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hrvojemihajlic

Hrvoje Mihajlic
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Every year my hometown hosts an international fireworks festival. It usually last for a couple of days, so it's a great opportunity to master photographing fireworks - in my opinion one of the most complicated things to capture with the camera. 

But why are fireworks so difficult to capture properly? 

First of all, when I say properly, I mean all of those things that make a great photograph - composition, exposure and some kind of a conceptional value - usually with story behind it.


Composition


How hard can it be, right? You set up your tripod, point a camera to the sky and wait for the fireworks to begin. You may know exactly where the fireworks are taking place, but you never now how high or wide it is going to be, so you need to be alert at all times and ready to rearrange you composition. 


Exposure


If you decide to go with the boring version of shooting only the sky, you probably won't run into problems. Once you set your exposure, although some rockets will generate brighter flashes than others, you are pretty much good to go. At this point, exposure values will vary from, lets say 1/10 to a few seconds, depending on how far you are willing to push.

On the other hand, things could get a little complicated if you want to capture something else beside the fireworks. Let's say you want to get a photograph of a couple of people watching fireworks beside the lake, like this one beneath. 


If you want to get the coast of the lake as bright as that one on the photo, you are looking at at least a couple of second exposure, at a higher ISO setting. The problem is, if you do that, your fireworks will be vastly overexposed. And of course, in contrary, if you get the fireworks right, you probably won't even see the coast of the lake.

The only solution to this is thinking outside the box. There are a few solutions, some more complicated than the others. The first one that came into my mind was to use an external flash and fire it by hand. Although the ex430 is pretty strong, the result probably won't be so satisfying.

The second one is the general idea to expand the dynamic range. HDR is one of the option, but honestly, I doubt  this one too would bring a satisfying result.

The third option, and the option I used, is to just bring the two photos together. The coastline of the lake is the border of two photos.


Concept


Once you get your technique right, it's time to put some conceptual value to the plate. As I said before, just plain photos of fireworks are pretty boring, but when you just bring a few people in frame, thing just get way more interesting. 


But in the end, it would be fair to admit that most of the time you just need a little luck. In 2007, at the last day of the festival, at the last fireworks, the last rocket, I somehow managed to capture this magical moment.


I get questioned a lot on what settings to use. The thing is - there is no universal setting for shooting fireworks. The best way to fireworks photos is just to experiment. The photo below wast taken with iPhone 4 (on auto setting of course). iPhone has a fixed shutter, the aperture is f:2.8; exposure is 1/15 of a second, and ISO speed was set to 1000. Trying the same on my SLR I was getting pretty decent results, but as I said before, it all depends what you are aiming for. Good luck.  


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After shooting some architecture with Velvia 100, I've decided to have some fun with Velvia 50. Like the previous series, in this one I also used Praktica MTL5b and some Pentacon lenses (50mm f:1.8 and 29mm f:2.8, although I also own 200mm f:4 but for some reason I don't use it). I bought the film in late April this year in a shop called Praxis (pretty much the best place for buying photographic film in Croatia). To be honest, I've had a pretty shitty summer due to some postponed faculty related stuff, so pretty much nothing interesting happened, but some of these photos have a deeper background story (at least for me).


For instance, this photo of ficho's new bike. It was just a few days old when I took this photo. He crashed breaking a collar bone just a few days later, and because some complications, he can't ride a bike for two more years. I think he has even sold the bike in the meantime :(



On this one there are my three bike buddies. The one on the right just got a great job in Osijek, so he is moving there for a year and a half. I guess we won't do much mountain biking together for a while.



This is a classic landscape photo. Just like on all the others, no corrections of any kind were applied. These are the pure vivid colors of Velvia 50. The photo was taken with Pentacon 29mm f:2.8 @ something between f:8 and f:16 with 1/125 s exposure. Since it was a bright sunny day, if you take a look at this chart, you'll see  that my memory is probably right :).



Those few are from my grandma's garden. They are really special for me because she has terminal cancer, and honestly I don't know if I will be taking pictures of those garden dwarfs next summer :(.



On this one is my friend TCvetkovic, also a mountain biker, but as it turns out, a damn good barbecue maker. This was taken before one of the most epic barbecues I've ever had. And I've had some pretty epic barbecues. It was also the high point of my summer :D



This here is a cliché, but somehow, the more I look at it, the more I like it. I'd say it's the colors :D



This is the 4th lake i Maksimir park. The first photo was taken in late April, and the second one less than a week ago, in early October. Those two are the only photos that I had to pull out the blacks a little bit. The contrast was just a bit too strong.  

conclusion



Velvia is really a great daylight film with high-image quality, superb granularity, and world-class levels of image color saturation and vibrancy. I know this sounds crazy, but somehow all those relatively fresh memories appear much more vivid than on digital photos.

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Like every year, this year I'm spending a couple of days in Novi Vinodolski. I haven't taken any photos for a while, so I was really thrilled about it. In the past week I've managed to get a few decent shots, and I hope I'll catch a few more in the next few days, before getting back to Zagreb.

I'm still using my old equipment. I really want to push beyond the limits of my 400D before purchasing another camera some day. This applies to all my Cookin filters as well :)


So, this is what I've managed to get so far:


Novi Vinodolski 2011 - 1 by hrvojemihajlic Novi Vinodolski 2011 - 2 by hrvojemihajlic Novi Vinodolski 2011 - 3 by hrvojemihajlic Novi Vinodolski 2011 - 4 by hrvojemihajlic Novi Vinodolski 2011 - 5 HDR by hrvojemihajlic Novi Vinodolski 2011 - 6 by hrvojemihajlic San Marino Island by hrvojemihajlic Purple Haze by hrvojemihajlic Lady and the lighthouse by hrvojemihajlic




Stay tuned, there is more to come...




Feel free to visit my portfolio - portfolio.hrvojemihajlic.com

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WOW... I haven't posted anything for a few months... or this entire year to be precise. I guess I was busy  :D - mainly with studying, writing   my own blog, starting  some other blog/project  (both in Croatian) and writing for an awesome Croatian magazine  Plan B, and even photographing for some clients.  

Anyway, summer is coming, which means I'll have more time for photographing :) I have a few ideas on my mind so stay tuned!  

P.S. I've also started my portfolio siteportfolio.hrvojemihajlic.com . Nothing special, just a small representation of my work through the years (LOL it sounds like I'm 100 years old). Feel free to comment, here or on the site :)

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Creative_mess v.1.2
hrvojemihajlic.com

Glasanje za nagradni natječaj "Jesen u Maksimiru je počelo". Glasajte za svoj favorita.

Nadam se da ovaj puta neće biti 6 glasova :D

GLASATI MOŽETE OVDJE -> blog.hrvojemihajlic.com/jesen-…

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Featured

Photographing fireworks by hrvojemihajlic, journal

Fujichrome Velvia 50 by hrvojemihajlic, journal

Novi Vinodolski 2011 by hrvojemihajlic, journal

Long time no see... by hrvojemihajlic, journal

Glasanje - 'Jesen u Maksimiru' by hrvojemihajlic, journal