As with the previous couple of years, the event almost didn’t take place as the result of tough economic times and lack of support from sponsors. Luckily however, as was also the case last year, a handful of fantastic sponsors (Shore 104, The Keg, London Drugs, HSBC & Conchord Pacific) ponied up the funds needed to pull the spectacle together for another year.

And boy were the thousands upon thousands that gathered on the water, and the shores of English Bay, False Creek, Kitsilano Beach and beyond, dazzled over the course of 4 nights, by professional teams from the USA, Spain and Mexico.

One of the principal nightly sponsors for this year’s event was again the wonderful folk from Shore 104.3FM. In the hours leading up to the colourful explosions each evening, the radio station presented “SHOREfest” – a free Summer concert series performed right in front of the English Bath Houses. Touted as the largest free music festival in Vancouver, SHOREfest involved 2 stages over 4 nights and featured the following 26 talented and largely local artists:

Shore 104 have now taken the brilliant step in posting a number of songs from these performances, professionally filmed and edited, on YouTube for everyone to enjoy. Not only do you get the chance to hear some great tunes from artists that you may or may not have heard of before, but you can get a real sense from the scenery of how much fun everyone was having under the Summer sun at these events.

Below I’ve posted the performances that they have released, for your viewing convenience. Enjoy.

Jets Overhead – “Weathervanes”

Wil – “Honey Pie”

Kuba Oms – “Beautiful Uncertainty”

Having photographed this event from various locations around English Bay over the past few years (see here and here), I sat back, relaxed and enjoyed most of the performances this year (Team USA & Team Spain), and pulled out the ol’ Canon 7D for the Team Mexico performance.

It was a really fun night and the crew from down south didn’t disappoint! Here’s the best of what I managed to capture.

I have to say though, being my only chance to catch the fireworks tonight, I’m glad that it was Team UK who were on show – a team that hasn’t performed at the Celebration of Light festival since the late 90′s. I’m so used to seeing teams from Canada or China letting off their rockets, that a performance dominated by recognisable British tunes was a welcome change for me.

Setting up camp right in front of the English Bay bath houses with Carmen, TJ and Danica, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset as legendary local rockers 54.40 performed a free concert (put on by the good folk at Shore 104.1), behind us.

As always, I snapped away and came up with the following shots I can now share with you all.

And lastly, a couple of quick shout-outs. Firstly to Mum – Happy Birthday, I love you very much! And also to Carms for taking one for the team and spending the day on the beach reserving our piece of sand for tonight – love you too! x

I enjoyed the show from a prime piece of viewing real estate on the beach at English Bay with Ryan, Corrie and Carmen tonight and, as usual, managed to snap off a few shots over the course of the evening. Rather than post the individual shots in this post as I normally do, I’ve instead put together a full gallery of all three nights I attended of this year’s festival. You can check them out by clicking on the image below.

As much as I hate to admit it, Team Canada (the only other team I have seen this year), were left looking somewhat amateurish as the Chinese team put on a powerful, colourful and even emotional display with a distinctive Olympic feel titled, “Power of the Dream”.

Let me just say straight out, if Team China don’t take out the competition this year then it will be a crying shame. WOW!

And on a final note, it’s already been asked of me whether some of these shots are multiple exposures. They are not. Almost ALL the shots in tonight’s gallery were shot using a 3.2 second shutter speed. Simple as that.

Having had some good results from our shoot from the Burrard Bridge last year, Jen and I decided to make the trek back to the Bridge and this time even snagged the little deck that juts out the side of the pedestrian walkway – a perfectly steady, comfy, prime vantage point spot for the evenings display.

The sunset was golden and gorgeous (see image in the gallery), not having seen Jen for a while we had a blast catching up over some red wine, olives, cheese and crackers, and when it came time for the rockets to fly, Jen and I unleashed our respective cameras (mine with my new Canon L series telephoto lens attached).

Team Canada put on a decent show, but in my opinion, not anything to get too excited about. There was really only one or two real “WOW” moments… so I really hope that the USA and China give it a real good shake over the next week or so on their respective nights.

Stay tuned for images from those forthcoming shows, but in the meantime, check out the gallery below from Team Canada’s 2008 tilt.

1. Select a great location

Selecting the best vantage point for your shots is always going to be a bit of a gamble. The best way to find out that “special” location to set up in is, of course, by word of mouth. However, I have found “Flickr” to be a pretty good source of inspiration of late. Pick your event, view the great photos that others have shot from the event and try and work out where they set up to capture their “rocket-goes-boom” moments.

The photo at the top of this post which I took during Riverfire a good few years ago during my first ever attempt at photographing fireworks. Sure, it’s a little overexposed, more on that in a minute, but I think it’s a good example of being in a great spot for a potentially great photo.

I can’t remember the name of the park I set up in upon advice from a co-worker at the time, but I can show you on a map (see right). It’s on Moray Street just off Bowen Terrace – that much I can tell you. You certainly don’t get to see all the fireworks on the Southbank branch of the river, but you certainly have the best vantage point in the city for the Story Bridge and the explosions that are let off from the tops of the CBD buildings.

Regardless how you choose to find your inspiration, I always keep a couple of rules in mind. Number one, if you can’t get into the PRIME location that you are after, then aim for somewhere really different – somewhere you’ve never seen photos taken from before. And secondly, wherever you choose to plant your tripod, ALWAYS ARRIVE EARLY. If you’ve got a hot tip of a great spot to set up in, chances are there will be about 4-5 other photographers who have received the same tip jostling for the same spot.

2. Take the right equipment with you

Selection of lenses is completely dependent on how far you are away from the fireworks themselves and therefore is not something I can provide guidance on in this instance. What I can say is that you will want to be using a lens that will provide you with a focal length that will enable you to capture explosions at all heights. Additionally, if the source of the fireworks is on water, it’s a good idea to allow for an amount of water in the bottom of your frame as it usually provides colourful reflections that always add to any good photo.

The two most important pieces of equipment I would suggest would be in your “must-have” basket for photographing fireworks effectively are a tripod and a cable release or remote shutter control. Together these two essential pieces of equipment are going to set you back around $200+ bones, but the fact that combined they will allow you to not even touch your camera once during the fireworks performance (an essential factor when dealing with long exposure photography) means they will be worth every cent in the long run.

3. Be flexible with your settings

FOCUSING

You can argue either way in regards to automatic or manual focusing. With manual, so long as you get the focusing right from the get-go and nothing happens that would potentially bump your camera out of place or mess with your focusing ring then you’re all good. If you just leave it to your cameras expert devices when it comes to focusing, however, I find it does a pretty good job as it always tends to focus on the brightest part of the frame which, what do you know, is generally the subject of your photo anyway.

SHUTTER SPEED

The only way to capture those great bursts of colour with long trails of sparkling goodness is by allowing your shutter to remain open for longer than the human hand can hold a camera still for, hence the reason for the tripod and cable release or remote. Zero contact with the camera body while taking photos equals zero vibrations and therefore sharp long-exposed shots. When I say long-exposed, however, I’m talking somewhere between 1″ and 3″. It all really depends on the given light in the atmosphere when the fireworks are going off. If there’s still sunset colour in the sky then you’ll obviously want to go for something more around the 1″ range. Any more than that and your photos will potentially over-expose and at the very least you will lose colour depth.

On the flip side, if it’s already pitch black then you can by all means look at 3″ exposures and if you do it right, anything up to 6″. In order to do this without your pictures blowing out due to the intense light given off by initial explosions, you will need to toggle your exposure compensation settings as well.

EXPOSURE COMPENSATION

By dialing in a negative exposure setting (eg. -1.0ev) into your camera before taking your shots, you can effectively tell your camera to let in a little less light than it wants to given the shutter speed setting you have selected and the corresponding aperture setting your camera chooses to use. This has the effect of reducing the intensity of flashes of light given off when the fireworks shells explode initially. This, in turn, gives you a better chance of obtaining deeper, richer colours from the resultant firework.

It all sounds a tad complicated at first, but you need only experiment for the first two minutes or so of the display and you will find a setting that works for you.

4. Cheese, olives and wine

Last, but certainly not least, ensure that you have a ready supply of soft cheeses, plump, ripe olives and a damn good bottle of plonk to get you through the event. I’ve NEVER diverted from this strategy and it seems to work a charm for me, and indeed those who I have photographed with before (right Jenny)?

If you’d like to view a few samples of my fireworks shots from the last couple of years (shot in Vancouver), then click on the links below.
Happy snapping!

• Festival of Light 2006 – Part I
• Festival of Light 2006 – Part II
• And the Winner is Mexico
• Summer Has Arrived – Celebration of Light 2007
• Team China Were Smokin’
• 2008 Canada Day Fireworks