Hunting Focus

The fireworks themselves? They ROCKED. Huge huge explosions, lots of different patterns, clear view, a little music – it was great.
The crowds were enourmous, but in my area of the park/shoreline at least it was almost all families and friendly little groups.

The photography side didn’t go as well. I brought the wrong lens – I brought my 80-400VR because I thought I’d need the range, but I actually needed the opposite – a super wide to get the full breadth of the show. I almost always carry my 50 f/1.4 with me, so I quickly switched to that. And now that I think about it, I feel really silly have made the mistake – oh well, live and learn.

I rode the subways in and out of the downtown area – I parked in west town and just took the blue line in and walked. Other than some minor adventures, it wasn’t bad at all. Not riding the Metra all the way in from Lemont or Lisle really feels right, and there simply was NO parking (or driving really) downtown/shoreline. So driving to western-ish suburb and then cta was a win.

Taking one smaller camera bad and the tripod was a win too – I was glad to have both. The strap on the induro just will not stay attached with their strap arrangement. I’ve now found two mostly acceptable alternative. One is to unscrew one of the feet, and use that as a mounting post for the clip on the that end. Not too hard/slow to get on and off, and I don’t worry about the dang thing falling off in a subway platform.

The other is to clip the strap to itself near the top mounting, and wear the strap like a big shoulder holster almost. I did this on the way back from the shoot because I didn’t want to muck about getting back to the blue line. It was more comfortable than I would have guessed, and I’ll definitely use this technique again.

The pictures themselves I’ll look at tonight – they are too bright (not overexposed, but too bright somehow) and you see far too much of the smoke from previous fireworks going off. I think I can bulk correct this in post. We’ll see.

I’d definitely enjoy shooting this again, but not down in the crowd. That’s just right out.