Wednesday evening was the second display from the Celebration of Light fireworks festival, and was by the team from France. Again wanting to capture the fireworks in the context of the beautiful Vancouver skyline, I headed to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver, which has a line of sight view of downtown Vancouver, albeit from 10 kilometres away.
I shot the fireworks from Lighthouse Park last year, and while I'm usually reluctant to go back to the same location to take the same photograph, the conditions last year were a disappointment and frustration. A very warm and humid day led to a very high level of haze and atmospheric distortion that, combined with shooting across the water, led to quite a soft photograph. Additionally, this location has a special surprise in the right conditions, with Mount Baker in Washington state being visible behind the Vancouver skyline. Last year, the conditions certainly weren't right, and there was no chance of seeing the mountain, which is roughly 120 kilometres away.
When the conditions for this Wednesday's display started to look promising, I therefore decided that despite having shot from here before, I would have to try again!
Parking up outside the park, due to signs claiming the gates would be locked before I could hope to be out, a brief and thankfully much more relaxing hike than on Saturday took me to the Arbutus Knoll lookout shortly before sunset, giving me plenty of time to get set up. I was thrilled to see that Mount Baker was visible, although I still doubted whether I would be able to pick it out after the sun had set. While I waited I grabbed some sunset shots and perfected the position of my tripod, which had to look out through a fairly narrow gap in the trees.
My early arrival paid dividends when another photographer turned up shortly after sunset and had to settle for second-best location! As the light from the sun faded, I could see a layer of haze building up over the city, but just had to hope that it wouldn't block out the mountain by the time the fireworks began.
Fortunately I was in luck, and was able to bring out the mountain in this shot, perfectly centred behind the Wall Centre building in downtown Vancouver. Because of the distance, I again used my 70-300mm lens at 300mm, with the addition of a 1.4x teleconverter to get a reach of 420mm, and again shot a panorama consisting of five photos, with the camera in portrait orientation.
The haze, which I worried would spoil the shot, actually caught and reflected the city lights, producing a wonderful rich orange glow over the city which makes this shot really rather colourful. Although a few tankers rather inconsiderately parked in the shot, I am infinitely more pleased with this shot compared to last year's shot, with this shot matching much more closely the scene I imagined capturing.
Click on the photo to view it on a black background for best effect!
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
Awesome shot Alexis. The effort paid off. I think the tankers are cool and actually add color and light. How did you get the water smooth but the fireworks sharp? Fav!
@michaelelliott Thank you Michael! The water is blurred due to the long exposure, which also captures the firework trails. As long as you use a tripod, and the fireworks aren't the kind that trail off, you can use quite a long exposure and still keep the fireworks appearing very sharp, you just capture more bursts while the shutter is open! There's a little more complexity to getting all the light and shadow detail in this shot, discussed below, as well.
@baznman Thanks! The panoramic city shots were captured using bracketing, I used a total of 7 bracketed exposures ranging from 1/3rd of a second to 20 seconds, all taken at ISO 1600, f/10. To keep sharpness with the teleconverter, which always robs a little, I had to use a relatively narrow aperture, compounded by the teleconverter itself taking away a stop of light, so in order to keep the exposure times short enough that the light levels didn't change much, the high ISO of 1600 was required -- fortunately the 5D3 can easily pull this off with very little noise.
The panorama was taken about 5 minutes before the fireworks began, to capture a little more light in the sky and allow me to use bracketing without having to worry about moving fireworks (I had enough trouble with moving boats!). The fireworks shot was taken about half-way through the display at around 10:15 -- this display had surprisingly little smoke from my vantage point, so although I usually get my best shot in the first five minutes of the display, I was able to keep productively shooting longer than usual here. Because I kept the focal length and tripod location the same, I was able to align the firework shot perfectly with the city panorama, and then use a lighten blending mode and a few additional tweaks to allow the bright firework trails and reflections to show through. The fireworks shots were taken at ISO 100, f/11, and in bulb mode, allowing me to manually capture a nice burst of fireworks -- the particular shot used here was 4.2 seconds long.
I truly appreciate the added info about how the shot was taken and processed. I'm getting ready to head out on a vacation during which this sort of insight will prove helpful. Thank you for your generosity.
Spectacular- I don't think the tankers spoil the shot. IMHO they add to the shot. And I love reading the stories of how you get these masterpieces. They are as fascinating as the pictures themselves.
September 4th, 2014
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@baznman Thanks! The panoramic city shots were captured using bracketing, I used a total of 7 bracketed exposures ranging from 1/3rd of a second to 20 seconds, all taken at ISO 1600, f/10. To keep sharpness with the teleconverter, which always robs a little, I had to use a relatively narrow aperture, compounded by the teleconverter itself taking away a stop of light, so in order to keep the exposure times short enough that the light levels didn't change much, the high ISO of 1600 was required -- fortunately the 5D3 can easily pull this off with very little noise.
The panorama was taken about 5 minutes before the fireworks began, to capture a little more light in the sky and allow me to use bracketing without having to worry about moving fireworks (I had enough trouble with moving boats!). The fireworks shot was taken about half-way through the display at around 10:15 -- this display had surprisingly little smoke from my vantage point, so although I usually get my best shot in the first five minutes of the display, I was able to keep productively shooting longer than usual here. Because I kept the focal length and tripod location the same, I was able to align the firework shot perfectly with the city panorama, and then use a lighten blending mode and a few additional tweaks to allow the bright firework trails and reflections to show through. The fireworks shots were taken at ISO 100, f/11, and in bulb mode, allowing me to manually capture a nice burst of fireworks -- the particular shot used here was 4.2 seconds long.
Let me know if you have any questions!