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I started out at 5am with good intentions of getting a sunrise along the surf. I bagged the whole idea when it was clear that the horizon was not clear. I came back to the condo and started deleting iPhone apps then looked out around 8am and noticed the clouds were breaking up and the tide was low. I wasn’t too confident that I could get a shot without joggers and walkers but a little patience worked.
I stood on the balcony and shot some pics of the fireworks last night. It’s pretty easy to get shots like this – all you need is a tripod and a wide angle lens. Just keep shooting and slowing the shutter speed until you get some foreground detail. This is 10 seconds at f/8. I was pretty surprised to see the surf detailed – the fireworks acted as a big flash to stop the wave action.
I made my way to the beach from the 7th floor this morning and wandered around in the sand. It wasn’t too inspiring, the sun was blocked and there wasn’t much of a foreground, except for a bicycle laying in the sand. I came back to the condo and waited for the sun to rise above the heavy clouds and shot a few pics from the balcony. I asked my daughter Kara what to call this pic and without hesitation she said “Poseidon’s Crown.”
The Fourth came and went with a bang, it was really hot but worth it. The last time I went to DC to take pics of the fireworks I was shooting Velvia-50 film. Remember those days. This year I headed down with my friend Kirk on the Metro and we set up along the Potomac River in a spot with a view of the Lincoln Memorial adjacent to the Washington Monument. This was a great spot and we weren’t the only ones that thought so. The show went really fast, about 18 minutes based on my first pic to my last. I was surprised how fast $500,000 of fireworks went up in smoke. There was a couple in the row boat having a romantic date and drinking steadily, I thought if the boat tipped could I swim out there and make a rescue? I would be a hero and cool off at the same time. They didn’t capsize but they drifted in my view finder and now they are famous.
An iPhone pic along the Potomac in late afternoon.
Sometimes subtle tones and mood of a single image outweigh the bang of the HDR image, there I said it. My routine is to shoot HDR image sets then decide later what I like best, the single image, single/HDR blend or “full-tilt” HDR. As landscape photographers say “be there and be prepared” as in, 5am and with your best camera. Add another and make it a three-some, be open-minded. So here it is, BE THERE, BE PREPARED AND BE OPEN-MINDED, sorry I’m not really yelling this.
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Well worth the wait. Love it.
What a gorgeous shot! I can almost hear the surf …
🙂