Lake Panorama Fire in the Sky Fireworks - 18 Edition - D90

Equipment Used: Nikon D90, Tamron 24-70 mm f2.8 G2 lense, Hahnel Wireless Remote Control, Slik Pro 500DX tripod, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

Lake Panorama held its fireworks show on the closest Saturday to the 4^th of July this summer and I headed to my usual location to capture the boats on the water and fireworks above them.

I set up both of my cameras and in this collection; the D90 was used with the 24-70mm lense to capture these images. Settings on the camera included an ISO of 400, f7.1 to f9.0 aperture and 42mm on the lense. The Hahnel remote was used to trigger the camera when I saw the fireworks get lit and I held the shutter open for anywhere between 3 to 23 seconds.  When running a two camera set up, sometimes you forget which remote you have pushed down which might turn an image into something good or bad?

Using Lightroom, I used user presets that I’ve developed last year for fireworks in the same scene situation and then further tweaked the basic tab sliders. Graduated filter and a mask was used to fine tune the exposure of the boats on the water and the reflection in the water.

In Photoshop, I cloned out unwanted objects like a cell phone tower and a buoy that was in the water. I used a vibrance adjustment layer to increase the color of the fireworks as well. I reduced the noise of these images with the reduce noise filter. I created 3 combined images in PS using different images of fireworks. I was able to do this by using different blending modes with layer masks and rotating the images to spread out the look of the fireworks.

These images turned out better I think because they are in better focus as far as the boats and firework bursts are concerned. Even though the D750 is the better camera, miss focusing caused by the lense made the D90 the winner on this shoot. With Panorama Days this weekend, I’ll have a second chance to get focused shots on both cameras. 

#1.

#2.

#3.

#4.

#5.

#6.

#7.

#8.

#9.

#10.

#11.

#12.

#13.