Big thanks to Maria, Nicolas, Alana, Olivia and Amy for been such wonderful models. I didn’t get a chance to spend quality to photograph all but you guys brighten up the day and made it a memorable event!

For natural portrait photography style, I restrict myself from photoshoping the photograph itself. Hence no liquefying, no scene manipulating (add/remove object) and no plastic  surgery on the face. I’ll leave those tricks to glamour photography where they are desirable and wanted.

Ignoring my picture settings on my camera, RAW output photo always turns out to be dull and flat. None the less, I still shoot with picture settings and RAW + Jpeg output, that way I get to examine the mood I was trying to go for at that point in time.

RAW to Jpeg, no crop, no post-processing (yet)

First step of post-processing is conducted in Lightroom where I will try to recreate the level of contrast and saturation I see in the Jpeg output. I also utilise “Lens Profile” to get rid of lens variations such as distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration (which I never actual met an example to shows the difference). Finding the right level of ‘Black’ is the main attribute that defines the image; contrast, brightness and vividness comes after that. I also touch up my rotate and crop is desired.

Now the photo 'pop' better than before

After I’m (almost) happy when what I see in Lightroom, I then export this into Photoshop to do more post-processing that requires Layers. The purple fringes in the background between branches bugs me since the first sight, there are no real ways to deal with it in Lightroom, so I use “Hue/Saturation layer” to control colours only on the trees in the background.

The footbridge above the model is actual a feature piece and reason it is in the photo. While taking this picture, the rust steel and wood of the footbridge above were acting as a convas of the reflection of the sun from the river. I want to capture that emotion, unfortunately dynamic range of the camera is limited and reflect is not animated as in real life. I want to bring out the mood by further emphasis the footbridge by making it more dramatic (with help of Photoshop plugin) and add a “Cool colour filter” to bring out the aquatic look.

Another Photoshop processing I start to experiment is the eyes glistening effect to have the eyes pop bit more. This step isn’t practical in the photo as the difference is to subtle to be noticeable (but I do it anyway).

And as usual, I finish off with post-vignetting to draw in the focus toward centre of the picture.

Now the photo is complete to my taste

Now have the 3 steps side by side for comparison.

As result, third step in Photoshop were not meant to process model in the photo but to control the environment in the big picture.

In case you do not know what Black Card Photography is, Hanjie’s blog has an 2 excellent blog posts explaining this technique. In short, black card usage often consider as a cheap solution to Graduated ND filters. However, when shooting fireworks I consider this as the only solution to eliminate burst of light (causing over exposure) and to reduce smoke in the image.

Around 10pm new years eve, first thing I did was finalised my framing, double check my tripod position and decide a manual setting: 24mm focus almost to infinity, f8 ISO400 and expose for 3 seconds. Without the fireworks, the image turns out a stop too dark for my liking. However I know when the fireworks starts, the lighting condition will be completely different and you will feel like a fool trying to adjust your setting then.

I have also began to practise my black card swinging where I will block the top two third for 2 seconds and expose the third second of exposure. Because I am shooting RAW, I know there’s room to touch up in post processing.

Note: photos in this documentary are straight resized from JPEG unedited.

Finalised framing and use black card to eliminate light pollution in the sky.

Count down began, that’s when I have my remote in left hand and black card in my right. As planned, I cover over the fireworks for 2 seconds (counting 2 mississippi) and expose the third second till the shutter close. Not knowing it on the spot, but the first shot was actually 1 of the best card swing attempt in the entire night.

First time lucky. Fireworks are perfectly bloomed and exposed.

During the event, I began to realise flaws in my plan: 1 second on the fireworks can still be too long of an exposure, so I start to micro-adjust the amount of time I expose the fireworks. Another flaw was I have difficulty predicting when is the best time press the shutter as I need to foresee the best fireworks scene 2 seconds before it actually happens. So I began swap my timing to “roughly 1 seconds of exposure, then 2 seconds cover up”. I keep switching back and forth as I was already confused and amused by the spectacular fireworks display. due to I expose the same scene at 2 different timing in side photograph.

Bad timing as this photograph was exposed to nothing but blinding light.

Swapping between 2 different exposure timings started to twitch my brain a little and causing another side effects: Something I exposure the fireworks for some milliseconds soon realise it’s a premature scene and quickly decided to cover up the fireworks till roughly 2 seconds later where a bloom appears. I now have fireworks photos that are double exposed

Top line of fireworks seems 'motion blurred' while bottom line was disconnected.

Example of brain twitching where double expose the fireworks at the very beginning and the very end.

Occasionally, by that I mean 30% of my shots were semi polluted with pure black as I have failed to complete remove the black card from the lens’ angle of view. Again, this is something I won’t see in my tiny LCD screen and will only realised (and in regards) during post processing. On the plus side, these photos can still be useful as I can fill smoke into the blank, or extract the fireworks for photo stacking.

Many photos you can see obvious black card appearance.

As we reached to the end of the celebration, there were fireworks everywhere and stacking on top of each other. Exposures are now so bright, you cannot even recognise the harbour bridge no more, and let’s how we end the 2012 New Years Eve Sydney style.

Nothing can save you from the blinding light.

In conclusion, this was an awesome experience for me despite the 18 hours waiting period, inconsiderate photographer with tripod raised higher than you need (where rest mutually agreed to kept around 1 metre tall). Photographs Sydney fireworks is going to rejuvenate my lack of interest in new year celebration and I will be looking forward to this.

Happy new year and best wishes to all for the exciting year to come!

Initial tone map give me nothing useful to work with except a mess of purple-ish-blue in the background. I end up blend some of those into ev+2 to provide a much industrial look in the background, it also helps enhance contrast of micro details of the warehouse.

This is “Home” by Kid Zoom, an Australian Born, New York based artist. Having this structure assembled elsewhere you will experience an entire different flavour, that’s why I enjoyed this project so much that I willing to setup my tripod and wait till the crowd are out of sight meanwhile be awesomised by it.

Even at high shutter speed I was unable to take steady shot, and to make it worse I was shooting towards direct sunlight exaggerated colour fringing at all corners. The plus side was I manage to capture the detail textures of cycler’s cloth and his wrinkly skin, and that’s was my emphasis at.

Some cycler may also act as travel guide to help out your journey (in return, compensation paid in RMB. Just to keep that in mind). In this case, our rickshaw cycler are kindly enough to give us a quick run down of ZhouZhuang where we spent half day here before reaching to next destination. He settled a package with us for 200 RMB that he will accompany as till evening providing tour talk, transport to any point in city and waits for us while we do the tourist thing (in 1 occasion, he even walk and provide complete tour talk for us). 200 RMB (~AU$30 at the time) may seems a lot in China, but for the sake of convenience within limited amount of time the last thing you want to do is muddle around in a strange land.

As part of kit lens, you are most likely to get to play around with 1 of 3 telephoto zoom kit lens (that been 55-200mm no-VR, 55-300mm VR and this). Before you look into high end telephoto zoom lens like 70-200mm variant, you should really go in depth on finding the full potential of this lens.

Lens Overview

• Name: AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED
• Type: High-Power Zoom
• Format: For Cropped (DX) Sensor, or FX in DX mode
• Announced: 2007
• ESP: US$249.95

• Focal Length: 55-200mm
• Focal Length (35mm equivalent): 83-300mm
• Maximum Picture Angle: 28°50′
• Maximum Aperture: f4.5
• Minimum Aperture: f22
• Minimum Focus Distance: 1.1m
• Maximum Reproduction Ratio: 1:3.45

Physical Specification

• Focus: Ultrasonic-type (SWM), internal focusing
• Zoom: Rotary, extends when zooming
• Aperture Blade: 7 rounded blades
• Dimension: 73.6 x 99.5mm
• Weight: 335g
• Material: Plastic barrel, metal mount
• Filter Size: 52mm

Overall, the lens may feel a bit plastic-ey as you’ll mostly see plastics and kind of light consider its physical dimension. Do avoid dropping this lens as it is a modern lens that is build to reduce weight and cost, durability got reduced also along the way.