Saturday Night's Alright For Fireworks

At this point in time, it should come as not surprise to long time readers that I enjoy taking photographs of fireworks displays.  I haven't taken a formal survey, but I think it's safe to say that if you were to take the time to look at all of the updates I've posted here since August 2012, fireworks would likely be my most photographed subject.  This past Saturday was the final show of the Telus Fire On Ice winter fireworks.  I had a couple of potential locations in mind, but I chose to return to Île Sainte-Hélène.  I was still stinging from my last visit to the island where I came home with no photos at all.  While I stayed on the island, I changed my shooting location.  I wandered a little bit, passing a Fox who wasn't very happy to see me and grabbed whatever it was he was eating and took off in another direction. I soon found myself at the La Ronde parking lot.  You've all seen one of photographs taken from this location before.  I had thought about going there to photograph the fireworks the week before, but ended up deciding to wait since my batteries ended up being dead.  One of the great things about this location, is that it allows me to crop in some different sizes than the usual 8" x 12" that we're used to seeing.  I was able to crop a couple of these shots at 12" x 6" and even 12" x 4".  The result is what I find to be a nice panorama style shot with the fireworks going off at one end of the photograph while the skyline of Old Montreal fills up the other end.  I also really like the reflections of the fireworks and the buildings that can be seen in the river. I think my favourite shot of this set is the one at the very top of the page where you can see the fireworks hitting the river below.  It was also very cold when I took these pictures, and you can see the smoke/steam coming out of several of the buildings of Montreal.  I also like the little star effects caused by the long exposure times which can be seen on the very top of a couple of the buildings. Just a couple of fun things you can spot in these photographs.  With that in mind, I also took a couple of photographs of the skyline without the fireworks, so don't be surprised if you see some of those pop up here some time in the future.  Time for us to get a little technical.  The very first photograph from the top of the page was taken at f/13, 7sec, ISO 100 at 68mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/13, 11sec, ISO 100 at 66mm and then cropped to 12" x 6".  The third photograph was taken at f/13, 10sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The fourth photograph was taken at f/13, 6sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Here are a two more photographs that I wanted to share to bring an end to the set.

f/13, 4sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

Cropped to 12" x 6"

f/9, 4sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

Cropped to 12" x 6"

No real reason why that last shot was taken at f/9 compared to the others.  I just wanted to try out some different apertures.  On that note, those of you who are tired of seeing photographs of fireworks, you should be good until the end of June when the next Loto Quebec Fireworks competition begins.  For the fireworks lovers like myself, I can't wait for them to begin.