For the first time that I can remember, we are not running all over the place to soccer or other kid related event(s). Instead, we have been home for 3 straight days with good friends in town from Colorado. It has been joyous.

Last evening we spent the evening in the back yard. Perfect temperature, a fire, smores and a few simple sparklers. As always, I had my camera with me. I love taking back yard portraits of the kids and last night was no exception.

My challenge for the evening was shooting in near darkness with only a single light source. The light of sparklers changes constantly as does the color & white balance. I shot these at either ISO 1600 or 3200, RAW, with a 35 f1.4 lens. I played a bit with manual exposure compensation, but most are shot at -.3 or -.7 to offset the really bright light source. Processing is simple in lightroom. I used preset BW Look #5 with some tweaks and added grain (I grew up shooting film and like grain).

Just having fun and really liked this series so I posted it up. Hope you are all having a great 4th of July weekend.

As always, click any image below to go to slideshow mode.