The 4th of July was a Blast!

As planned, I took my spot by Deep Creek Lake with tripod and camera in hand planning on getting some great shots of the boats on the water with the fireworks reflected in the Lake. And, if I got really lucky, there would be a good orange sunset to add icing to the cake. Well, my plan partially fell into place - I did have a great spot for shooting the fireworks, however, I was a little too far into the cove to capture all the boat traffic and the orange sunset was definately out of the question since it was very gray and threatened rain as I waited for dark to fall. Here are 2 out of the hundreds of the shots I captured:

Now, my critique of the shots are - as mentioned above, I didn't get any of the boats on the water as planned, only a few of the lights from the boats, they were setting the shots off in the middle of the mountain (atop the tubing hill), so they all seem a little disjointed, and lastly, the water was very rough so no reflections in the water.

Therefore, I'll need to scope out a new spot for next year's big show. But, all in all, the rain only started to fall as I was getting in the car to leave, the boats leaving afterward in what seemed to be slow motion was an awesome sight, the fireworks were spectacular, and my shots weren't as bad as they could have been, so it was a blast nonetheless!

Boy have I been busy!

Once I started this blog, I got super busy and neglected it a bit! My intentions were to write something everyday or at least every other day, but the weather has been almost perfect so I've been out shooting instead of writing. That and we all know where I am when the weather is perfect - car shows! So, I'll post some of the highlights of my recent shoots and try my best to keep up in the future.

My recent shoot was during Grantsville Days this past weekend. I haven't "officially" shot fireworks yet, and my mom's house overlooks the park and the field where they are set off so what better time to practice, right? And, they are held 2 nights in a row, so if I really messed them up on Friday, I had Saturday to correct my settings, which I ended up doing. Friday night I had my camera set at F16, bulb mode. I waited for a good burst, opened the shutter and waited until the burst ended - guess what - Job Noise Reduction! Which meant, if I had my shutter open for 20 seconds, it took 20 seconds to process that shot in camera before I could snap another one. I'm sure I missed out on a lot of decent shots waiting for the camera to process, but lesson learned. The next problem I had Friday night was trying to find something for the camera to focus on. Since the fireworks were shot off in an open field, there was no chance of finding a focal point until a shot got in the range of where my camera was looking. Again, lesson learned. Also, a big problem I had on Friday evening was that they shot off a lot of bright white fireballs that kept blowing out my shots.

Saturday night was a bit more successful. First off, I turned off the Job Noise Reduction before ever starting to shoot. And when a burst went off, I waited until it got into my focal point in the camera before opening the shutter so my camera didn't have to continue to search to find something to focus on. And, if they mixed in a bright fireball, I shut the shutter down before I got blown out shots. So, with all that said, I got much better results the second night. I'm still not sure if I did it the right way, but I was fairly pleased with my first real try.

Now, with this weekend being July 4th, I have a place where I can set up overlooking Deep Creek Lake and my plan is to get fireworks reflected in the Lake with boats in the cove in forefront. I'll either get the shot that's in my head or I'll know where not to stand next year.

Wish me luck!