In My Back Pocket

Midway through this December, Saturday afternoon, my daughter and I were in the Cab of my white 2000 GMC Sierra half-ton working our way through town and our list of errands. Not having read this week’s newspaper, The Echo, and without the town of High Level having a Twitter-feed we chanced upon the Santa Parade moving through mainstreet. Later, at supper, I learned about fireworks being among today’s events – at 6:00 p.m. the High Level Fire Department would begin a fireworks display. With all the night photography I’ve done, I hadn’t yet captured fireworks.  I found my blue folder of Night Photography notes from Darlene Hildebrand (Her View Photography http://www.herviewphotography.com/ ), skimmed them, briefly, put my Canon 60 D on top of my Manfrotto tripod, changed lenses to my Canon 15-80mm zoom and set the shutter release for a 2-second countdown.  The camera settings for the photographs I took are ISO 100, f-8 with an exposure of 13 seconds. I got to the fireworks site, aimed my camera into the sky toward an anticipated fireworks target area and made rough calculations for focusing to subject; using live view I adjusted composition area against where fireworks were bursting open and fell from; each of the 79 pictures taken are at a range of approximately 200-300 metres from the camera. Above, you’ll find some of the better exposures I snapped.