We were on our way to my parents’ house for a Fourth of July Barbecue in Saddlebrooke, north of Tucson. Up ahead we could see that there was quite a summer monsoon brewing. As we drove toward the community, a rainbow appeared in front of the mountains to the east.
Earlier in the week I had read about some new and different techniques for photographing fireworks, so I packed my SLRs in the back of the van. Knowing the ephemeral nature of desert rainbows, my wife encouraged me to take my cameras straight to my parents’ backyard as soon as we arrived. The closer we got, the stronger and brighter the rainbow appeared, and the more anxious I became as I envisioned the photo that was undoubtedly presenting itself, given the spectacular mountain view from my parents’ backyard.
Upon arrival we were met by my mom, who told us that there were already three photographers set up behind their yard. My parents’ next door neighbor is an avid photographer, and two of his friends had come over to photograph the fireworks that night — the rainbow was a bonus. Oh, and one of them was a professional with credits in magazines like Sunset and Arizona Highways.
I made my way to the backyard where I saw three photographers and four cameras on tripods. I quickly added my own to the mix.
We chatted amiably as we waited for the rainbow’s inevitable fade, but instead it rewarded us by continuing to brighten and lengthen until it stretched into a full rainbow across the sky, and even added a dim, second bow.
During our conversation, while we wiped our polarizing filters clean of the occasional raindrop in between clicks of the shutter, I learned that the professional photographer was Kerrick James, and that he has 14 covers for Arizona Highways, as well as many other magazine credits and several books. The topic of extreme zoom lenses came up, and he told us the story of how he created his best selling image, “Catching the Cable Car at Sunrise, San Francisco”. It involves a 12oomm lens, a 2x extender, and a bit of luck, and is quite a story.
At one point one of the other photographers slapped his leg and exclaimed as he was bit by an ant. I looked down and saw a lot of activity at my feet. On closer examination we saw that the ants were dragging some winged insects to their nest. I commented that I should go get my macro lens.
A few minutes later I did go get my second camera with my macro lens attached. The winged insects were “alates”, the reproductive caste of termites. They leave their nests during the first soaking rain of the season in order to establish a new nest. These alates had run afoul of a particularly voracious nest of ants, who were harvesting them beneath our feet.
Meanwhile, since the rainbow continued to shine, Kerrick decided to create a time lapse, taking an image every five seconds. He had a wide angle lens that was able to capture the full rainbow in the frame. My widest lens could not capture the entire scene, so I took three images to stitch together later in photoshop.
After an hour the rainbow finally started to fade, and we packed up our cameras and retreated to our respective houses. Our family enjoyed some tasty steak, chicken & hot dogs from the grill, as well as salad and fruit. By the time we finished eating, it was time to get ready for the fireworks.
The technique I wanted to try involved purposefully shooting the fireworks out of focus at a wide open aperture (f 1.8).
I tried this with both still and video, and liked the result enough to edit together some of the fireworks. The music from Gillicuddy has a fun “sitting around the campfire” feeling that lends just the right tone to the fireworks.
I hope you enjoy the video (it looks great in full screen HD).
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