New Year’s Eve. It’s way past midnight now and I confess it’s been embarrassing, nothing short of embarrassing. Don’t you hate those once-in-a-lifetime or once-a-year chances when you think you’re prepared, everything is controlled, and then things start to slide away, go awry, get their own life?
I was determined to shoot fireworks!
Well, I have never shot a single firework in my life. Of course I have seen many, at least one per year, but shooting them? On the other hand, it must be easy, eh? Put your camera on the tripod, set it to manual mode, f8, bulb mode, trigger the cable release and wait.
OK, the first problem was, that down in the valley there was fog. I was not sure how dense it was, but it turned out being too dense. The next problem was, that obviously some neighbors who had always made fireworks this year didn’t. Maybe they were away, maybe they simply didn’t want to, maybe net incomes really have slacked. I don’t know, but whatever the reason, the fireworks were everywhere but in the direction I had turned my camera.
OK, that’s the beauty of using a wide-angle, right? It won’t be in the center, but from all sides it will bloom into the image, framing a full-moon sky in a special way, right?
Wrong. The timer on the cable release had happily counted minutes and seconds, but I had forgotten to put the camera into manual focus mode. Uh-ohh. No light, no focus, no exposure. See you next year!
Luckily enough, I have some other images for today, for example this one. It is of a creek down in the valley, running parallel to the storage lake of the river power plant east of Ferlach. It is fascinating to see how the algae in its bed keep their deep emerald green, even in this time of winter, when all the surroundings have bleached out.
Oh, and, Happy New Year!