Alright, already delinquent on an important day! Happy late July 4th!

I went to the local 4th of July fireworks show, slated for July 5th of course, with canoe in hand. I wanted to get out on the lake, the calm end of the lake, to paddle around a bit before setting up to photograph the fireworks. Calm or no, still a bad idea, and needless to say, I drove around with the canoe on top, finally settling for a place atop an overlook that gave me a good view of the fireworks launch pad as well as the 50 million people below on the lake (hence the canoe still on top).

The show was nice, and I really just shot singular bursts of light for texture photos (never know when you may need a backdrop to some design)! I did enjoy this particular shot with the lake below and the flat horizon with the hanging on of light from the sunset.

For those of you interested, the light degradation in the West adds a bit of punch to a photograph, that if shot later in the same composition, would not be present. This particular photograph was taken using an exposure of more than five seconds, aperture of f/8. Because of the long exposure time, the light that is still there, although visible dark to the naked eye, burns in on the sensor, just like it did with film!

Try shooting with backgrounds like this with anything, as it does offer you a little more time to play with light and interesting backgrounds.

More to come this week about a publishing project that I am involved with! JF