Fireworks and Ice

Fireworks and Ice, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

See the rest of the New York Fireworks 2008 set.

 

Comments

[swampcracker]

From a balcony five floors up
The fireworks of nearby towns
Their multicolored mushrooms
In silence
Blooming on the horizon
A country at war with itself

[LauraJMixon]

I *love* all these fireworks images! Thanks, Lindsay.

We live about half a mile from the city ball park, and have a ringside seat to great fireworks year-round. I like the shiny!

[minstrel hussain boy]

lindsay, these are brilliant. they should absolutely suggest a soundtrack by darcy.

[Bruce]

Beautiful. I don't know enough about photography, digital or paper, but this seems like a very difficult shot to get right.

[The Phantom]

I don't think it takes away from the magic of these works:

can I ask

what equipment was used?

what editing was done as respects brightness, contrast?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I shot this with an EOS-20D body and a 50mm lens at f/3.2 and ISO 400. The surreal light comes from a mix of different sources and colors. The red fireworks are reflecting off the overcast sky and the wet pavement. The street lights have an orange cast to them. The smaller but closer light on the ice machine is slightly warm, but much cooler than the street lamp, it's also catching the wet asphalt. The white balance is set to "as shot"--in other words, I chose not to correct for the color cast from the electric lights. If I'd put the white balance on "tungsten" the final image would have been a lot cooler.

I didn't do a lot of post processing on this image. I decreased the overall expose by about a quarter of a stop in Lightroom and added fill light to bring out more detail in the foreground.

[cfrost]

The images are worth the price of the big-ass camera/lens. This one's got a sort of festive apocalypse look.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

This one was shot with a very small, cheap lens. My lens is an older version of the Canon 50mm f/1.8II, which you can still pick up new for under $100 bucks. Every Canon DSLR user should have one. It's great value for the money.

[cfrost]

Whatever the camera/lens, you're obviously doing your homework and it shows.

[cfrost]

The fireworks photographs take me back a few years when we took my nephew to see the 4th displays. When he was three years old he was pointing and exclaiming “oooooh!” A year later when he was older and wiser enough to know that the world could be a very dangerous place, he hid under a blanket and demanded that we “turn it off!”

[voxy]

SO BEAUTIFUL THANK YOU for the delightful surprise when clicking here after so long ....

[The Phantom]

You may want to make some of these available for commerical sale, framed or not, in poster stores or elsewhere. They'd brighten up a small apartment very nicely.

[BOMBOVA]

I shot this with an EOS-20D body and a 50mm lens at f/3.2 and ISO 400. " you have come a long way doll, you never bust a lens, and these photos of fire are super. "