I hope everyone is having a happy and a healthy Independence Day. Happy birthday to our country and her 233rd birthday!

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Photographing fireworks can be a a confusing adventure. Wondering what gear to have and how to setup. Plus all the technical junk like aperture or shutter speed. I wanted to provide some info about what I do when I approach a fireworks show.

Gearing up for the show I start with my Nikon D300 and a wide angle lens. An extreme wide angle I find is really too much as the fireworks are normally always at a distance (your mileage may vary however depending on your access to the show.) I use my 17-50mm giving a bit of play room and not too wide to make things appear small. I will bring my L-bracket as 9 out of 10 times I am shooting vertical. Could you tilt your tripod head sideways? Probably; although I wouldn’t recommend it unless you have too. The L-bracket keeps your cameras center of gravity over the central axis of the tripod. The L-bracket can be very important and useful for waterfalls as well and landscapes for quick swapping. Doesn’t just have one use. Need your sturdy tripod and ball head for that L-bracket. Grab a cable shutter release. You could go wireless, but it isn’t necessary and it’s one less set of batteries to deal with. You could use your 2sec timer, but that takes all the romance out of it. Besides the obvious memory cards and batteries the last thing I would recommend is a cover for the rear of the camera. Not totally necessary, but with people holding flashlights or other glow sticks why have it mess with your exposure? Nikon normally includes it with your camera. Nikon calls it the DK-5. Your more expensive full frames I believe have a curtain shutter for the viewfinder. If you don’t have either a decent microfiber over the back does the trick (pin it with a rubber band if it’s windy) or whatever you could implement. Just nothing too heavy or dangling to induce shake.

Once we have all the equipment out of the way lets talk exposure. You might be asking if their is a magic exposure. Well there isn’t. I don’t mean to break it to you like that, your actually better for it. Not because you need to learn the hard way or anything, but because you will be shooting it artistically. The reason you want that cable shutter release is so that you can choose the exposure yourself! How do you do it you may ask? Put your camera into Manual mode. Don’t be afraid it won’t bite . Seriously though; we are putting it on bulb (run the shutter speed slower and slower until you see it past 30 seconds) so that you will control the exposure based on how long you hold the shutter release button on your cable release down. Aperture is variable, but I tend to like f/16. It keeps the fireworks from over exposing too much and gives you an abundance of time for creative results. Usually 9 seconds or so. My ISO stays at the standard calibrated setting for the lowest noise. This is ISO 200 on my D300. How do I know how long to hold it? Depends on whats firing. I watch the show (and not through a viewfinder (yay!)) and hold the remote down as each type of firework fires. When I feel it has painted the canvas or in this case sensor with enough photons I let go of the cable release. It may be short for only a few type of artistic bursts or longer to get a few extra trails or colors. Think carefully as that finale goes off, you won’t get it all. Careful timing however and proper choice will help demonstrate a lot is going off at once. Usually meaning a shorter shutter speed due too so much action.

Foreground can add dimension to your photograph. Just keep in mind where you are and try to keep it subtle. Not too large or moving itself. You want the viewer to look right to where the action is; the fireworks. This silhouette of the spartina (water grasses) in the bottom right hand corner was the perfect compliment and a pleasant surprise. I did setup trying to get something, but as soon as the show started a jerk planted him self in front of everything. It’s his show too (I guess :-p) so I moved and made it work.

Now heights of the fireworks may vary. Not a bad thing. This could be great to add some text for an occasion or event or the 4th of July . Don’t count these out yet. In the case of fireworks on the water I actually take off the DK-5 once it’s dark enough. I found the negative effects of stray light aren’t bad unless your near a campfire or something of equivalency. When shooting a barge on water I had to constantly adjust as the barge moved, also I would change zoom from time to time depending on the height of the fireworks and needed to go a tad wider. I was originally alarmed at the bursts growing outside the frame, but it can suck you into the action more if it isn’t over done. Experiment. This show gave me 18min of experimentation.

This is what happens when you hold the release down too long. As the light builds up it becomes more and more severe. For me I’m not a fan of the look, some might like the intensity. I feel it starts to out compete with the color of the images. It can happen some times. No reason to beat yourself up. To find the ideal time I just run test images. I act quick and rush a bit, but most shows are on the shorter end. Not everyone has the money of Macy’s. Plus when your watching the show you can’t help but get caught up enjoying the show for a few frames. Perfectly natural.

I wouldn’t keep noise reduction on. It will eat up valuable time. So go through those menus and turn your long exposure NR (noise reduction) features off. It can sometimes run as long as the photograph itself. You don’t want to spend 20seconds on a 10second photograph do you? Plus you can do it in post processing. I don’t bother though however with noise. I set a black point where the sky should be black and BAM (sorry Emeril) it all falls into place. Color saturation for me is handled by shooting with a white balance (WB) of cloudy. [UPDATE] Do feel free to experiment with saturation boosting. It is by no means off limits.[UPDATE] It adds a touch to the color with out skewing the images. You could try shooting in vivid mode as well, I shot these in standard. Shooting in RAW will allow you to tweak all of these type of settings after the fact however and save JPEG heartache. You might have noticed the fisherman in some of my images. Particularly my last one. I lucked out with this. No offense to them, but I can probably guarantee you wont catch any fish with fireworks going off in the same body of water 700ft away. Last I checked fish don’t like sound that you can feel in your heart over great distances. With that said written I hope I have demystified some of the fireworks troubles for you. Make sure to find a great show and share with us what you come up with. Feel free to drop me a line if I left anything out or have any questions. All the best and have a fantastic, patriotic holiday!

Tags: 4th of july, fireworks, fireworks howto, fireworks tips, fourth of july, how to shoot fireworks, howto, wolfe's pond
Posted in Staten Island NY, Techniques | No Comments »

This is a series of new chargers and battery solutions from Energizer coming out in July from Energizer. Picked this up on two of many sites I read; Engadget and Gizmodo. This one of all of them intrigues me the most. I am in recent need of another charger now that Dina has picked up interest in digital photography. If you don’t mind carrying it on your keys (not that it needs to be on your keys) it seems like a solution for/to me. My only curiosity now is price. Plus if you grab an uber cheap usb hub off of Newegg then you could get a multi charger for a heck of a lot less. I will definitely look into this when it arrives in Bestbuy and other local retailers.

Tags: battery charger, energizer
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This weekend I spent at the salt marsh and also a new local at pouch camp. It was an early day starting out at the salt marsh timing the tides with sunrise. Thankfully low tide was around 7:30am so I could  have the tide still receding as I ventured through the marsh. I put on my wellingtons (petroleum knee high boots) and carefully worked my way through the marsh. Many people walk into this marsh unaware of what they may be stepping on. All these grasses as well as fauna are all important to the biodiversity and food chain of the area. There are often thousands upon thousands of snails and tons of crab just below your feet. Not to mention the polychaetes and other annelids (worms) below the surface. Might not be our idea of a tasty treat, but it sure is to many birds and other species that share this habitat.

So as I arrived to my surprise there was a great egret, two snowy egrets, and three little blue herons. Really cool to see for size comparison and just plain fun to photograph.

Depth of field was tough on this one, but it was just enough to pull the little blue and great egret into sharp focus leaving the snowy egret a tad soft. I spent at least an hour taking my time shooting and getting ever so closer. These three birds love to fly away from you at very far distances. I often find the trick is to take your time (although I know that isn’t easy when you are eager to shoot) and use your camera as a blind. Make short movements that are slow from beginning to end. They need to realize you aren’t a threat and mean no harm to them. Shoot a few frames every time you approach. Don’t just wait until you can achieve eyeball shots. They may fly before you get there and you will have nothing, plus it helps the birds get used to the sound of your shutter. I find ripping real fast the first time is also not a good idea. A loud noise going fast and continuously is a good way to spook’em. If you make a slight mistake they don’t always take off in the other direction, sometimes just a little hop in their air to another near by location.

You don’t want to lose concentration and think the game is over. These are opportunities not to be missed. They can often provide flight shots at slower speeds easier to catch then the bird coming at or near you. Hard to tell the difference of a bird flying five feet or half a mile. Flying is flying to most viewers. Don’t go spooking them on purpose to get this shot however. It isn’t very nice; plus they often do this as they move from one hunting location to the next. All good things come to those who wait they say. Being prepared can make it all come to fruition.

After the marsh I decided to see what was hanging out at one of the fresh water ponds. On my way I could see nothing hanging out, but the usual mallards. However there was a cotton tail! A common bunny, but they sure are a pain in the ass to photograph. They have a nearly 360 degree angle of view making sneaking up on these suckers nearly impossible. The trick? walk like your 100 years old. No offense to the elderly, but it is the only thing that seems to work. Well there is one other thing, but I’ll mention that later. I had to approach this bunny walking incredibly slow across asphalt and a grass field. Not much cover. This was as close as I could get to him after 10 min of effort. A decent habitat catch, but I wanted more.

A bit disappointed I decided to head out of the park and meet up with my friend Seth to work on the Staten Island Dragonfly Atlas. On the drive out I thought I saw something. Looked odd, but I moved on for another hundred feet questioning if I should turn around. Instead of regretting it later I did a u-turn and headed back. What did I find? Another cotton tailed rabbit! I pulled over onto the grass real slow (silent hybrid prob helped a bit) and began shooting from the car. Thought my other trick was capturing them? Nah. I use the car as a blind whenever I can. Due to what we have done to our environment animals have become accustomed to cars being around and fear them a bit less then the humans that are in them.

I caught him with a mouth full. He continued for what must have been a good twenty minuted just going about his business. Lucky me a park ranger didn’t come by as it is part of the national parks system :-\. Oh, the things we do for Photography.

My last treat of the day was coming upon this eastern painted turtle spotted by Seth along out dragonfly walk in Pouch Camp with dragonfly expert Paul. She appeared to be looking for a place to lay her eggs. Not wanting to disturb her all that much I patiently sat for a while to gain a comfort level with her.

I was shooting with my 150mm macro giving me the ability to shoot macro photography at a further distance then shorter lenses. This exposure was done with ambient light opposed to my next shot which I used flash fill for.

I dialed down the flash unit to around 1 2/3 stop on my SB-800. I had the flash dome diffuser on and tilted to the side away from my subject. I wanted to dial the flash down enough so that it wouldn’t dominate and be apparent that it was used. Flash fill can be useful for certain subjects in areas of shade and to remove color cast. The goal is to not to blast your subject. We want to to look as if we never used it. Pouch Camp is private property so do please receive permission before walking its grounds. Hope your weekend brought pleasant surprises for you as well.

Tags: egret, heron, pouch camp, salt marsh, staten island
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Dina came running upstairs telling me a snake was outside. A snake? Not sure what to do, but grab my D300 with my Sigma 150mm macro and get shootin’! She stops me at the door as he is right at the foot step. I carefully open the door and and walk over him. Finding out he was a northern brown snake I wasn’t as concerned about being bit. They normally eat soft bodied creatures such as slugs and earthworms. They still look pretty cool being over a foot in length though.

Shooting at f/2.8 gives this amazingly fine depth of field. I made sure to watch my film plane to my subject as well so I would get his whole face in focus. If the film plane or back of the camera was on an angle to my subject and not parallel I would only get a section in focus and not a horizontal stroke. Plus shooting at f/2.8 helped when hand holding the lens although there was enough light to stop down if need be. Another key with using a wider aperture is to block out that unappealing back drop. Could you be sure this was at my doors footstep and welcome mat without me telling you? I’d bet not without analyzing it. As for getting that tongue where it is? Ripping that shutter release button and trying to anticipate the release. Luck doesn’t hurt either, but we can help to create some of that by being prepared and using our knowledge/experience.

As he felt the tension was too much he decided to head back to the garden. Revealing to us as we moved the mat there was another northern brown snake. Amazing what we can find in our backyards at times. I don’t have much grass in the NYC concrete jungle, but apparently just enough. My next quest will be seeking out snails after a good rain.

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More to come. Working on a new portfolio through Smugmug. Not a fan of Zenfolio anymore. Stay tuned!

Tags: brown snake, northern brown snake, snake
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With the first day spent at the salt marsh in adverse weather I came back more prepared and with comfort! The day would prove to be a long one. Six hours in total watching and waiting; which can be its own entertainment as well. I was even greeted by two deer (sorry no photo of that, camera was pre-occupied.) The nest has been around for approximately 2-3 weeks according to a local beach walker. Leaning toward the third week. Meaning they could hatch any day now and today was that day.

The killdeer began to hatch one after the other. She had laid three eggs which tends to be more rare then the more common four (how they hold a huge portion of the future inside them like that is beyond me with the size of the eggs in relation to her body.) Later that day while I changed a card (own nothing bigger then 8gb cards) I saw a hatchling tucked away. After quickly retreating I observed a head pop-up. Probably the first one I saw. When finally dry and with enough strength to greet the world a second soon followed. The third egg remained unhatched for the remainder of the stay. No worries however.The next day I returned to make sure all three eggs & eggshells were missing. Although stray cats can and could be the culprit I learned something new behaviorally from watching the killdeer.

Killdeer (and possibly other shore birds) will carry the egg shells away from the nest in order to protect it. After seeing the action occur more then once I was able to confirm it for myself. Later talking to Dina she told me one of the reasons this is done is to reduce the likeliness of visibility to aerial predators. The outside of the shell is spotted and beige similar to the sand with dark spots; while the inside is a pearly white and can shimmer being wet from the embryo.

Watching as the 2 of 3 were born, knowing my cards were getting full and the light was going from good to bad I left them to finish getting the offspring ready for their journey. Killdeer chicks will be ready to feed almost immediately and just need their parents to protect and guide them.

Taking some of their first peeks into the world.

Finally mustering up the courage to share their face with the world.

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Two side notes here. Some cool news tips:

• Mozilla is coming out with a newer version with their Firefox internet browser that is going to support color profiles. Finally coming one step closer to sharing the way we want to share the images we take with the world. Check this link out for all the details! (make sure to test it as it needs to be turned on. I wasn;t a fan in certain circumstances. Hope they work out the bugs.)
• Google buys up one million phone numbers for their upcoming Google Voice service. Wanted to update anyone who was still interested in getting full control of their phone services. Can’t wait for it to become available? Sign up here to get an invite as soon as it is available. Read about it’s features here and see how much it can do to help your business line.

Tags: babies, chicks, killdeer, nest, staten island
Posted in Photography, Staten Island NY | 2 Comments »