Fireworks on New Year's Eve..

Usually we avoid going to Seattle for viewing the fireworks on the Space Needle since it will be overcrowded, cold and there will be a lot of drunk drivers! Above all, finding a good viewpoint for photography is a challenge. This year we decided to take a chance and headed to Kerry Park on the Queen Ann hill. This park offers perhaps the best view of Seattle downtown.

As this park is crowded by photographers on most days, we were thinking we won't get a spot today. To our surprise, there were not that many photographers when we got there by 8pm. There was no rain and the sky was clear! But it was freezing cold!

We waited for 4 hrs for the fireworks along with many other photographers. By 10pm the park got jam packed.

The fireworks started at 12am and lasted for about 10 mins. To be honest, there was everything this year (clear day, great parking spot and cheering crowd) except for great fireworks (compared to previous years)! :( Once the fireworks were over, we could hear people saying "This was an economy package fireworks..."

Here are few shots that we got. All these are composite of two or three shots. We used Photoshop CS2 and created layers for each of the images and merged them.

Update: Wednesday, January 10, 2007

We got many requests on how these shots were made. So, posting the techniques used for these photos.

• We used a sturdy Tripod (of course!)


• We took couple of test shots of the space needle before the fireworks and adjusted the compensation by -0.7. then kept the same settings. We used Auto WB which worked out pretty well!


• We used Nikon 80-200 f2.8 and zoomed in on space needle (vertically) still leaving some space on the sides and at the top for fireworks.


• We didn’t change the frame at all. This helps combining multiple firework shots easily (during post processing) and we knew that the fireworks would only last for about 10 mins.


• Since we wanted slower shutter speed to catch as much action as possible at once, we used f14-f16 and this got us about 6-8 seconds.


• Mostly we just kept tripping the shutter as soon as it returned as it got us some actions in sequence.


• Whenever possible we started the shots in-between the batches of fireworks – doing this allowed us to have slower shutter speeds while exposing the shots correctly. Starting a shot when the fireworks are in progress, would have resulted in faster shutter speeds (as there is more available light) and we wouldn't have been able to capture the long light streaks of the fireworks.