Gallery - GuyFawkes2010

Most years I do try to take shots of the fireworks display. Traditionally I have gone up the top of Mt Victoria to do this which has meant I have a collection of fairly similar shots over the years, not wanting to bore people I've only put one set of that up on these pages. But this year, for a bit of variety, Ewen and I went up into Kelburn near the cable car. This gave us the reverse perspective from Mt Victoria and I must admit I wasn't too sure what we would see - I half figured the barges would be hidden behind the buildings down on the waterfront.

As it turned out it was a pretty good location. I intially started using a 70-300mm lens but found that the fireworks were sufficiently large that a wider angle was needed. So I switched to the 50mm which coinceidentally has the faster glass on it. It turns out that was around the right size and speed for what I wanted. Below are the results :-

Taking a few lessons from previous years the total display was twelve minutes long rather than the usual fifteen to nineteen. But the total budget remained the same which meant rather than the lulls the previous displays have had where little was happening this years show was a much more active one. All the photographs above were shot in chronological order from the start of the display through to the grand finale in the last few images.

The one big drawback of the location was that it was right in the wind line and so, besides the cold, it had a bad tendancy to shake the camera and tripod. I have tried to steady things but you can see the trademark wobbles in a few of the images.


Philip R. Banks
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