Here in Maryland there is a light dusting of snow on the ground, temperatures in the high 20’s low 30’s. My wife and daughter are out to see a play, and my son is upstairs taking a nap. The only football game on right now is the Eagles/Giants game — yawn.

I’m bored.  What to do? I know, take some pictures of the Christmas ornaments on the tree we recently put up.

These shots were taken on a tripod with my 135 f/2.0 lens. ISO 200 and a tungsten WB. The average shutter speed was about a third of a second.

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Taking photographs of fireworks is fun and relatively simple.

Last night I brought my camera, 70-200 lens and a tripod out to see the fireworks from South Hampton Middle school in Bel Air, with my family. I setup my camera to shoot in “bulb” mode (which means the shutter stays open for as long as my finger is depressing the shutter, and shuts as soon as I let off), ISO 100 and f/11. Set the lens to manual focus and waited for the show to start.

Once the first few projectiles hit the sky, I could then point the camera in the right direction and get my focus set. At that point, it was just a matter of holding down the shutter for as long as one, two, or several explosions appear in the sky. If your camera doesn’t have “bulb” mode, set your exposure time long (4-10 seconds).

I know there are many cities and towns shooting fireworks off tonight, Saturday, July 5th — so there is still time for you to try this out for yourself, rather than having to wait a whole year.

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On Monday, I am shooting corporate headshots for a client, so yesterday I was setting up a new lighting scheme from techniques I learned from the Lighting-Essentials workshop I attended last month.

I was resorting to setting a timer on my camera and then running over to the chair to capture myself in the frame to check my lighting. Luckily, after only a few laps from camera to chair and back, my son came home from work. He is on the grounds crew at Mountain Branch Golf Course in Joppa. Of course he was all sweaty and wanted a shower, but he was more than happy to sit in for a couple test shots.

There is something about this image I really like, and I thought I’d share.

This is taken with a large softbox to camera right and a white foamboard camera left. I had a second light with grid hitting the background from left to right. I normally would have the backlight directly behind the subject, but in this test setup I was limited on the amount of space between the subject and the backdrop.

I shot a basketball on my pergo floor in my basement. Overhead I used a Canon 580EX flash at 1/8 power with shipping tube over flash head to create the spotlight look. I positioned a second 580EX at 1/32 power on floor with snoot pointed directly at ball to give a bit of fill to the lower half of ball.

I was quite pleased with the way this turned out. By looking at the image itself, you would think it was taken on a basketball court floor, rather than in my basement.

Below shows how the shot was setup:

One night before the official full-moon I ventured outside to capture the moon. Most people think you need a long exposure for this, but that’s not the way to do it. The moon is being illuminated by the sun and even though the sky is dark, the moon is quite bright. Here are the settings used for this photo:

Canon 70-200L w/1.4X
ISO 200; f/5.6; 1/800