Photographing fireworks.

There are 364 days left to prepare for bonfire night, or if you're lucky there may be one you could get to tonight, but technically it would be a day late. Taking photos of fireworks is massive fun, because it's pretty easy to get good results. But, it's a number game. Expect a 5% yield of photos you'd likely consider good enough to keep and you'll be happy. Many modern camera's have a fireworks mode. If yours does, I'd suggest you use it but be aware of what your camera is doing, perhaps tweak a manual or custom mode to give you some flexibility. Also, not all 'fireworks' modes are the same, my daughters camera favours a 4 second exposure time, where as my fuji set shutter speed to 2 seconds. The ISO and the F stop can vary in 'fireworks' mode, depending on the scene, literally in microseconds depending on what it sees. So it's worth bearing that in mind. Unless you can make a decision, and adjust your camera settings like the bionic man, in the same time it takes for a firework to fill the sky, perhaps there's no shame in letting a computer make those decisions for you. Don't let manual snobbery stop you getting a great shot. However, if you want to set up your camera and have an experiment you may be surprised to learn you can get away with a very low ISO, resulting in crisp sharp picture. 100-200 is fine as the bright light from the firework will cut through and burn a lovely high contrast image onto your sensor. F stop of 10 or below should suffice, but pay particular attention to your focus. Auto focus could struggle in low light. So maybe switching to manual would be wise, with a wider F stop? But it's your call. Nevertheless it's a great time to get your camera out and learn more about how it copes with fireworks.

Start with
ISO 200
f stop 8
Shutter 2"

Try handheld you may get some wobble, depending on your ability to hold a camera still, but the effects work as often as they fail. Tripod use is limited unless you're including the foreground on a wide shot, as firework tend to fill different parts of the sky, and zooming with a good optical telephoto is generally the way you'll want to capture an explosion.

How to make a video engaging

We're overwhelmed with information on a daily basis. Our attention spans are shorter than ever. Research suggests we've moved from an attention span of 12 seconds (only a few years ago), to around 8 seconds in 2016. Advertisers know this, and most ads (on youtube) at least have 5 seconds, before the clickbait (that has driven them here) is prioritised over the message from the advertiser. In recent days my kids have told me that they like the adverts that say their message in the first 5 seconds, then waste the rest of their 30 seconds on something trivial. The one they cited was a bloke getting out of the shower, who, at 27 seconds asked "Are you still here" after delivering all he had to say 22 seconds previously. Nevertheless, 90% of information the brain receives is visual, so using video is the key to driving traffic your way.
It's the same with videos. It's one thing to get a viewer to click a link to your latest creation, but another altogether to get them to watch until the end. Bearing in mind you're probably already switching off, I'll cut to the chase, here's my top tips to ensure your video will get clicked and a longer view time.

1) Create an engaging thumbnail.
2) Include the thumbnail image on any social media links or better still, include the best 10 seconds of video clip to give viewers a glimpse of what they're likely to enjoy.
3) Make the first 5-10 seconds really visually impactful.
4) Unless your video is an engaging spoken to camera piece, try to keep clips between 5-10 seconds.
5) If you're making cool aerial videos, don't include time before launch and flight time to the best shots, do some work in your editing software and just put in your best bits*.
6) Keep the video 1.5 to 2.5 minutes. Anything longer and people get bored, especially if the flight is of one subject, a lighthouse, or boat etc,
7) Choose your music wisely, audition a lot and ensure that it's not annoying.

Thats it, hope this helps with your viewing figures and audience engagement. Let me know your top tips.


* Have a look when you're watching normal TV at how long each 'clip' is, its rare a clip will be over 5 seconds in length. Unless it's the film Gravity, the first clip of which goes on for several minutes.

Photographing the supermoon, November 14th 2016

On the 14th of November this year there will be the biggest ever supermoon that the world has ever seen since records began etc etc, again.
Nevertheless it will provide (once again) fantastic opportunities to take some great pictures. However, you should probably start snapping now. The difference in diameter will be negligible and the weather, clouds conditions on the 14th may not be as favourable as they may be on the 13th, or the 12th. So my advice, is get snapping straight away, but bear in mind the 14th is when it's 'full' but that doesn't always mean more photogenic. The other thing to bear in mind is, if you want to get a natural shot of it looking supersize, then you're going to need a foreground, and peculiarly, light. It's actually much easier to photograph the moon during the day. So thinking about what time the moon rises is going to be important as well.
Without the use of photoshop or an equivalent photo editing program, if you want to get the classic giant moon shot, you're going to need a hefty telephoto lens. 300mm should be sufficient, in order to compose something reasonable. The shot (left) was taken at extremely short notice, I was in an open air restaurant in kefalonia when it cropped up, although it's acceptable, there are a number of things we can learn by studying it. On the night, the moon looked huge, but as you can see from the photo, It's not really done it any justice. The reason is because the scale of the foreground object is too large. The chimney is larger than the moon. Whilst the 250mm focal length ensures the moon fills a fair portion of the photo, the foreground objects are simply too close. The solution to creating the super-moon illusion is to ensure that you can frame the moon as close to the horizon as possible. Next to buildings looks great as the 'supermoon' will dwarf them.
This thinking gives us two problems.
1) Focus and aperture; and
2) Exposure and ISO.
The photo above was taken (in a panic) handheld. Although the Canon IS really helped out, the shutter speed had to be dropped to 1/13, which is a fair challenge to hold handheld. The f stop was thus, as low as the camera could handle and the lowest ISO I could get away with was 400. Which under the circumstances felt like the best compromise. You've got to remember as well, the moon doesn't half shift when you're zoomed in close, so planning beforehand is vital if an impressive supermoon shot is your goal. Given the same challenge, there are a number of things you can do to prepare.
1) Know where the moon is likely to rise, think about your composition and don't forget the rule of thirds.
2) Expect your best photos to come from night 2.
3) Use a tripod and leave it in situ overnight (if you're doing 2 nights and it's possible), or mark clearly where the legs were fully extended.
4) Use night 1 to experiment with camera settings and review the photos for clarity and exposure.
5) Consider HDR methodology, and set your AEB to +/- a couple of F stops. (I use HDRtist - it's simple).
6) If 5 isn't appealing, use as low an ISO as you can get away with.
7) Use a middling to high aperture, 9 or higher should be sufficient. You want the edge of the buildings sharp as the moon. Bear in mind higher aperture will mean longer shutter speeds that could show the moon blurry as it does move pretty quick.
8) Use a shutter release if possible, or 2 seconds timer delay if you can't, to keep things as still as you can.
9) Concentrate your exposure on the detail from the moon. The contrast of the moon is far harder to pull the detail from (because of the high contrast) than the simple flat silhouette of the building and the flat colour of the sky behind it.
10) Bear in mind, the finished photograph is definitely going to need some post production tweaks. If HDR isn't your thing, then your going to want to look at balancing the contrast, ensuring the highlights aren't overblown and the darks too lost. Ensure your screen brightness is set to full before you start playing.

If you're not sure where the moon will rise, have a look at Google's sky map app for android and iOS there are also plenty of apps that will tell you what time the moon will rise. Currently it's quarter to twelve, in the morning. Which would be ideal.

Have fun, good luck and share your best pictures below.

Here's my best photo of an eclipse, but wait..... thats no moon.