I had a lot of fun yesterday shooting 4th of July fireworks above Donner Lake in my town of Truckee, California. Ok... I spent a lot of time sitting on the edge of a cliff, bored, waiting for the show. But it was relaxing as I picked a location that is hard to get to so there were not a lot of tourists around.
A couple rock climbers did surprise me when all of a sudden they popped their heads up over the edge of the cliff. We ended up having a great conversation after they reached the top, where I was. I forgot to get a photos of them though.
Once the show did finally start, I went to work and did end up having a lot of fun. It was a good show, I ended up with many "keeper" photos. Here's a couple of my favorites:
Both photos were shot with a Canon 5DS R and a 24-105mm lens. Both were longer exposures with the camera on a tripod, no lens filters were used.
The top photo was ISO 500, the lens aperture was f/4.0, and it was a 4 second exposure. It was also cropped a bit to be more of a panoramic format.
The bottom photos was ISO 200, the lens aperture was also f/4.0, and it was a 5 second exposure. Both images required a lot of adjustments in Photoshop's RAW converter.
Here's where I was sitting for quite a few hours before the show. It's a small ledge with only room for one photographer. I got there early because I wanted to make sure I was that one photographer.
Thank you for looking and I hope you all are having a great day!
Scott Thompson
www.ScottShotsPhoto.com
