22 votes in and I am sitting on a 7.6+. Didn't see that coming.
As for originality, it is not. I saw a guy do a very similar picture over on Flickr. He used two images. His setup had a bounce umbrella on a stand and his flash was hidden by himself crouched around the brolly. That shot had him lit up from the top as the light bounced down on top of him. With the brolly on the stand he was able to take a second shot and do the sparklers to give the rain and then he blended them together adding more sparkle streams to fill in his empty spots. He posted up a tutorial on it (though I just explained it right there).
When this challenge came up we had already gotten past both of our main fireworks sessions here in town (fri and sat nights). And even if we hadn't I probably wouldn't have gone down to shoot the fireworks. Did that one year and it was fun but not fun enough to go again and focus on shooting for a challenge to get a shot that ultimately I didn't really care about. But remembered this idea and went ahead to figure out how to do it on my own in our studio as the kids and Aimee are in bed by the time it gets that dark out.
Got the studio light free, plugged up all the gaps in the windows so that the exposure wouldnt be tainted with extraneous light. Started with Aidan (both of my kids are vicious fidgeters and figured he would be able to stay put the longest). Did a couple of test shots to get him lit properly - which is basically just a handheld 430ex popped manually bouncing off the floor in front to the right. Once that was done I lit a candle and hid that behind the backdrop to prevent light seepage and used it to light the sparkler. Once the sparkler was lit I just walked behind waving it up and down to make the rain effect. I was dressed all in black so you can;t see me in the exposure. After the first sparkler I realized I needed something to put it out with otherwise I had a sparkler going off long after I made my pass. The second sparkler I didn't make a full pass before the shutter closed (had to use a 30 second speed as my plunger is broken). Third sparkler I adjusted where it was bouncing off the umbrella as the first two were too far in back and the bounce was hidden by the brolly. Fourth sparkler did pretty good. Then Rowan wanted her turn. I was sweating pretty bad and really wanted to be done but i went ahead and did two shots with her. I angled the sparkle to give a bit more dynamic to the rain and she gave me two really good poses. Aidans were kind of silly but hers were more contemplative. They both did awesome in not moving as I figured once the sparkler was coming through they would be flinching but neither moved. The only issues with any of the images were mine and not getting a good rain pattern.
This was the last shot of the 6 and was my fave. Editing was pretty straightforward. Couldnt have done it in basic but nothing serious done in advanced. Aimee preferred it in b&w and gave me the title. My title was Cloudy with a Chance of Sparkles - which would have been good for Aidan's expressions. Aimee's title suited Rowan much better.
I have had a desire to do a family portrait of the same idea - Aidan under one brolly, rowan under one and then me and Aimee under one - multiple shots all fused together for one big panorama. Right now though that is too much work to figure out, plan and execute. So I went for this for this challenge. Expected it to score well - mid 6's. But it seems it will do a bit better than that. After voting I see that it certainly stands out.
Look out Oliver. I am coming to get ya! but probably not really. ;)
PC - 7.55 and only the yellow. But man those other two ribbon shots were stellar. Glad to be hanging with them with a weird take on the challenge. Thank you for the votes and comments.
Couple of unedited outtakes
Statistics
Place: 3 out of 62 Avg (all users): 7.5591 Avg (commenters): 8.9375 Avg (participants): 7.1714 Avg (non-participants): 7.7065 Views since voting: 9663 Views during voting: 447 Votes: 127 Comments: 45 Favorites: 6 (view)
Well done with thinking outside the box and the execution. This year was my first attempt at photographing fireworks, so I can really appreciate this image with the creativity.
Amazing! Amazing work and an amazing result! Your kids are such pros at posing. I think they could pull anything off, but they outdid themselves on this one! WOW!
Refuge from the Storm
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