** Picture of the Day 3 **

[millys]

Magic Bands.......

Milly

 

[mom2rtk]

Spyder Rock by mom2rtk, on Flickr

 

[Chernabog1940]

Butchart Gardens, Victoria, B.C.

 

[goopysolelady]

 

[PythonFan888]

Sorrento by Allen Castillo, on Flickr

 

[Chernabog1940]

Sorrento by Allen Castillo, on Flickr

Love your pix of Italy!

 

[Ratpack]

Symphony in the Stars by Allen Castillo, on Flickr

I love these shots of the fireworks. Please tell me how you take them and process them?

 

[klmall]

Castle Mountain, Banff NP

 

[dhorner233]

 

[BarkerBird]

Mark Twain
January 10, 2016

This was the last day of operation for several of the attractions at Disneyland as construction of Star Wars Land was about to begin.

“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” – Mark Twain

 

[PythonFan888]

Love your pix of Italy!

Thanks!

I love these shots of the fireworks. Please tell me how you take them and process them?

Thanks!
My usual fireworks set-up:
>Tripod
>Remote shutter release cable
>Neutral density filter. I have shot fireworks with and without an ND filter. As long as I'm able to keep the exposure to less than ~12 seconds or so I can usually keep the highlights under control even without an ND filter. This was shot with a 0.9 ND filter.
>Lens. This depends on your location and your choice of composition. I have shot fireworks with ultrawides and a variety of zooms. This one was shot with a Nikon 70 - 200 f/2.8 lens @ 70 mm.
My Settings:
>Manual exposure and focus
>Exposure - BULB Mode. You use your remote cable release to manually open and close the shutter.
>Aperture - usually between f/11 and f/14 depending on the situation. I sometimes even go down to f/22 in instances when I don't have an ND filter.
>ISO - base ISO for the camera - usually ISO 100
>Focus - I usually set this to infinity then back up just a tiny bit.
When shooting fireworks I just open the shutter with the remote cable and keep it open until the burst sequence is finished. So the exposure times vary depending on the timing of the bursts. WDW fireworks are precisely timed and follow the soundtrack of the show. Watching youtube videos of the different shows and listening carefully to the soundtrack will give you an idea of when to open and close the shutter.
Processing: I usually follow my usual workflow when processing fireworks. I open the RAW file in Adobe Camera RAW then make my preliminary adjustments: Lens Correction, White Balance, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Clarity, Vibrance - all depending on what I have to start with. I then save an uncompressed TIFF file of the image which I open in Photoshop Creative Cloud. I usually apply NIK filters - also depending on the image, plus Noise Reduction and Sharpening. I then save as JPG for sharing online. When shooting without an ND filter I usually end up with shorter exposures and most of the time I can blend them in Photoshop to create a composite.

 

[Ratpack]

Thanks for the info, I am going to print these out and give it a shot.

 

[mom2rtk]

Monument Valley Sunset by mom2rtk, on Flickr

 

[goopysolelady]

AK Kidani:

 

[PrincessInOz]

 

[PythonFan888]

Capri

 

[Aladar2004]

 

[dhorner233]

 

[Chernabog1940]

 

[goopysolelady]

Just hearing the awful, awful news coming out of DW tonight and it's hard to find anything appropriate to post as a "Picture of the Day". May this photo bring peace to us all as we embrace the family with our thoughts and prayers.