Like all eternal kids I’m a big fan of fireworks, so I was genuinely excited to be photographing the fireworks display for Pyro1 to mark the opening of the new Student Union accommodation right by Wembley Stadium. When it comes to pyrotechnics everything is timed to the second and this display was going to last for just 180! No pressure then! I knew that once the display began I would have very little room for manoeuvre, which meant I needed to arrive with plenty of time to scope the area and look for the best location to set up my tripod. As I’d be using longer exposures to capture the fireworks I needed to be sure that there were no lampposts in the foreground of my frame which would not only be distracting but the light from them would over-expose the image. Once I’d found my spot I waited for the start of the display with Mark who was acting as time-keeper and was in walkie-talkie contact with Neil on top of the building where the fireworks had been set up. Before I knew it we were off – and I began to understand the 3 and 5 and 10 second chunks of time that pyrotechnicans are used to working with. Three minutes actually felt much longer than I expected!
With any form of night photography it’s not really until you see the images on the back of the camera (or, even better, on your computer screen) that you get to see the full magnitude of the lights you’ve captured which are not visible for more than a split second to the human eye.
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