Greetings everyone!

I will be returning to the Twin Cities for the Uptown Art Fair this Friday - Sunday, August 1-3. The Uptown Art Fair is Minnesota's largest and most-attended art fair, running Friday noon-8pm, Saturday 10am-8pm, and Sunday 10am-5pm. I'll be located in the same spot at last year, booth # 2114-2115 on the first block of "The Mall" coming from Hennepin Avenue.

I also have two other events slated for later in the month:

• August 16-17 - Art Crawl through the Gardens - Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Chaska, MN

• August 23 - Northwoods Art Festival - Hackensack, MN

 I look forward to seeing some of you soon!

As most of you know, I'm primarily a [natural] landscape photographer, so I must admit that shooting fireworks is not at the top of my list of subjects to photograph. But after reading a recent post by Sean Bagshaw Photography on the Photo Cascadia blog about a different method for capturing the exploding light bursts, I simply couldn't resist giving it a try and having some fun with it during the local Fourth of July display.


Photographers, read on further...

The technique is simple — with your camera in "bulb" mode and fixed upon a tripod, twist the focus ring of your lens steadily (in manual focus mode) while the shutter is open for a second or two. Begin the exposure with the fireworks well (but not too far) out of focus and end the exposure with the burst in-focus (or very close to that point).


It's not as easy in practice – timing is one of the main challenges. You want to time the shutter to open at the point of the explosion and close before the light fizzles. Also, this technique works better with displays that shoot more single bursts of fireworks, as opposed to those that shoot lots of them in succession. In other words, the grand finale is not the time to employ this approach. This technique definitely relies on a good deal of trial and error, and success will not be on your side all (or even most) of the time.