Wishing everyone a safe, happy and productive 2015.

The weather forecasters unfortunately were completely accurate with their predictions for a damp New Year’s Eve. 11:45pm saw a shower moving accross Lake Rotorua so plans for photos of the firework display changed a little as I elected to stay in the car and photograph through the windscreen rather than start the year by getting wet. The weather obviously played a bit of havoc with the timing of the show as the fireworks were intermittent instead of the normal sequenced display. I normally enjoy looking for reflections of the show in the lake but the wind and rain eliminated this option so my plan B was to catch individual frames and composite them into one image.

All images were taken with the Nikon D3s, Nikon 24-120 f4 lens, ISO 1600 1/10s f4, processed in Lightroom to achieve deep blacks with colour in the highlights and then opened as a 6 layer stack in Photoshop. Canvas enlarged to 200% with a new layer filled with black moved to the bottom of the stack. Individual firework layers moved to achieve the composition I wanted and then blend modes set to lighten.

A long planned ambition will materialise in the early part of the year and I look forward to sharing some different images in the coming months.

Stay safe, be happy, marvel at the natural world around us and protect it in any way you can – every small difference you can make, counts.