Southbank Gas Brigades, finally!

Well I had become a little obsessed with trying to capture the gas brigades firing in front of Crown Casino, on Melbourne's Southbank.  But I think the results are a worthy reward!  I am having this printed tomorrow in a large 90cm panoramic print, and fingers crossed it will look fantastic.

I have been saving the photographs I have taken at Melbourne's Southbank (well most of them, the really really really bad ones I quickly deleted), and while not all of these are of the gas brigades (there are a few others that I have captured along the way and already posted on this blog), the total number of photographs is 555!  To be fair, because I have been using a high speed shutter release, I have probably averaged capturing three images every time I've pushed the button, but there has definitely been a few photographs to finally get this one right.

On Saturday night the gas brigades were firing at 8pm, 27 minutes past sunset, and with a clear sky it was the perfect time.  Light enough for a fast shutter speed to capture the fire balls, and dark enough for the city lights to be glowing along the banks of the Yarra River. 

Originally I was trying to capture this as a single photograph like the one below, and three months ago I would have been ecstatic at the result.

However the longer this mission went on the more obsessive I became.  I was lucky enough to meet Sean Davey (a professional photographer, originally from Tasmania and currently touring Australia taking panoramic photos at some of Australia's most iconic locations) on Queensbridge one night.  Along with reading 'A Photographers Guide to Photoshop' a couple of months ago, these two sources gave me the inspiration to capture this scene as a panoramic photograph. 

Any other panoramic photo would have been pretty simple, by ensuring that the same focal length, aperture and shutter speed are used, it is as simple as loading them into Photoshop, merging the photographs, and magic!  So on Saturday night when I got home I tried this method in Photoshop, but because of the difference in light between the image above and the remainder of the landscape, Photoshop refused to automatically merge the photos.

So I had to switch to manual mode.  I used Photoshop to automatically merge the four photographs that I shot of the scene without the gas brigades firing, and then I overlayed photograph of the gas brigades firing on top of the panoramic scene.  With a fair bit of moving, tweaking and re-touching, I could align the gas brigades and crop them into the this final image below. 

It is fair to say that I have learnt an amazing amount about my camera and Photoshop through trying to capture this image over the last few months, but finally I am pretty happy with the result!

With all that I have learnt, now on to the next obsession......