Failed Fireworks
Your Daily Shot of Indie-Goodness:
Annuals - Sore
When a holiday comes around, it only means one thing for me: work.
Last night, though, Mike Autry decided to spice up our July 4th with root beer floats, chicken wings, and a few packs of sparklers.
After we’d both gotten off work (roughly 10:30pm), we headed out to my yard with our cameras and tripods to see what we could get. A few of my distant neighbors had apparently gotten something larger than sparklers, but they only shot about one firework (can it be used in the singular every five minutes). This was the best shot I got:
Now, on to the sparklers. I couldn’t figure out a good way to incorporate them into an interesting photo. Mike hit upon a very clever application, but I couldn’t steal his idea and my own brain was just mush. This is the best I got, which isn’t much:
I thought about using that for my daily shot, but when I went to my porch this morning, I saw we’d forgotten to throw away one used sparkler. I liked how the foil curled, so I took it inside and took this instead:
Ah, well. There’s always next year.
In flash-related news, I feel I made a breakthrough today when I set the flash to “Manual” and could control the output by determining the power of the flash (i.e. 1/1 for full power, 1/4 for less, 1/64 for WAY less). I’m going to play around more when I have a chance and will hopefully get something useful. I still really need to get an off-camera flash shoe…
July 5th, 20089:37 pm at
I got my flash about the same time you got yours and have also discovered the power of manual mode. Ironic that we’ve got these very powerful flashes that incorporate P-TTL, yet so many find them most useful in their manual setting.
Oh well, still tons to learn about flash. I, too, have been wanting an off-camera flash shoe or a pocket wizard-type radio trigger.