Summer Nightastic! Fireworks Spectacular (75 sec. exposure)

Click the image for Flickr where there is EXIF along with my commentary about shooting the show.

 

Tom,

Could you step us through your post processing of this amazing photo? ; I know someone was asking about how you avoided the smoke on the DIS. ; Also, you must have had a very calm night.

Which ND filter did you use? ; If variable, at what strength. ; This is knock your socks off good!

Oh, how was the Honeymoon? ;

 

Fantastic work Tom. Consistently one of the best here!

 

Post processing was almost nill (slight fill increase, exposure decrease, and highlight control). ; The only "big" thing was a white balance adjustment. ; The red during these fireworks definitely dominates (over the blue), so I cooled the shot a bit to replicate how it looked to the human eye.

I used the B+W 1.8 (6 stop) ND filter. ; It does pick up smoke (my Illuminations shots are plagued by this) but not a whole lot.

This is the same pyro show from P&P with some slight changes to dialogue. ; I would rank it as my #2 fireworks show at MK (slightly behind MVMCP and slightly ahead of MNSSHP).

Good luck to any of you trying to shoot the show. ; It was more crowded than I've ever seen Main Street. ; I could never get a centered location, and two nights I didn't even try to shoot it. ; If you've never seen it, it's worth just holstering the camera and just watching it once. ; You can tell that the crowd LOVES this show.

 

Tom, what a great idea and a fantastic shot. ; I have been thinking about sneaking my wife off to WDW while the last kid in the nest is off at camp. ; I think may just have sold me.

Beautiful colors. ; Just perfect. ; Thanks for sharing.

 

I was hoping to shoot it from the Cali Grill observation deck, but it poured the night we had dinner there. ; They gave us a "rain check" to go up there the next night, but we just decided to watch from inside the park to save time (probably a mistake).

 

Thanks, Tom, for the information. ; A most excellent photograph even if you had to endure the crowd.

 

She carried her D40 & 18-200 plus her own tripod (which I carried), so we both did take some pictures. ; Although most of the photography during the trip focused on us. ; Still, I managed to snap a few decent shots of things other than us. ; But I knew where to draw the line.

 

Congrats! ; A great place to honeymoon! ; And the shot is simply awesome!

 

Amazing shot there Tom. Congrats on the wedding too.

 

thanks for the shooting info, this is a great shot, now it leads me to wonder if i might be able to do something similar with my vari n-d when we go to mnsshp in october. karen and i could not take the seperation from disney and we are going for oct 20-24 , a short trip mostly for the party and a little epcot

 

I don't why not, Gary. ; It does the same as an ND filter but you could try a few different strengths instead of having to selection with filter to use. ; A huge advantage if you ask me.

 

Those are some very colorful fireworks my friend! Great shot and hope that the honeymoon was awesome!

 

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. ; I still have yet to get a shot printed--probably the penny-pincher in me thinking that each shot I print is $X towards printing that could be better used to buy gear!

Most definitely! ; I'd look at some EXIF data before you go to get a good idea in advance of what settings to use. ; The first go round, I stacked a polarizer on top of the 6 stop ND, went with around f/16, and after a 30-40 second exposure of fireworks, I had a mostly black frame.