I'm having a hard time trying to decide if the 2013 Fireworks season has been a success or a failure for me thus far. We're halfway through the competition and so far I've missed out on the first two shows due to bad weather and the three last shows have been kind of a frustration as the locations I have chosen to shoot at haven't been as glorious as I thought they would be. I suppose that choosing a good location involves lots of trial and error, but so far it feels more like error and error. My Lovely Assistant tells me that I'm being too hard on myself, that I still end up with several nice photographs when all is said and done. She's probably right, but it's still a bit frustrating to me to find what I think will be a great spot to shoot the shows only to be met with an obstacle once the fireworks start going off. One plus is that it's been forcing me to be a bit more creative in my cropping. I generally always try to stay in the 12" x 8" range with my crops because it's an easy size to frame. Last year I began to play around with the 12" x 6" range as I liked the panoramic look that it gave my photos. With these photos, which were of the fireworks show put on my the United States for the
L'International Des Feux Loto Québec, I ended up using ever more different crop sizes. The main reason being because where I was located, an overpass on Rue Saint-Charles over Taschereau Blvd, ended up having a condo building with rather bright parking lot
lights which ended up bleeding into my photos. Most of my shots ended up having this annoying yellowish streak of light in the left-hand side. I had figured that by using my 70-300mm lens I'd be able to bypass that problem as my lens would be focused on what I wanted to be shooting, mainly the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Cross on Mt. Royal and the fireworks going off in the sky. All of which were several kilometers away from that condo building and it's annoying bright lights. However, it was not meant to be. Thus, the first photograph that you see on this page was cut to a rather unique, by my standards anyway, 7" x 12". The third photograph is cut to 9" x 12" while the other two I ended up being able to use the more traditional 8" x 12" that I was earlier talking about. Even with my complaining, it doesn't mean that I don't like the photographs that I took. You wouldn't be seeing them here on the page if I didn't like them. I really like the second photograph you see here. The big blue bursts in the sky along with all of the other smaller blasts happening along the bottom of the shot. I also like the
silhouetted skeleton of the Monster roller-coaster in the bottom left-hand side. Though I hate the reasoning that brought me to using the odd cropping, I enjoy the simplicity of the first shot. The single blast going off over the bridge with the cross on the mountain in the background is, oddly enough, the very look I was hoping to get. I just needed to take a different road to get there. The third photo I enjoy as the fireworks appear to me to be like large red flowers, complete with white stems left by the trails of the rockets as they went up to the sky. I also like how clear the bridge is in this shot due to the light of the fireworks reflecting against it. In the fourth photograph, I like how the strands of light look almost like silk, spread smoothly across the sky. Almost like a spider web blown loose by the wind. I also liked the pattern of white light left by the blasts. The shots were all taken in Manual Mode using a remote trigger so as not to cause any camera shake. In order of appearance, here are the settings that I used to for each shot. f/9, 6sec, ISO 100 at 70mm. f/9, 6 sec, ISO 100 at 70mm. f/9, 5 sec, ISO100 at 70mm and finally f/9, 10sec, ISO 100 at 70mm. If you are wondering, it's
not an accident that all my the shots were taken at 70mm. I shot them all at that focal length when it became quite clear that I couldn't avoid the dreaded lights from the condo building. By shooting at 70mm, it gave me more room when it came to cropping the photographs, and also allowed me to get the higher blasts that were going off in the sky. It's the same trick I used
last year when I found myself in a similar situation. As it would happen, I came home from that night of shooting certain that I had wasted my evening and would find nothing of use in my camera. Instead, the photo that you'll see if you follow the link, ended up being one of the 25 that were part of my exhibition last fall. One of these days I'll learn that my Lovely Assistant is always right. I need to stop thinking the worst, and concentrate of finding the best.
lights which ended up bleeding into my photos. Most of my shots ended up having this annoying yellowish streak of light in the left-hand side. I had figured that by using my 70-300mm lens I'd be able to bypass that problem as my lens would be focused on what I wanted to be shooting, mainly the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Cross on Mt. Royal and the fireworks going off in the sky. All of which were several kilometers away from that condo building and it's annoying bright lights. However, it was not meant to be. Thus, the first photograph that you see on this page was cut to a rather unique, by my standards anyway, 7" x 12". The third photograph is cut to 9" x 12" while the other two I ended up being able to use the more traditional 8" x 12" that I was earlier talking about. Even with my complaining, it doesn't mean that I don't like the photographs that I took. You wouldn't be seeing them here on the page if I didn't like them. I really like the second photograph you see here. The big blue bursts in the sky along with all of the other smaller blasts happening along the bottom of the shot. I also like the 
silhouetted skeleton of the Monster roller-coaster in the bottom left-hand side. Though I hate the reasoning that brought me to using the odd cropping, I enjoy the simplicity of the first shot. The single blast going off over the bridge with the cross on the mountain in the background is, oddly enough, the very look I was hoping to get. I just needed to take a different road to get there. The third photo I enjoy as the fireworks appear to me to be like large red flowers, complete with white stems left by the trails of the rockets as they went up to the sky. I also like how clear the bridge is in this shot due to the light of the fireworks reflecting against it. In the fourth photograph, I like how the strands of light look almost like silk, spread smoothly across the sky. Almost like a spider web blown loose by the wind. I also liked the pattern of white light left by the blasts. The shots were all taken in Manual Mode using a remote trigger so as not to cause any camera shake. In order of appearance, here are the settings that I used to for each shot. f/9, 6sec, ISO 100 at 70mm. f/9, 6 sec, ISO 100 at 70mm. f/9, 5 sec, ISO100 at 70mm and finally f/9, 10sec, ISO 100 at 70mm. If you are wondering, it's 
not an accident that all my the shots were taken at 70mm. I shot them all at that focal length when it became quite clear that I couldn't avoid the dreaded lights from the condo building. By shooting at 70mm, it gave me more room when it came to cropping the photographs, and also allowed me to get the higher blasts that were going off in the sky. It's the same trick I used last year when I found myself in a similar situation. As it would happen, I came home from that night of shooting certain that I had wasted my evening and would find nothing of use in my camera. Instead, the photo that you'll see if you follow the link, ended up being one of the 25 that were part of my exhibition last fall. One of these days I'll learn that my Lovely Assistant is always right. I need to stop thinking the worst, and concentrate of finding the best.
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