July 4th Fireworks In Washington DC

Washington DC is probably one of the best place to celebrate fourth of July. July 4th celebration is an all-day event in the nation's capital, beginning with the parade along Constitution Avenue and ending with the fireworks. Fourth of July celebration is a great opportunity to shoot fireworks, specially in Washington DC. Shooting fireworks is always fun and new experience to me no matter how many times I have done it before. Usually, in the beginning of the shooting, I set my camera settings to basic for fireworks shooting and later play around with it and do new experiments. I have always learned more and more when I play around with the camera settings and adjust it beyond widely recognized industry standard settings. Last month I wrote a blog post about camera settings to capture fireworks using Nikon D90. Even though that camera setting was specifically for D90, it can be applied to any other camera. You may find different terminology for different brands of camera or menu settings will be in different places but the overall concept is same; lower ISO, 3-4 seconds of shutter speed and small aperture, f/12 for example. Other than following the basic camera settings, only way to master the firework shot is keep practicing and trying new ideas and play around with your settings.

Here are couple of shots from July 4th, last Sunday. In the first picture, you can see little smoke in the background which could have been avoided if I had closed the shutter right after the explosion but since my camera was not in the BULB mode, there was no way to close it manually other than waiting for the exposure time to be finished. But this is the part of the learning process.

In this second picture, smoke is not visible and fireworks looks crisp in pitch-black background. This time I learned from my previous mistake and changed the shutter speed from 4 seconds to 2 seconds, changed the aperture from f/12 to f/16 and snapped it right after I heard the explosion so that the shutter will be closed before the smoke is visible.

If you have any suggestions about shooting fireworks or learned new tips and tricks from your experiment, please share it with us. Happy Shooting!

Night Shooting Around Memorial Parks In Washington DC

When I visited around National Mall recently, I regretted for not taking my camera gears with me. Since then, it was always on my to do list to capture the beauty of DC monuments at night. As soon as the weather was nice for night shooting, I went there last Saturday with my Nikon D90, 18-200mm VR II telephoto lens and the tripod. While I was waiting for the lights to be fully illuminated, I scouted around couple places to shoot. My idea was to capture well lit monuments with the dark background. As the evening got darker and darker, the light intensity was increasing slowly over the memorial areas and I noticed few photographers who were coming with their camera gears and setting up for the photo-shoot. At around 10 PM, all the monuments were shining on the bright lights in the backdrop of dark evening. It was such a beautiful and amazing view which can’t be explain in words but you have to be there to experience it. If you are interested in photography and live in the United States or even outside for that matter, I think it’s one of the place to visit.

I met couple of professional photographers there and learned quite a lot from them. I met Andy Walker from North Carolina who was a professional photographer for many years and taught me various techniques of photography and showed me some of his amazing arts including recent rocket launch shot he captured at NASA (Kennedy Space Center) in Florida. I walked around with Andy and took this shot inside the Lincoln Memorial.

Exposure - 4sec     Aperture - f/16    Focal Length - 105mm    ISO - 200

If you are also planning to shoot around the memorial parks in Washington DC, please keep in mind that you are not allowed to use a tripod inside the Lincoln memorial. If you want to take a close-up shot of the Lincoln, you have to bring a telephoto lens with you.

Here is the outside view of the Lincoln Memorial.

Exposure - 8sec     Aperture - f/14    Focal Length - 31mm    ISO - 200

And here is the World War II Memorial with the Washington Monument standing in the background.

Exposure - 10sec     Aperture - f/16   Focal Length - 24mm    ISO - 200

It is an amazing place to be at night and if you like doing night photography, it's one of the best place to visit. If you have been there or planning to go someday, please feel free to share your experience.

If you are looking for the camera settings to take long exposure shot, fireworks for example, you may want to review my blog post on how to shoot fireworks with Nikon D90. Depending on your requirements and lighting environment, Shutter speed, Aperture, ISO and other camera settings may vary but it will give you some insights about camera settings to begin with and you can change them as later you get more experienced photographer.

Happy shooting!