Ardle came over yesterday for a pleasant afternoon’s chat over the chess board and cold beer. I shall report on the chess in a later blog post as the Ardle is about to return to polish off the game and claim his first victory in circumstances that bear some resemblance to Doctor M’s victory, two weeks ago.
Yesterday was the day of the Miyajima Fireworks Display and the objective of today’s operation was for Ardle to experiment with firework photography without having to endure the press of the crowds on or in the vicinity of Miyajima island. Hence, he came here to Rakurakuen and set up his tripod on the sea wall in Minori, just over the river from our house.
Ardle came equipped with his mighty Nikon D7000 mounted on a Mussolini era Italian Manfrotto tripod supplied by Mr Mark Williams.
I took along my nifty little Nikon D40, which, with its 18-55mm lens is not up to the job of photographing fireworks at a distance, but did allow me to take a few night shots of the immediate scene, somewhat blurred due to the long exposure required for night-time shots, the movement of the subjects and camera-shake and body sway, not helped by all that cold beer we had just consumed.
Ardle decided to mount his camera in the verticalment position but it was not long before the firworks were going up simultaneouslyment from two positions.
In my role as technical advisor I pointed out that he ought to have mounted it horizontalment.
Note, I said nothing about doing so now, merely that it “would have been better if he had mounted…” etc.
Ardle then fiddled around with the screw for a bit and eventually persuaded his camera to decline alla horizontalment just in time for multiple fireworks to go up from a single position, for which a verticalment approach would be more suited.
I pointed this out to Ardle, who switched from French to Anglo Saxon and told me that he wouldn’t be able to get it up in time.
Even so, he did manage to take quite a few shots, two of which can be viewed on his blog, Experiments in Light: Daily Photos and their Stories – well worth a visit.
