Fireworks

Cracking light show on the ground and in the sky.

The Hotel Eilean Iarmain (“EI”) is a lovely spot any time of the year, with a vibrant bar, excellent food and super rooms. On the 4th November they held a bonfire and fireworks event and I went over to attempt a firework image to show the natural harbour location with some sparkles up above.

Usually at this time of year I keep a close eye on my aurora forecasting apps. The best one I’ve got is created by Andy Stables up in Glendale on Skye. It is far more accurate and informative than any other I’ve used. Checking it before heading out revealed some aurora action forecast for the evening so I thought things could get quite interesting.

Due to the aurora forecast, I changed my plans. Initially I was going to shoot the EI fireworks from a long way off using a 100-400 lens. With a possible aurora incoming, I decided to get much closer in, and planted myself upon the small waste treatment plant just beyond one of the hotel’s cottages. This gave me a nice view over the water to the pier and the gallery & shop. With the bonfire lit, and the fireworks due in 30 minutes I started to work on the composition and camera settings.

By now the aurora was visible to the naked eye. The aurora app was shouting out a red alert and it was looking pretty powerful. A couple of test exposures confirmed a monster green glow, combined with some “mackerel” clouds which looked very unusual.

I decided to use my Sony A7III and 16-35 2.8 lens to get a wide enough angle for the expected height of the fireworks. Using manual focusing, I shot a number of “base” images of the scene to the context and the developing aurora. I set the camera at 15 sec f/3.5 ISO 1250 for these. 15 sec gives sharp enough stars. f/3.5 is a bit closed from the lens’s maximum f/2.8 to get a smidge more sharpness (depth of field is no issue at this distance at 16mm). ISO 1250 gave me the right balance of exposure without being too noisy.

I continue to be really impressed with the Sony A7III. Alongside my state-of-the art Leica Q3, it really holds its own for detail and sensor quality.

Things moved quickly when the fireworks kicked off. I knew I’d need totally different settings on the camera because fireworks are massively bright compared to the ambient light. Fireworks are tricky to set up for because you never know how high they will go, in which direction, and how intense they’ll be.

Initially I started off at 5 seconds, f/5, ISO 800 but quickly ended up at 2 seconds, f/5, ISO 100. The shots were just too overexposed to be usable so I had to adjust fast. Thankfully the fireworks were expolding within the frame I had composed for, which meant that the previous aurora base compositions were all OK. I had worried I would have to recompose as a vertical shot, and then reshoot the base image afterwards, which was a problem as clouds were getting thicker.

Pretty much all you can do once the exposure is set OK is mash the cable shutter release repatedly as the fireworks shoot up, trying to anticipate the timing exploding “flowers” at the top of the rocket flight to get the rocket trail and the maximum extent of the spectacular blooms.

5 minutes later it was all over. I had a good selection of base images, and what looked like a nice group of firework shots to work on.

Never one to miss a good aurora, I then headed around the “loop road” to get a view north towards the Cuillin mountains. I had in mind a re-shoot of my Dunscaith Castle image, but with an aurora in the background. However, that shot was taken on a full-moon night which provided ample ambient lighting so you could actually see what was in frame. Unfortunately, on this night there was no moon so the shot would not worked - you wouldn’t have seen the castle even with a 5 minute exposure.

Instead I drove round to Tarskavaig where there’s a “lazy photographer” shot from the roadside above the township that takes in the houses with the Cuillin in the background. Not a difficult shot by any standards. For this one used my Leica Q3 to get the best possible resolution (60mp versus 24mp on the Sony). A bit of exposure jiggling to match the sky, the house lights and leave a bit of detail in the land, and I had a nice image at 48 sec f/1.7 ISO 1600 (which gives you an idea how dark it was).

Tarskavaig with the Cuilling behind and a vibrant aurora overhead

Back in the edit suite at HQ, I started the process of assembling the firework shot. I imported a selection of explodey firework images and a nice base aurora/hotel shot into Photoshop and started the rather tedious process of selecting and layering. Photoshop’s latest AI selecting tools are great, but haven’t got the hang of fireworks yet.

To pick out an individual firework trail from the background I selected the rough area using the lasso, and then within that used Select > Colour Range. This allows you to use a pinpoint eyedropper tool to pick out the specific bright firework trail areas with accuracy. If you use the “+” eyedropper you can click in multiple places to add to the selection and handle the differing colours/brightness in each trail. Once that’s done, you have a nice and accurate selection of just the firework trail which can be copied to the clipboard.

For each firework trail, I’d create a new layer on top of the base aurora/hotel shot, and paste the copied trail into it. It was then necessary to move the trail to the right place because Photoshop “forgets” where the original was. I ended up with 12 layers in all. Like I said, it’s not the most exciting part of photography for me.

12 layers and lots of selections in Photoshop

With the assembled main image starting to look pretty good, I exported the final tiff file into Lightroom to carry out some final adjustments. I find it much easier to do this in Lightroom than Photoshop. A few global exposure, clarity, noise reduction and sharpening adjustments were needed, complimented by some point adjustments to brighten a few of the firework trails and take down the exposure on the hotel lights.

Overall, I’m very happy with the end result. The idyllic waterside setting of EI, plus the fireworks, plus the aurora makes for a rare image indeed. Yes, the aurora really was that green.

The Tarskavaig shot was much more like it from a post processing perspective. About 3 minutes of work to make some global adjustments and minor exposure tweaks was all it needed. It’s interesting to see the change in colour of the aurora over the course of about an hour. The Tarskavaig shot has far more pink in it than the EI shot. Weird stuff these auroras.