse. Composition is a bit strange having the skyline almost off the bottome of the frame, a bit more space with some nice reflections at the bottom might have helped balance things up a bit. Alternatively, a portrait aspect ratio with reflections of the fireworks in might have been possible.
The fireworks don't look real, something is amiss with the colors. Maybe that's a result of overlaying a bunch or not, but 10 shots or 1 - it still needs to be a good looking picture in the end.
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