DHS - Fireworks

I like them Gary, especially that I have not seen this type of shot before too! If this is the thing Michael showed me, I love this process for combining images.

 

Hey, can you right up a procedure for this two image process you are all talking about? I think many would be interested. Maybe have Tim publish it on the site.

 

i think michael would be best for writing it up, although it's even simple enough for me to understand, so here goes a try
1. you have to start with a base image for the background, it needs to be light enough to let the background come out, i took several this night from the same spot, with varying amounts of exposure time to give me a range to pick from. the old f11, iso 100 and shutter open in differing time lengths. you do want to capture some detail. you do this from where you are going to shoot the fireworks from, and you do not change the tripod angles at all when you shoot the show
2. shoot your fireworks shots, keeping in mind you want as dark a background as possible, so your burst shots are now very brief, a couple of seconds a lot of the time
3. i process my shots in lightroom, and i have what i think is a pretty decent fireworks preset that i have tinkered with over the last 4 years and gotten to where i like it, i cull out the rejects and then just group apply it to the remaining shots
4. select and fine tune your base shot
5. in lightroom select the 2 photos, base shot and the burst shot you want, click on photo, click on edit in and select whatever version of photoshop you use to open the 2 photos
6. click on the base shot, this will open it as the background layer
7. command a
8. command c
in windows i believe this is control instead of command
9. now click on the fireworks shot, this now opens up as layer 1
10. command v
click on normal to get the drop down
click on lighten, default is 100 % opacity, you can adjust to taste
that's it, you should now be seeing the combined photo in the ps view window
i have been exporting from lightroom as tiff's, so for me right now it takes a minute for both to open up as the working files are currently in adobe dng
i will in the near future be abandoning dng and working in raw so as not to lose any file details. this new laptop is muscular enough to handle these files and i really see a speed difference
i still have 2 drobo slots open out of 4 so when the time comes i can really boot up my storage as this drobo will recognize drives up to 12 tb in size.
so i am now saving the finished file as a tiff, importing back to lightroom and converting to jpeg when ready to upload to my phanfare site

 

ok here is another with 100% opacity, for some reason it looks darker here in this post than it did in photoshop???

 

Fireworks Friday by John Wolff, on Flickr

 

so here is my interpretation of galactic spectacular, i just wish the bursts had been higher, then it would have been outstanding combined photos, from the echo lake, men in a row looking like they were doing bad stuff meet


and this one was an experiment at merging 3 shots together



another multiple merge

 

Totally agree but it is what it is. If you think about it. Illuminations was the original projection show with the globe projecting images from the inside out. It didn't take away from the fireworks like the newer shows do at MK and DHS.

 

There is at least one decent spot for Jingle Bell, Jingle BAM! at the studios this season. There is a lot more pyro in this edition of the show vs last year. My first attempt at fireworks with the new camera so there will be do-overs to get it right, but I do like this location. The projections are essentially invisible from here but there are no crazy crowds and I kind of like what you get for a foundation under the fireworks.

 

yeah don, that is a mighty fine fireworks foreground place

 

Nice work Don! That's at the top of my list of fireworks shots for this trip.

 

Saw that on Twitter @donsullivan and put that as my spot for the last night of Pixelmania. Well done!