Firework Season is Back in Town

With the wind, the rain and the cold also come the Gluhwhein, the merry songs, and the FIREWORKS!!! So be ready with your camera to capture the moment, in this post I’ll try to help you get the best results.

I took the image above during last year’s Switch-On in Manchester. I’ve received many nice comments and lots of views, here I tell you how to get something similar.

Find a Good Spot

Every year I see lots of people trying to get to the very front, what’s the point? If what you really want is to get good firework pictures then you want to be farther away. You really need to give some space between you and the fireworks so you can catch’em.

Carry a Tripod

I know, I know, I also hate lugging stuff around. However this is a time where the tripod is your friend. You will need long exposures to get the fireworks and give them time to spread-out in your frame so, don’t be lazy for once ;¬)

Get a Wide-Angle Lens

If you are using a DSLR get a wide-angle (10mm), you really need a lot of space to make the fireworks fit on your frame. If you are using a P&S or a compact camera then don’t worry, your lens is already wide enough.

Avoid Touching the Camera

Chances are that it will be dark enough and the movement you generate while pressing the trigger (even when using the tripod) will be unnoticeable. However, it is best if you are using a cable or ratio trigger (if you have a DSLR), or just set your camera on the timer. Even P&S now have an option for a 2sec delay, that will do.

Long Exposure and Aperture

As I said above, you need to give time to the fireworks to explode and spread in your frame, so you need to work with long exposures. How long? to be honest it is trial and error. For  the image above I used 4 seconds. You also want to get a good depth of field. I won’t get into details but try to increase the number in the aperture as much as you can without getting ridiculously long exposures (you don’t normally want to get above 10secs).

Remember the long exposure will give you a better chance to capture the fireworks. But the longer it gets the more fireworks will get cramped in your frame so it is a matter of taste and it will depend on how big the area is and the firework programme.

A Starting Point

If you like the image above and you will be facing similar conditions, then this are all the settings I used. They could be a good starting point for your first frame :D

Exposure:       4 seconds Aperture:       f/16 Focal length:  10mm ISO speed:      200

Now go out and shoot and don’t forget to share with me your results. I hope you find this helpful.

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Composition: The Diagonal Method

I am both a bit impressed and a bit shocked about something I just came across and wanted to share it with you. It has to do with the composition of your images. Have a look at the following image because I will come back to it later.



Composition I would say is the art of guiding the viewer through your image --drawing him/her to the interesting points in it. If you have read anything about composition in photography you must have read about the "Rule of Thirds". Imagine any of your pictures and divide it in nine sections of the same size (see fig. 1). This composition rule basically says that you should avoid putting your subject right in the center, instead, you should aim to position it at any of the intersections between the lines you just draw --to make the image more interesting to look at, that is the aim. And if you have a point and shoot camera and always wondered why your frame was divided in nine... now you know!

Fig. 1

Now, I have had this rule in mind for quite some time because I don't always pay attention to it. Rules are meant to be broken right? I mean, sometimes I do believe that a subject looks better right in the centre of the image, or sometimes I consciously put the interest point a tad away from the intersection lines on fig. 1. So what?

Well this is what I found, and even though it is not "scientific" it certainly surprised me. It has to do with aesthetics and Edwin Westhoff developed a method of composition that, he argues, gives better results than the rule of thirds. He called it "The Diagonal Method". He noticed that many images from master photographers and indeed many famous paintings did not followed the "rule of thirds" precisely. He also noticed that many of those images rather followed another composition logic related to the "Golden Section" --yes, you have heard of it before "The Divine Proportion", Leonardo Da Vinci, etc. Follow the link if you are interested in a full explanation, for the purposes of this post suffice to say that Edwin devised the "The Diagonal Method" around that logic and came up with the following way of dividing the frame: imagining two overlapping squares and drawing diagonal lines across them (see fig. 2).
Fig. 2

You guessed right, interest points are intended to be over any of the diagonals. And IT REALLY WORKS!!! So much actually that Adobe included the Diagonal Method in Lightroom!!

Remember the image at the top? well I did some serious cropping without knowing this technique, I even used a different ratio (1.85:1) than the ones I normally use (6x4, 6x6) and IT TOTALLY MATCHES WITH THE DIAGONALS!! check the next image with the diagonals included:


As you can see, one of the diagonals crosses the eye perfectly and another comes in between the feet of the model!! which are the things I intended you to look at. I was totally freaked impressed and decided to check some of my other recent images. Obviously it doesn't fit EVERY image but still... it works fairly often!!

See more images after the Jump. And trust me, I cropped them before knowing this Golden Section logic and they match either perfectly or within a couple of mm.


___________________

Not perfect but very close!


Bang on:


One last one:


So maybe we do like those proportions. You don't have to know much of aesthetics but normally you do know what you like and what you don't. Give it a try and see if you images are more pleasing this way.

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Finally it's coming! The Anti-School of Photography

Yes that is right! I'm preparing a programme that includes a good range of photography "Anti-lessons". Hopefully I will learn lots by planning them and you will also get some valuable information the fun way. I started this project a while ago but never really saw it through. This might be the chance.



As you can see from this image, any age is perfect to start with photography :)

So write down in the comments if there is something that you would like to learn and I'll try to include it. Might be a good idea to register as a follower so that you can get a notice every time I update an anti-lesson.

More to come...
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