CdO Fiesta Fireworks 2013
Extreme Photography! Just for a handful of firework images from a 6 minute display? Is it really worth it? In the end, YES! :-) Read on!
I thought I would share a little background information regarding this shoot because people viewing images here just see the "output" - not the "input"! Hopefully this will give people an insight into what we photographs must do to capture those lovely shots!
At 3pm, four and a half hours before the scheduled Firework Display time, I made my way to the Cagayan de Oro riverside on a lovely, but toasting hot 30 degree, day to (1) establish exactly where the display area was located and (2) to decide where I was going to get the best scenery for my images based upon that location. Traffic in the city was heavy so I decided to walk. Very hot with all my gear! A kilometer or two later and I met a very helpful pyrotechnic guru, Orvi Plaza from Dragon Fireworks, near the launch site at about 4.30pm. He was just doing a dummy run through of the display with his pre-programmed laptop hooked up to a red case full of switches and buttons and a key marked "Power Fire"....I was hoping it was not actually connected to the mass of mortar tubes I could see nearby! The program ran without any detonations and all looked good!
Orvi seemed to have all the time in the world for me and took me to the launch site, which was located on a part constructed bridge in the middle of the river, and he very kindly indicated some relevant parts of the display. The most helpful information was a likely change in wind direction by the time display time came around! This dictated that I was not going to shoot from downstream, but upstream instead. I quite liked the idea of having the Ysalina (Carmen) Bridge and City Hall behind the display but this information meant they were going to be in front of it and I was going to be walking further! I shot some images of Orvi and the team and these are the first in this gallery :-)
Taking pictures of fireworks in the sky is easy. But if that's all you do, you get no sense of scale nor, more importantly, the location in the world! This makes things a little more tricky as you need to find your location and decide upon the composition of the image. I liked the idea of conforming with "The Rule of Thirds" with the location I found, just upstream of Ysalina Bridge on Carmen side, and set up so the bulk of the fireworks would be on the left vertical third line of my frame. Ysalina Bridge would generally be my horizontal line one third of the way up my frame with City Hall on the right and whatever reflections in the river below these. I set up my camera for 8 and 10 second exposures to perfectly capture the ambient lighting and took the first few "on location" images as seen in this gallery. These looked good and with about an hour and a half to the display time I grabbed a coke and then noticed some lightning in the distance. I was just thinking how great it would be to capture both lightning and fireworks in the same exposure when it started to rain. Hard!
I was hunched up under my tiny umbrella, the majority of which was protecting my camera and lens and not me, for more than an hour! It was during this time that I took a couple of self pics and a short video as seen in this gallery before the display images. The rain was torrential as can be established from the video but if something is worth doing, its worth suffering to do it! When I arrived on location I was hot and tired of walking around but by the time the rain stopped I was soaked and several degrees cooler!
About half an hour behind schedule it was perfectly dry but there was still thunder and lightening going on. And to my delight, the lightning was behind the display area! Unfortunately it was sheet lightning and not fork lightning but the clouds were being nicely illuminated by it nonetheless so i hoped this would feature in some of my exposures. The dispaly began (without warning so I missed the initial battery of shells!) and was over all too soon! But I did nail a bunch of shots as can be seen/enjoyed here :-) And just as I had hoped, a couple of the shots do have sheet lightning behind the clouds adding that little extra visual effect! Thank you God! :-)
Many thanks Orvi, I am very pleased with the outcome (despite all the walking, the heat, the rain, the wind, the delay and hours of preparation for a 6 minute display!) and I hope you enjoy these images of your work. This excellent display, whilst not identified by a globally recognised iconic structure such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is very clearly identified as CDO by the locally recognised iconic Ysalina Bridge and City Hall :-)
ENJOY!
Peter :-)
NOTE! The images here are 1600 pixels wide, larger than the 1024 I usually upload, so do select “Original” from the slide out menu to see them at this larger size – it’s worth it! :-)
ALSO - if you would like one of these images as your desktop wallpaper, this can be downloaded from our wallpaper gallery here:- http://www.clevercaptures.com/Wallpaper
Read MoreI thought I would share a little background information regarding this shoot because people viewing images here just see the "output" - not the "input"! Hopefully this will give people an insight into what we photographs must do to capture those lovely shots!
At 3pm, four and a half hours before the scheduled Firework Display time, I made my way to the Cagayan de Oro riverside on a lovely, but toasting hot 30 degree, day to (1) establish exactly where the display area was located and (2) to decide where I was going to get the best scenery for my images based upon that location. Traffic in the city was heavy so I decided to walk. Very hot with all my gear! A kilometer or two later and I met a very helpful pyrotechnic guru, Orvi Plaza from Dragon Fireworks, near the launch site at about 4.30pm. He was just doing a dummy run through of the display with his pre-programmed laptop hooked up to a red case full of switches and buttons and a key marked "Power Fire"....I was hoping it was not actually connected to the mass of mortar tubes I could see nearby! The program ran without any detonations and all looked good!
Orvi seemed to have all the time in the world for me and took me to the launch site, which was located on a part constructed bridge in the middle of the river, and he very kindly indicated some relevant parts of the display. The most helpful information was a likely change in wind direction by the time display time came around! This dictated that I was not going to shoot from downstream, but upstream instead. I quite liked the idea of having the Ysalina (Carmen) Bridge and City Hall behind the display but this information meant they were going to be in front of it and I was going to be walking further! I shot some images of Orvi and the team and these are the first in this gallery :-)
Taking pictures of fireworks in the sky is easy. But if that's all you do, you get no sense of scale nor, more importantly, the location in the world! This makes things a little more tricky as you need to find your location and decide upon the composition of the image. I liked the idea of conforming with "The Rule of Thirds" with the location I found, just upstream of Ysalina Bridge on Carmen side, and set up so the bulk of the fireworks would be on the left vertical third line of my frame. Ysalina Bridge would generally be my horizontal line one third of the way up my frame with City Hall on the right and whatever reflections in the river below these. I set up my camera for 8 and 10 second exposures to perfectly capture the ambient lighting and took the first few "on location" images as seen in this gallery. These looked good and with about an hour and a half to the display time I grabbed a coke and then noticed some lightning in the distance. I was just thinking how great it would be to capture both lightning and fireworks in the same exposure when it started to rain. Hard!
I was hunched up under my tiny umbrella, the majority of which was protecting my camera and lens and not me, for more than an hour! It was during this time that I took a couple of self pics and a short video as seen in this gallery before the display images. The rain was torrential as can be established from the video but if something is worth doing, its worth suffering to do it! When I arrived on location I was hot and tired of walking around but by the time the rain stopped I was soaked and several degrees cooler!
About half an hour behind schedule it was perfectly dry but there was still thunder and lightening going on. And to my delight, the lightning was behind the display area! Unfortunately it was sheet lightning and not fork lightning but the clouds were being nicely illuminated by it nonetheless so i hoped this would feature in some of my exposures. The dispaly began (without warning so I missed the initial battery of shells!) and was over all too soon! But I did nail a bunch of shots as can be seen/enjoyed here :-) And just as I had hoped, a couple of the shots do have sheet lightning behind the clouds adding that little extra visual effect! Thank you God! :-)
Many thanks Orvi, I am very pleased with the outcome (despite all the walking, the heat, the rain, the wind, the delay and hours of preparation for a 6 minute display!) and I hope you enjoy these images of your work. This excellent display, whilst not identified by a globally recognised iconic structure such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is very clearly identified as CDO by the locally recognised iconic Ysalina Bridge and City Hall :-)
ENJOY!
Peter :-)
NOTE! The images here are 1600 pixels wide, larger than the 1024 I usually upload, so do select “Original” from the slide out menu to see them at this larger size – it’s worth it! :-)
ALSO - if you would like one of these images as your desktop wallpaper, this can be downloaded from our wallpaper gallery here:- http://www.clevercaptures.com/Wallpaper
