Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year everyone!  It's hard to believe how fast times seems to fly.  We've just wrapped up a second full year here on the Blog.  I know, I can't believe that I've managed to keep that up either.  What better place to welcome in a new year, then where the last one began.  Some of the first photographs seen on this page in 2014 were of the fireworks celebration and a free concert put on by The Lost Fingers.  Once again this year, there was a concert scheduled for the Old Port, but upon arriving on the scene with My Lovely Assistant, we immediately noticed a big difference from last year.  There were way more people.  Last year I was able to walk up to the front of the stage with relative ease.  This year, there were several thousand people between the stage and I, meaning that my hope for some concert photographs quickly went out the window.  I figured that with the sudden addition of free time before the fireworks, it would be a good idea to try and find a new spot to shoot the show this year.  I thought that I had found the winning location when we climbed a few staircases and found ourselves on an observation deck on top of one of the parking garages.  Sadly, I miscalculated the distance between us and the fireworks display.  We ended up being way to close to catch the large explosions, but after getting over the initial deception, I tried to focus on coming home with something.  I keyed in n where the mid-sized fireworks were coming from and tried to shoot those. By looking at the second photograph, you can kind of see my problem.  That photograph was taken after I had already abandoned my initial position and moved further back on the deck.  The rest of my shots were pretty much taken while aiming for that batch of smaller explosions.  They aren't all spectacular, but I think that some of them are pretty interesting.  I especially like the first, fourth and fifth photographs of this batch.  I like the fine lines of the explosions in the first shot.  In the fourth photograph, I really like how some of the light from the larger explosion bleeds into my shot, creating some nice lines horizontally across the screen, and in the fifth shot, I like all of the gold sparkles.  The end result looks almost like a golden tree of light.  The true credit for these photographs once again belongs to My Lovely Assistant.  I was rather upset when the show came to an end, but she told me not to relax, she was sure that I'd be able to find something in the shots I took.  Maybe my 2015 resolution should be to give up arguing and finally just admit that she is always right.  She's got a pretty good success percentage in that catagory.  I guess that's what makes one a good Lovely Assistant.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 25sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/16, 7 sec, ISO 100 at 24mm and the third photograph was taken at f/16, 27sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Here are a couple more shots taken from the roof of the parking garage.

f/16, 8 sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

f/16, 4sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

And so begins another year of photographs here at Eric Mahannah Photography.  Here's to hoping that it will be a good one.