Tag: Fourth of July

Bombs Bursting in Air

Greetings everyone from our hotel in French Lick Indiana (and no, I’ll never get tired of saying or typing that!).  Linda and I are on a mini-vacation to celebrate our 20th Wedding Anniversary.  To help bring back the memories from 20 years ago, the weather has decided to flashback as well and provide us a heatwave.  So it is in the high nineties this week which I am sure the Globull pundits are claiming are man-made, but for the record it was 105 in Iowa the day we got married which by my quick math was HOTTER than this week.  I’ll certainly save a post for our vacation experience, but as of now I am in a world of hurt on this blog.  I have less than a week to go and a lot of posts to get through.  With the training runs this week for the Bix7 next weekend and trying to get some blogs out, this mini-vacation feels a lot more like work.  But there is still time to pull this through, so let’s not waste anymore time.  In a continuation of the last post, I am bringing you some shots from a local fireworks display that happened on July 3rd. I just took a sampling for this particular post, feel free to stop by our photography website (eddiesoft.smugmug.com) to check out the rest of the images – actually the ones through post processing – there are still a number of them to get through from the Peoria display.

While reviewing the shots for post production, I was definitely in a less is more frame of mind.  Sure, the sky filling barrage and wall of sound is fun to watch, but a lot of the true beauty of the individual fireworks tend to get lost in all the light.  This also includes a wash out of an pictures if you are not careful about reducing your shutter speed or closing down the aperture when they start the huge displays.

There is definitely something in the simplicity that really appeals to me and I think highlights the creativity in designing and developing essentially missile (or rather a mortar) that delivers a specific pattern of light.  The last one is probably my favorite of the single firework pictures and one I’ll probably end up getting printed for my den (considering purple being my favorite color and all)  .  The following caught my attention from a Rorschach Test perspective.  Quick, what do you see in this shot?   If you said a headless praying mantis you are likely right there alongside me in the nut house.

Hit the jump to see more fireworks shots including my favorite one out of the entire set and some odd ones that caught my attention for their creepiness.

Continue reading Bombs Bursting in Air

Happy Fourth of July America

 Fireworks

Once again, the greatest country in the world celebrates its birthday.  This means it is time for the light shows in the sky (courtesy of China firework factories).   Today is another guest blog entry courtesy of my wife’s photography.  We basically just learned the trick to taking fireworks pictures and was out catching the local displays to try it out.  To be honest, the settings are only about 40% of the effort.  It is all about timing since you have to keep the shutter open for a number of seconds.  However, when you get lucky, it sure looks good.

Fireworks

I really like this one she took for a couple of reasons.  The color is really crisp, but generally fountains give off way to much light and overpower the image.  She had the shutter timing perfectly for that oneand gives an interesting shadow as it shot through the trees.

This one came from the same display.  It gives the impression of huge sparklers suspended in the air.  Too bad the fountain had to be cut off the bottom, but that would have probably washed out the shot.

Fireworks

The hardest shots are the large flowering fireworks due to having to guess the timing (about 1 second after you see the propulsion flame go out works pretty good) and harder yet is trying to guess the diameter of the explosion to set the zoom appropriately (yes, we are zoomed in pretty good).  To be honest, the off center ones give an interesting artistic impression.

Hit the jump to see some of these pictures

Continue reading Happy Fourth of July America