The Tenney Fourth of July

Well, as you know, this weekend was the 4th of July. Our neighbors tend to be a bit exuberant in celebrating Independence Day, so normally, our 4th consists of me watering down our cedar shake roof, followed by Lori and I sitting on the street watching the neighbors light off their mortar launched fireworks, while the kids hide inside the house and watch movies or go to bed. The girls have always been sensitive to loud noises, especially Megan. But this year, all three were excited to watch the fireworks show. So, I spent a little more than we usually do, and we joined the crowd who had gathered at my next-door neighbors house to light fireworks. I was a little apprehensive, expecting that either I or my wife would have to call an early end to the evening to take the little ones home. However, they all did great and enjoyed the show immensely. Megan did take some precautions (she came outside wearing a pair of earmuffs which Lori augmented with some wax earplugs). Hailey did insist on going home a little early, but it wasn't the noise that got to her, she just got really tired and wanted to go to bed. Sierra and Megan stayed for the entire show.

I brought along my camera in an attempt to take some pictures of the event, but found I have quite a bit to learn about taking fireworks pictures. One of the issues I had was a problem I've encountered before. That is, I get an internal reflection in my lens of strong light sources. It appears as a ghosted image in the opposite quadrant of the picture from the light source. Fed up, I did a bit of reading and found that one possible culprit is the cheap skylight filter I have on my lens. I purchased the filter to protect the lens in case of a fall, or to keep it from getting scratched. The filter costs $15, which is a lot less than the $200 for even the cheapest of lenses. But, it also means that I'm now shooting through an inferior level of glass compared to my lens. I'll have to try some night shots without the filter to see if that makes a difference.

The second problem I had was that most of the sites I read suggested that you set the focus on your lens to infinity. Unfortunately, the mortars that my neighbors were launching don't go as high as those used by a professional fireworks show, so they were going off inside the focal range of my lens. Thus, with the focus set to infinity, my pictures of the fireworks came out blurry. It was hard to tell this on the small lcd screen on my camera, especially since the camera was tilted almost straight up, so I didn't realize it until the show was over. I got a couple of shots that look great as thumbnails, but once you start to zoom in, they go really out of focus. So, most of my "good" pictures were of the fountains that everyone had. One really fun thing that they tried was to attach a fountain to the back of a remote control car, and then drive it up and down the street. That provided some really interesting light trails.

Here's a few of my favorite shots:










You can see the rest in my Fireworks Flickr set.