Tips for taking fireworks photos!

With the July 4th holiday upon us, I thought I’d share some tips for taking great fireworks pictures.

1.Steady the camera. Use a tripod with a remote shutter release if possible. Fireworks on a dark night require long exposure times and a steady hand. Trying to hold your camera and a bottle of beer at the same time could result in unnecessary beer spillage.

2.Frame the shot. With fireworks, it’s important to anticipate where the burst will happen. It’s key here to be sure you’re pointing the camera at the fireworks, not the hot bodies in front of you on the grass, no matter what they’re doing.

3.Long shutter speeds. To capture the intensity of a fireworks display, setting the shutter speed to “bulb” or the manual “fireworks” indicator generally gives the best results. Though trying to find the tiny settings on the camera, in the dark and after a few glasses of wine, can take longer than the fireworks themselves.

4.No flashing. The light from a flash only reaches a few feet in front of you and won’t illuminate the sky. Using a flash on a dark night to record fireworks will result in black images and annoyed spectators around you. Offering them a beer usually works to soothe eyes ruined by white flash spots or simply turn off your camera’s flash.

5.And MOST IMPORTANT! Don’t start drinking at noon if the fireworks begin at 8pm. In cases like this, not only have cameras been forgotten entirely, but so have most events of the evening. I speak from experience.

Have a safe and wonderful holiday weekend!

Thanks to Debbie at Delicious Baby for the Fun Photo Friday!

Thought this would be a perfect picture to share with DeliciousBaby’s Fun Photo Friday! Woke up yesterday morning to storm clouds and rain, instantly feeling a bit down – after all, it’s always supposed to be sunny in Hawaii, right? But I’d forgotten the most important thing – without the rain there can never be a rainbow!

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the process of chasing our own rainbows, when if we just stop long enough to look, they appear right in front of us! Have a wonderful weekend and good luck finding those rainbows!

The word of the day was WOW!

WOW! – the view looking into the remains of an extinct volcano from the rim above.
WOW! – the water so clear and blue it felt as though you were swimming in a pristine aquarium.
WOW! – the number and colors of friendly fish (and turtles!) swimming around us.

Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve is one of the most popular snorkeling destinations in all of the Hawaiian Islands and it’s easy to see why. The Preserve is home to over 50 different species of rainbow colored fish with some total fish counts numbering over 400,000 at one time! Visibility is 80 to 100 feet. The floor of the bay is actually the crater of an ancient volcano that flooded when the exterior wall collapsed and the ocean rushed in.

While swimming through the 74 degree (chilly for us!) waters, we were surrounded by so much beauty it was quickly worth the shivers. We were fortunate enough to see a graceful Green Sea Turtle (honu in Hawaiian) swim off for deeper feeding grounds. The state fish of Hawaii, Humuhumu-nukunuku-apaua (a species of triggerfish with a huge name) were out in abundance. We even startled a large moray eel as it was moving from one coral crevice to another (or maybe better said – it startled us!)

We took the advice of the locals and got there early. Though bleary eyed at 7:30 am, we were able to get a good parking spot and have the beach fairly to ourselves. By noon on a Sunday, it’s almost too crowded to move. A great time to pack up the gear and head to Teddy’s Bigger Burgers for a well-deserved lunch – and the BEST burger we’d ever eaten!

Hanauma Bay is open daily in the summer (except Tuesdays) 6 am til 7 pm. As a special treat, on the second Saturday of the month the Preserve is open until 10 pm for NIGHT TIME snorkeling. We’ll have to give that a try and post pictures next month!