New Year's Eve Fireworks and coach Bobby Bowden

Last Thursday evening I was fortunate enough to be on the pumphouse at Friendship Fountain (on the San Marco/southbank side of the St Johns river in Jacksonville, FL) for the NYE fireworks display.

The following day, during the Gator Bowl pre-party, I was hired to shoot the Varsity Party and coach Bobby Bowden's last walk - his final walk into the stadium for a bowl game (or any game he coaches, I suppose).

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The NYE photos are, simply, some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen.

Mind sharing some details from the shoot/PP?

Thanks for the comments. That made me feel awesome.

Obviously on a tripod...I was elevated about 20 feet above the fountain on the pumphouse, which helped a little I think.

I was using a 40D, Tamron 17-50/2.8 at f/8, ISO2oo (in highlight priority mode), live view, focused on the Modis building, Av mode, set to -1 EV initially. I then set the bracketing to -1 1/3, -1 and -2/3 and just kept hitting the shutter during the show. At some points I tried covering the lens with my hand and "adding" fireworks to the sky without the trail, but it wasn't easy and the show was only about 10-12 minutes, so not much time for experimentation.

Overall, I would repeat everything I did, except I would try f/5.6 and f/11 while bracketing (especially since I'm happy with f/8, might as well see what else I can do).

Shots varied between about 4 secs to 30 secs, depending on bracketing and amount of fireworks lighting up the sky. I took about 65 shots and about half came out really nice, 4-5 "specatular" (to me).

good stuff....best fireworks pics i've seen...
i'm local...maybe one day we can meet up and you can teach me a few things...

Shoot me a PM and we can try to work things out. I haven't met to many people locally even though I've been here for a while. Would love to find some other neat things to photograph (nightscapes and special events in particular).