Last night I went to the fireworks display at the Mayflower Park in Southampton with a few new Uni friends and I loved it. We began our evening visiting the fairground – going on rides and eating some not too healthy food (which isn’t much of a new thing for me), before moving off to the Riverside to watch the firework display. The rides are littered with brightly coloured flashing lights which make the ideal subjects for creative light trails using the camera’s slow shutter speed. Unfortunately, the fairground was too busy to use a tripod (and a remote release) so all my images were handheld, but I think I have captured images that convey speed, colour and the excitement of the evening proceedings.
I thought that the firework display was very well thought out – being over the water you saw mirror images of the fireworks as well as ensuring the crowd’s safety. Fireworks are beautiful and spectacular to watch but they are a bit tricky to photograph really well as the ‘bursts’ are difficult to predict and blurring seemed inevitable (have I mentioned I didn’t have a tripod?). Having the camera trained on the right part of the sky at the right time did prove problematic. Not many shots were true ‘keepers’…
I definitely enjoyed my time at the Riverside and would love to have the opportunity to photograph fairgrounds and fireworks again – but this time with a tripod and a little more planning thrown into the mix such as the location for an unobstructed position (not in the middle of a crowd where we ended up at!). I would like to experiment with taking shots that include a wider perspective of the surrounding area, people watching the display (the momentary lighting on children’s faces) and enjoying the fairground rides. I have learnt that having your camera pointed at the night sky can give you colourful and dramatic shots but by using different perspectives you could get shots that are less clichéd and, dare I say it, more atmospheric. Here are some of my more successful shots (loving the heart shot!)…
Unintentional and unexpected Bokeh image… (note to self I really need to experiment with this photography technique).
© Hayley Salmon
Visual Exploration 