Blackpool's World Championship Fireworks 2014...Sweden

We went down to the promenade to watch Sweden kick off this year's Firework competition and they didn't disappoint with their spectacular display. We stood in the car park of the Metropole Hotel and had a grand view of them being set off from the North Pier. The tide was in which makes for beautiful reflections off the water. I tried my best after researching the best way to photograph fireworks, this Friday though I'll make sure I don't have the shutter open for a long. I had it open for about 7 seconds for each photograph for these but will try 4 seconds instead and see if they're any better. I'm quite pleased with the results regardless so here they are. I made a small video of the last 3 minutes of the display.

 

Learning photography from scratch

I've decided that as I have a lovely new Nikon D7000 I need to learn how to use it to its full potential to justify the £'s spent on it. It's not easy to learn and retain information at my age but I'll have a damn good try. Today I have learnt that ISO is the level of your camera's sensitivity to available light. The lower the ISO number the less sensitive it is to light while the higher the ISO is the more sensitive the camera is to light. Also the higher the ISO number is the more noise or grain you get on your photo so it's almost always best to use as low an ISO setting that you can.

ISO Aperture and Shutter Speed are known as the Exposure Triangle. This is a good link for an explanation of how they work together.
 http://photographylife.com/iso-shutter-speed-and-aperture-for-beginners

ISO = noise The higher the ISO the more noise on or grainy the photo

Aperture = depth of field the lower number F stop (larger opening) eg F5.6 the smaller depth of field (blurry background) The higher the number F stop (smaller opening) eg F20 the longer depth of field (clearer background )

Shutter speed = Blur The faster the shutter speed the more clear a photo is. The slower the shutter speed the more blur occurs. Running water ie a river can look milky if a slow shutter speed is used.