The very first post! And as the start of this blog coincides with the start of a new year, I’ll start with photographing fireworks. It was my first attempt at doing this. My man gave me some clues: use a tripod (which I didn’t do, too much hassle), stop the aperture a bit, and use long shutter speeds. To be frank, I didn’t expect to be able to make a good ‘traditional’ firework photo with this camera shooting handheld. So I opted for other effects of the fireworks. The sky coloured beautifully, and I liked the contrast with the tree in the picture above (1/6 seconds at f/2.4). Apperently you can get decent sharpness with such a long exposure. Or I am just that steady?

Above another example of the side-effect of fireworks: a lot of smoke. Which is great, because a lot of light gets bounced off from it, creating the dramatic effect. Again not perfect sharpness (1/30 seconds at f/4.8), but still an interesting picture to me.

I did try to create a proper firework photo as well, and I was actually quite pleased. The photo of the red fireworks below was shot with an exposure of 1/250 seconds at f/5.6. I love the little starbursts at the end of the tails, and I love the detail in the tails.  Although you might have to zoom in to actually see the details.

To finish my first blog: Happy New Year! And I hope to see you back here again.

All photos in this post were shot with the Leica M (type 240) with the Summicron-M 1:2/35mm ASPH.