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.