In a world of anonimity, where you can click on a link and view peoples little universe shared in a blog, how do you show people that you really like their work? For my  photo blog I get alot of comments from people saying how much they like my photos, Thanks and I really appreciate the feedback. If I was a poet I would guess that people would do the same. But how do you return the favour when all you have is an email address attached to a website address from someone who has enjoyed  your work enough to leave a comment?For me, I always check out my commenters websites. I dont just go along and read the first page I like to read quite a few posts to get a feel for the people who take the time to leave meaningful comments on my work. I take the time to return the gratitude by reading their work and alot of the time leave a comment as well. So far I havent had a comment from anyone with a crap site, so congrats everyone on the quality of the blogs out there.

Being a blogger, I know how much time we all put into our little bits of real estate on the internet so I also like to play a little bit of santa and click on peoples ads as well. This is my way of giving a monetary return to the people who take the time to read my page. Adsense, adtoll, whatever it may be, I know we all make that little bit of money from people clicking on our ads so hopefully over time my click thanks will return a paycheck for my reader. Its anonymous, no one knows youve done it and it gives a little surprise when people check their ad balances.

 I also do the same for entrecarders who drop on me. I try to visit as many entrecard blogs as I can, and I always drop a card when I do. But if I really like the site, and read further than the front page I will click on a few ads while I am there. Bloggers need to stick together so its up to us not to just drop and run, but really check out each others work, encourage each other to continue and click each others ads to show our appreciation of each others work. I know some Entrecarder will always drop and run, but if you see a card from me you can guarantee I have read your most recent posts and more than likely dropped a nice little tip in your ad jar.

How do you show your appreciation to fellow bloggers?

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You’re probably like me and have spent plenty of time over at the big kahuna blogs, as well as many other ‘make money online’ websites, doing your best to learn from these guys and gals who got their big break years ago with making money online waaay before most people viewed Google Adsense ads and ‘Site Sponsor’ ads as a bit like spam. They got in before all these Windows applications came out that block online adverts, and before a lot of the affiliate programs were so full that only the guys right at the top of the pyramid were managing to still make money.

Well I’ve got some exciting news for you, and if you get in pronto you can actually be amongst the people at the top who are making the big dollars first. Let me introduce Pay Per Play Media.

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 DOH!! The blog address has changed

Just a quick post to let everyone know that I have moved the blog to the root directory. The new home page address is now http://www.timchristie.com  you just need to drop the /blog.

Anyone with links to me it should be quick and painless to update. There might be a few 404’s for a little while but it will all get better once Google recrawls my site.

Why have I done this? I had just about all but dropped off Google search so what better time to do it.  The 301 redirect I had was hurting my stats pretty bad, so I decided it was time to regather everything and start again. New Year, New address.I have some pretty big posts to get out over the next few weeks so everything should be fine.

In the mean time here are links to some of my past posts:

• Animal Portraits
• Canvas Prints
• Pay Per Play – Convert Your Traffic To Dollars
• 2007 Landscape Photos
• 2007 Band Photos Part 1
• 2007 Band Photos Part 2
• How to Photograph Fireworks
• How to Photograph Christmas Lights
• The FOZI Tripod
• My Computer Broke!
• Free Business Cards
• Monkerai B&S
• 28 Days Last Ever Tour
• Flora Prints
• Pasha Bulker Aground On Nobbys Beach
• Groovin The Moo Festival – Maitland

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Gleeso – Lead singer for The Screaming Jets

Solver, support band at The Clubhouse Hotel, Maitland

Scotty, Guitarist For The Screaming Jets.

Paul – Bass player for The Screaming Jets.

Izzy – Guitarist for The Screaming Jets

Blue Stone Red – Support band for the Sydney leg of
the Screaming Jets tour.

Mick – Screaming Jets Drummer

Col Finley – Monkerai B&S Ball

Anthony Snape – Monkerai B&S Ball

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How did this happen, well for some reason, ever since I put in a 301 redirect from my root directory to my blog, google has really destroyed my page listing for searches. I guess they didnt like it. I went from page 2 for “how to photograph fireworks” down into the bowels of the search pages. I think about page 18. So I decided that if I have been hurt that bad, then while I am down, I will move the page to the root directory and reset my permalinks and start all over again to build my PR back up. I know it would take time and I would most probably hit the sandbox for a while but I think in the long run it will be worth it. I think it can wait for a while now.

There is an instruction page about how to do the move in the wordpress options area and I thought I was all good, but somewhere along the line I have typed a wrong address, and BOOM, no more wordpress, not even admin login. I had no way to get back in and change my settings back to how they were… nothing. Dont get me wrong here, I am no stranger to changing stuff on the server, nor fixing things if they do break, but I was in serious trouble and nothing I did could fix anything. I knew I was screwed!

So as a last resort I had to contact my hosting company, Dreamhost, support team and get them to restore my page and my SQL Databse, from the last backup they did. After a few mishaps all is now working as it was. Just a word of advice when asking your hosting company to restore for you, make sure that they leave file permissions and ownership as they were when they were backed up, otherwise the restore program defaults ownership to the root. When that happens your PHP cant parse or do anything and you wont have a web page.

Now alot of people across the web have shat on Dreamhost for different reasons but after this I am a fan. The support guys Jeffrey and Jeff, went out of their way to get things right. Alot of emails back and forth and we worked through a few issues together. I know from past experience that most hosting companies tell you to get stuffed when you ask them to restore from backups, but not Dreamhost. Even though my problem arose from my own dumbass mistake, they were quite happy to help me out.

After seeing how good these guys can get you out of a tight situation, I am happy to refer people to sign up to dream hosts awesome packages. As a Timchristie.com special you can sign up to Dreamhost for your web hosting and I have organised that if you use the promo code TIMFREEDOMAIN, you will also get a free domain name registration as well as 10% extra bandwidth for your site. Just a way to say thanks to you guys for reading my blog.

The moral of the story though, is to have your own backups that you can restore yourself, I do now!!! Oh yeah and dont screw with settings unless you are sure you typed the address correctly.

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I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and Santa brought you everything you asked for. I got a great surprise to day that I made it into the second round of voting for the win a laptop competition over at The Thinking Blog to win a RuffPC Laptop.

If you voted in the first round, thankyou very much but here we go again. I am now no 9. in the second round. So if you think my review is deserving to win a laptop then please vote for me again.

Thanks again.

Since this competition is now over I have re-edited this post and I am now supporting another win a laptop cometition. Check out my Win a Laptop post for more details

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I just want to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful and joyful time and really enjoy spending this special time of year with your family. If you are taking photos on Christmas Day, just remember to try and get the expressions on peoples faces as they open presents. Theres nothing like the look of genuine surprise on Christmas Day. Oh yeah, dont spend all day behind the camera, I will let you have one day off a year.

For all the Australian girls and boys here is an Aussie Santa Tracker Link . Read what santa has been doing to prepare for his flight and track his journey tonite.

For those of you in America heres another fun Santa Tracker link. Track santa across the globe as he makes his journey to all the girls and boys delivering christmas cheer. If you have google earth installed you can follow in 3D.

Santa Tracker Link

Heres another Santa Tracker Link as well as other fun Christmas games.

I hope you’ve all been good girls and boys and nobody gets a lump of coal in their stocking.

HO HO HO!!!

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Fireworks are a universal symbol of celebration. Across every culture in the world, fireworks displays are used to signify some sort of momentus occasion. Whether it be the 4th of July in America, The Queens Birthday long weekend in Australia or New Years Eve everywhere across the globe, the lighting up of the sky with a myriad of colours and sounds, excites everyone young and old. I’ve had plenty of questions about How To Photograph Fireworks from friends and the blog community lately so I decided to put together a tutorial for you to read.

Photographing Fireworks with a digital camera is really easy if you know how. Just follow a few simple tips and you will be taking prize winning photos of fireworks in no time.

Being a keen pyrotechnician myself, my love of digtal photography and fireworks has always meant chasing fireworks shows across Newcastle and beyond. In this tutorial I hope to give you some helpful tips to enable you to develop your fireworks photography.

There are no hard and fast rules to photographing fireworks, just a few guidelines to get you on your way. The main thing to remember is to have fun and experiment with what works for you. I have shot many shows and it wasnt until my 2nd or 3rd fireworks spectacular that everything really started to come together and I got some decent shots, so dont be disheartened if the first fireworks show you photograph doesnt produce spectacular results.

I hope that I can pass on some of the mistakes I made so that you dont make them yourself. Practice, practice, practice and you will notice a massive improvement in no time at all.

Equipment For Fireworks Photography

• Camera – Preferably a SLR, either digital or film. The settings will be pretty well the same across both formats, but with film you wont be able to review your photos and adjust your settings straight away. Use a low ISO setting or film to keep noise to a minimum and your shots nice and sharp.
  If you have one of the more expensive point and shoot style digital cameras you may be able to set it to manual mode and fix your aperture and shutter speed. Have a play with its settings and give it a go, you may be surprised at what results you get. Alternatively the landscape mode may be really good as well as it fixes the focal length at infinity.
• Tripod – A tripod is very important when photographing fireworks to keep your camera sturdy. If you dont have a tripod then use anything that enables you to hold it still, like a table or fence post. For a different effect you may want to hand hold your camera but I dont encourage you to do it all the time.
  For point and shoot camera users you might want to look into The FOZI Tripod. Very handy, take anywhere foldaway tripod.
• Cable release or remote shutter release – older style cameras are able to use to cable releases to remotely fire your camera. With most digital cameras you can get a remote control to fire them wirelessly, completely detached from the unit. I recommend using some style of remote release to improve the sharpness of your photos. If you dont have any of these there is always the timer release function, you just have to be really good at anticipating the timing of the show.
• Memory Cards – and plenty of them. Dont be afraid to shoot plenty of frames as every part of the show is different. Learn how to change the cards quickly in the dark as you don’t want to miss anything while changing over. I now leave a spare card in my pocket after I got caught out mid show, having to search through my camera bag to find a spare card. Keep them handy and change them quick!
  If you are using film, have plenty of spare rolls and practice changing film in the dark.
  Update: I got a 4GB CF card for christmas and I am now able to fit a whole show shot in RAW on it whithout changing mid show. This would be the only situation I would recommend using larger memory cards. I wouldnt shoot anything like a wedding with that bigger sized card because if something goes wrong you’ve lost a whole lot of photos for an already stressed out bride. Smaller cards lessen the impact.

Focal Length

Depending on what you are trying to achieve you can use either a wide angle to capture the whole scene or a tight crop to just capture single shells. It will also be dependant on how close or far you are from the show. The closer you are, the wider you will need to shoot to capture the whole display.

Focal length is a personal preference that you will have to decide on on the night. Experiment with what works for you.

If you are in a location like Sydney Harbour on New Years Eve, where the show is spread out across multiple barges down the harbour, then a wide angle is going to suit the situation a lot better.

If you are shooting across water, then experiment with shooting as wide as you can, keeping the water in the foreground. You can get some really cool reflections doing this. Update: Check out my Australia Day Fireworks Photos from speers point shot across the water

Aperture

Fireworks against the dark night sky are very bright so an aperture between f8 to f16 is your best bet. If you use a larger aperture ( lower f stop number ) than f8 you will blow out your highlights very quickly and all the colours will become white. To maintain colour detail and sharpness of my images I usually sit on about f10 or f11. Remember that if colours from the fireworks are being washed out then use a smaller aperture (higher f stop number) to reduce the light hitting the sensor. Only use single stops at a time as each stop higher or lower either halves or doubles the amount of light you let in.

Shutter Speed

In photographic terms, fireworks are a very slow effect. That means that you need to use a relatively slow shutter speed, which is why a tripod is so important to keep your camera still. If you only want to catch single or a few bursts, then a shutter speed of around 1 second will be pretty good. For multiple burst I would recommend anywhere between 5 -10 seconds but pick the part of the show where to use longer exposures.

I try to use longer exposures from the beginning to the middle of the show, when everything is happening a little slower. I watch for the change in momentum when everything begins to build towards the finale, at this point I drop back my shutter speed to prevent the photos looking like a mashup of lines with no definition of bursts. Again this is a personal thing, you know what you want to achieve and it will take a few frames to see what works and what doesnt. I prefer the old saying “Less is more” and try to keep my shots fairly simple.

Every now and again I will do a longer 20 or 30 second exposure but I have never found one that I liked. The shot to the left is a longer exposure (only 10 seconds from memory) and is way too busy, all the ground effects just mash together. What I do like with this one is that it shows just how big some shells really are. The white dot at the bottom in the center, to the left of the launch area, is a Toyota Hilux Ute. It really gives a great persepective on the size of the show. Click on the photo to see it large at my Flickr account.

The most common shutter mode I use is the Bulb setting. For my old Nikon D70s digital camera I have an infrared remote control release. In bulb mode you can press the button once to open the shutter and press again to close it. I never have to touch the camera and all my shots are really sharp. The advantage of using this is that you can be standing there watching the show, and not have your eye to the camera, letting you watch what is happening outside of your frame.

Camera Mode

Its best to use your digital camera in manual mode for shooting fireworks so you can control shutter speeds and apertures, to save the camera from having to think. If you use shutter or aperture priority modes it is more than likely you will blow out all the colours as the camera tries to compensate for the darkness.

Once you get your settings right you will be able to just leave them as they are and concentrate more on your framing and timing. You should only have to tweak it every now and then.

I would recommend a manual focus as well so that your autofocus doesnt keep trying to fix on a focal point each frame and slow down your shooting. Try to set your focus to infinity and leave it there, check mid show and make sure it hasnt moved.

Location

Get there early and scope out the best shooting location. If there is still a little bit of light in the sky you can see what will be in your foregrounds when the fireworks light everything up. Another good idea if you are really serious about getting your framing right, then go to the location the night before so you can see what other lights might be in the area to save you having to relocate mid show due to massive blowout from lights nearby. Try to be upwind so your images dont get washed out by smoke.

I was caught out by this one year when I went to shoot the Speers Point Carols Fireworks from Teralba, which was upwind on the night, but I needed to move due to all the really bright street lights on the road below me, as well as power lines running straight through the frame. I ended up just zooming in and shooting higher for a tighter crop and shot single shell bursts higher in the sky to remove all the crap from my foreground. This photo above is the result of adjusting to suit. I would have liked more foreground but this turned out OK.

You dont have to be right on top of the show to get a good photo. I think that shooting form further away gives you the opportunity to get a better foreground as well as a better perspective on the size of the show.

Timing

Timing is fairly critical if you want to just get single shell bursts, for longer exposures it doesnt matter so much. To time the shell break right, watch the launch location and you will see a feint red glow launching into the sky. When it gets to a decent height (highly technical term there, but every shells size bursts at different heights so you will just have to watch a few and see where they go off. There is no guaranteed height to use) release your shutter. If you are in bulb mode wait until it fades out of the sky and close your shutter. Success with this method depends alot on the timing of the show. If it is a really fast paced full on fireworks show then you may not get a chance to just capture a single shell so just aim for a few. You will be able to tell whats coming up as you get better at tracking the launched shells before they go off.

Final tips:

• Use a long exposure of say 30 seconds and carry some black cardboard or a baseball cap and use it to cover your lens, only remove it long enough to expose selected shell bursts. Be careful though that you dont move the camera in the process and introduce camera shake. I have found this pretty hard to perfect and dont use it very often.
• Tight zooms on the smaller ground effects using a longish exposure creates a really interesting pattern for your shot.
• Know your camera controls inside out so that you can change aperture or shutter speed really quickly in the dark. The longer it takes to change settings the more of the show you will miss.
• Rules schmools, if you know the rules break them, if you dont then dont worry. Play experiment and have fun!
• Update: Make sure that the structure you are standing on is solid enough not to move with people jumping around on it. I found out the hard way when I shot the Australia Day Fireworks at Speers point and found out afterward that the solid looking jetty shuddered when people moved and introduced shake into all my photos.

These few tips should set you well on your way to getting some great results from photographing fireworks with your digital camera. If you have any questions about how to photograph fireworks then feel free to ask me questions and where I can, I will update the post. Good luck and share your results. Happy New Years!!

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Matt only managed 25 but I think its because he is so short and is a self confessed uber Mac nerd. Now if it was number of 5 year olds he could take on in a Mac-Off then he would win for sure. Funny!

 Go check it out here and see how many you could take.

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The time has come to vote on the Win a RuffPC Laptop. My entry has been included and I am entry no 59 to so get along to vote for me so I can win a laptop:

The Thinking Blog

Please cast your vote for me so I dont have a repeat event of being stuck without a computer. There are some pretty good votes been made so far but if you feel like I deserve it then please vote for my entry.

Update

As the win a laptop cometition has now ended I am supporting another win a laptop competition. follow the link to see more details.

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