Shooting Fireworks

In the past few months, I've graduated to a DSLR, a Canon 7D. Since then, I've been amazed at how much time one could put into understanding how to make good use of such a high-quality camera. The path I've been taking is to simply try one thing at a time. Tonight, it was a good time to learn how to shoot fireworks. I would have liked to have shot from several vantage points, but it would have been difficult to move around once it got dark in the thick crowd at the St. Louis riverfront. There are many people with ideas out there on how to set one's camera. I started out at f11, 100 ISO and bulb shutter, making use of a remote shutter cable. I eventually moved to f8, in order to brighten up the arch and buildings better. I made a mistake by failing to set focus to manual focus, which caused the camera to struggle and delay on many shots, because it had a difficult time focusing on the darkness, which was when I often tried to open the shutter--I didn't realize that mistake until after the fireworks show. It's great fun trying to anticipate the best way to compose these shots. Post-shooting production was rather minimal. Mostly I used Lightroom 4 to nudge down the highlights and the darks, plus add a bit of clarity. There are no filters on any of these 4 shots, though, even though they look a bit surreal. Click on the images for a higher res view. IMG_2915 Fireworks - Eads IMG_2886 Fireworks - Eads IMG_2877 Fireworks - Eads IMG_2892 Fireworks - Eads

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EPA shuts down fracking study critical of industry

From Propublica:

When the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly retreated on its multimillion-dollar investigation into water contamination in a central Wyoming natural gas field last month, it shocked environmentalists and energy industry supporters alike. In 2011, the agency had issued a blockbuster draft report saying that the controversial practice of fracking was to blame for the pollution of an aquifer deep below the town of Pavillion, Wy. – the first time such a claim had been based on a scientific analysis. The study drew heated criticism over its methodology and awaited a peer review that promised to settle the dispute. Now the EPA will instead hand the study over to the state of Wyoming, whose research will be funded by EnCana, the very drilling company whose wells may have caused the contamination.

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U.S. authorities tracking snail mail too.

If you thought you were left alone with regard to your snail mail, this article from the NYT tells us to think again:

Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

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