Fire, Fire, Fireworks II

Another photo from the fireworks display.  It was taken in the aftermath of some really nice swirly fireworks I hadn't seen before but I failed to get any pictures of them myself.  My dad got some nice ones on his smartphone, which does go to show it doesn't matter what kind of camera you have, you can still get good photos.  

I was really happy with the composition of this picture because I'd been aiming for something like it the whole night, and I like the way the fireworks come up from the bottom like a bunch of flowers.  The settings are the same as the previous photo (ISO-100, F/16, 4/100) and I also edited it in iPhoto.

I started with boosting it twice and increasing the contrast to let the red stand out more against the sky and I changed the definition to 40 to make the fireworks clearer and to get rid of some of the smoke, although I do like how it looks in this photo.  I then moved the temperature all the way to 100, because I thought the photo would benefit from having a warmer feel to it.  I'm really happy with how much of the smoke I managed to edit out of the picture as I think it looks better and more contrasting this way.

The colours remind me of the neon red and black of The Academy Is....'s album cover for Santi - never a bad thing - and I like how the fireworks seem to range in height.  All in all, I'm fairly pleased with this photograph, especially since my hands didn't shake the camera as much as with some of the others and I actually got the photo I'd wanted.

There'll Be Fireworks Tonight

This was taken at the Peebles Fireworks display last Saturday, which wasn't as good as recent years as they seemed to have problems with the computer system but it was still miles better than the one at home.  It was raining quite heavily (the raindrop smudge on this picture can testify to that) so there was a lot of smoke and I had to keep wiping my glasses and the camera lens to see.

The fireworks did give me a chance to learn more about how to use my camera - I eventually found the fireworks setting - and I had a lot of fun trying out a slower shutter speed, as you can see below:

I was kicking myself for not bringing my tripod, as small as it is, because we were standing at the wall and since I'm rubbish at holding still half my photographs came out wobbly.  For a while I had the camera taking pictures in bursts, because by the time they'd lit the firework and set it off and I'd figured out where to point the camera it was too late and I ended up with a lot of these:

Long story short, I now understand my camera a lot better, which makes my dad happy I'm not taking his all the time, and all the fireworks are squiggly lines, something I actually like a lot.  I didn't get the best photographs but the slow shutter speed is something I'm now really interested in using next time I go out.

For this photograph I edited it in iPhoto, "boosting" it by 3 and adjusting the contrast.  I altered the temperature and tint to increase the green, although I really liked the electric blue at the other side of the scale.  The ISO speed in this setting was 100 and the aperture was f/16, neither of which I set myself.  It was taken zoomed in on a shutter speed of 4 and overall, I'm pretty pleased with the changes I made to the picture.