Independence Day

I had a great time last night shooting the fireworks over the Arkansas River last night. The weather was great and I loved meeting several of my new AOPC members. And despite the clouds and the shortness of the display, I managed to come away with a few pretty good shots. As always, you can see them at www.brizendinephotography.com

Trying not to sound bitter, I do have some general tips for people attending firework displays:

1.   If you come across someone (me in particular) sitting behind what appears to be a very nice looking camera mounted on a tripod and oriented in such a way to get the best shot of the impending action, please try to resist the urge to sit/stand in front of me. This is particularly good advice when doing so means climbing out even further onto some very loose and precarious rocks.

2.   Kids love to come to fireworks shows. Kids also love throwing rocks into the river. Kids however do not always think to look down the rock facing into the river to make sure there aren’t people down there. Parents, please watch your kids and keep your kids from inadvertently injuring me or one of my friends.

3.   If you are taking photos of the fireworks with a hand held point and shoot camera, please turn off your flash. I assure you that the light coming from your flash will not help your photos but very well could mess up those of others.

4.   Lastly, if you watched from your boat please wait 20 minutes after the show ends before attempting to maneuver your truck and trailer through traffic, onto the boat ramp, and then out of park exit. Dozens of other spectators and myself  were stuck waiting for about 30 minutes while several people blocked all outgoing traffic doing this.

Okay, rant over.  I hope everyone else had a great Independence Day.

Pinnacle and the Arkansas River

I spent some time at Pinnacle Mountain yesterday afternoon. I got a couple of decent shots but nothing spectacular. Then Alex and I went down by the river and got some shots of the Clinton Presidential Library and the Clinton Park Bridge. The results are posted as usual at www.brizendinephotography.com

While we were there I tried and failed to create a lightpainting by making an orb on the dock with the cityscape in the background. The reason it failed is because the cityscape was too bright which caught me in the photo making the orb. The terrible results can be seen in the photo below.

Photo Restoration

Yesterday I worked on a restoration project for my father-in-law. It’s amazing what a little time and Photoshop can do.

About last night

Last night I went out for a second attempt at spinning steel wool. After waiting for almost 30 minutes for the muggles to leave, I had the place to myself and ended up getting the results I was after. Not exactly perfection, but also pretty good for only my second time out.

Since the location had a sign posted “No Fireworks” and I didn’t want to have a semantic argument with security about the differences between fireworks and steel wool, I got the hell out of there within 60 seconds of finishing the shot. I think it was worth it.

After that I went to Camp Robinson to practice painting some of the static displays with a flashlight. I learned quite a bit about the technique but only came away with a couple of useable photos. I tried a little experiment with lightpainting some flames under one of the tanks with some electroluminescent wire but the results weren’t what I had in mind. So while I’ll show the final produce here, I plan to leave it out of my gallery until I can learn to get the results I want.

I’m looking forward to tonight. My father and I are going to take some night shots around the city. It should be both fun and productive if the weather cooperates. I’ll post the results as soon as I can.

I took a few shots of my friend Jake’s baby girl yesterday. Babies are adorable, but hard to work with. Someone needs to make a battery powered scrunchy that can wrap around your lens and lights up with LEDs to get the kid to look at the camera. Just an idea.

My son Dylan and I went out last night for our first attempt at spinning steel wool. The results were good, but less than stellar. This was mainly because I bumped the camera in the dark and decentered the composition of the photo. Oh well, live and learn. Props to Dylan for doing such a good job despite almost catching on fire.

And so it begins...

This is my first blog. I guess I’m writing it as a way to keep myself on target with my photographic goals. My main goal being simply to constantly strive towards improvement.

My interest of the day is night photography. This is troublesome because it’s now summer which means that sunset isn’t until 8:30. So basically I can’t even begin shooting until 10:00. My day job requires me to be up by 5AM, so this limits me to about an hour on week nights. Add to this the need to get pretty far outside of city limits to avoid light pollution when doing long exposures, and my dilemma becomes apparent. It therefore looks like I will have to limit myself to Saturday night shoots regarding exposure lasting more than 30 seconds.

As I embark on my little photographic journey, it is worth mentioning that I intend to make notes of any tips and/or advice that may prove useful to others who share my passion for photography and happen to come across my site. It is my sincere hope that at some point, someone somewhere will find this blog useful and be able to apply something I post to help them further their photographic goals.

Thank you for visiting. Check back often. Enjoy.