Friday, January 1, 2010

Hail to the Queen!

Jeff Pardee, from PyroInnovations, also told me of a New Years Eve fireworks show off of a barge near the aft end of the Queen Mary. The problem was (and it was a good problem indeed!) my daughter, who is currently teaching down in Honduras, surprised us and showed up on our doorstep! We thought she was going to have to spend the holidays down there, and it was a HUGE surprise to see her. That was COOL! The problem was, that she booked her return flight for 12:20 AM on Jan 1st. She did what I've also done - thinking that was the night of the 1st, not the wee hours of the morning of the 1st!

It actually worked out to our advantage. My wife and I took my daughter to LAX around 10 PM. We made sure she cleared ticketing and the TSA check point (with a few tears thrown in), then got into the car and headed to Long Beach. I had planned to set up across Long Beach Harbor by a 'light house' (a prop, really) near the Aquarium of the Pacific. But as we were on the freeway heading into LB, there was a sign about parking for the "Red Bull Event". I learned later that they did a monster car jump, and the city turned it into a huge event. Traffic was *insane*. There was no way I was going to be able to make it to the light house. We pulled an illegal u-turn (right in front of a police officer - no worries, I wasn't the only one), promptly got lost, got back to the freeway and headed towards the Queen Mary.

There was a party on the boat, but the parking was plentiful. (For $12 per car, it had better be!) We were in the area a bit after 11 p.m., and I found a nice spot on a walkway towards the Catalina Express dock that allowed me with a chance to get some reflections as well as the whole front of the ship. I also knew I was in a good spot when another photographer came along, saw where I was at, then decided to get down on some of the boulders around the waters edge. (I don't think this turned out too well as other spectators were able to get right in his way.) If he had asked, I would have gladly shared some of the space.

Since the QM was in the foreground, and because I was dealing with reflections, I put on a graduated neutral density fiter to calm down the pyro, set the camera for f/8 (about f/14 for the space in the sky), then did some timing experiments and found that 4.5 seconds would give me a well lit foreground.

Well, the show went off without a hitch right at midnight. They had good product and it was well choreographed. I kept with my 24-70 lens and zoomed in as far as I was comfortable. The show lasted about 20 minutes which gets me a LOT of opportunities for great shots. It took a while to get out of the parking area, but I think it was worth it.

You can see the results here on my Zenfolio page.

In the future, I'm thinking I need to try that lighthouse again. I'm also curious if I can walk across the QM bridge (I don't think I can), but that would be a very interesting and unique spot as well. We'll see......

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