Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by Rikki:
Congratulations on your shot. Beautiful capture I might say with the stunning city view in the foreground.

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by photobug5050:
Great shot. Try doing a mirror lock up on long exposures. The camera shakes when you hit the shutter which will cause stationary things to blur. Also, if you have a cable release or remote for it, use that too to cut down on the vibrations.

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by Structor:
Congrats on your ribbon! Great shot!

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by muur88:

Originally posted by Bear_Music: Congrats on your ribbon! It's a striking scene. Re: your sharpness comments, the Circle of Confusion begins to set in at about f/11-f/16 on that lens, depending on how wide you are zoomed, and CoF is particularly destructive of night scenes. You have enough DOF with the 10-22mm to essentially have 3 feet to infinity in focus at f/5.6 or f/8, so it shouldn't have been an issue. You could have run this at ISO 100 and f/8 if you'd chosen to. Also, I almost never use autofocus at night (unclear if you did), preferring to use a small penlight to set the focus manually by distance on the lens.

Thanks Bear. Obviously I need to work on my technical skills. Kind of embarrassing knowning I could have shot that at ISO 100. I did focus manually on the buildings to the right, but there were obviously issues. Still not sure I understand CoC and if the higher f-stop actually hurt my focus. From looking at the other night fireworks shots with foreground objects, foreground focus did appear to be an issue alot.

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by Bear_Music:
Congrats on your ribbon! It's a striking scene. Re: your sharpness comments, the Circle of Confusion begins to set in at about f/11-f/16 on that lens, depending on how wide you are zoomed, and CoF is particularly destructive of night scenes. You have enough DOF with the 10-22mm to essentially have 3 feet to infinity in focus at f/5.6 or f/8, so it shouldn't have been an issue. You could have run this at ISO 100 and f/8 if you'd chosen to. Also, I almost never use autofocus at night (unclear if you did), preferring to use a small penlight to set the focus manually by distance on the lens.

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by timfythetoo:
Another one of my top choices in this challenge. Great perspective and beautiful cityscape. Congrats!!!

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by blindjustice:
I love the space created in this shot; the depth of the corners; the shades of black; the shape of the fireworks; I guess the shot would be more spectacular if the fireworks portion filled up a bigger portion of the fram, like Scavelt's winner, but in reality, you can't compromise the shot for the sake of formula. THis is a great shot that would make a terrific print, I am sure; good going.

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by LalliSig:
Nice shot, what I find most interesting about it is that there only seems to be a small portion of the city celebrating and the rest are, well sleeping or something :)

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by Jutilda:
I'm glad the rest of this group saw such beauty in this "negative" image. Congrats.

Above the Crowds
by muur88

Comment by Kronus:
breath taking what more is there to say