A few pics from the 4th

I tried to take a few pictures of our fireworks fun. Fireworks are notoriously hard to capture, especially if you don't have a professional grade camera. However, I did learn a little bit about it when I was working in a photo lab a few years back, so I thought I'd give it a try. Our little digital point and shoot had really slow reaction time, but I did get a few shots. Check 'em out:

This was one of them shells. These photograph best if you can set your camera to a really short exposure time and use a high quality film (or, in the digital age, a chip that does color really well.) Also, setting the white balance is tricky. Our little point and shoot didn't have very sensitive settings, so this is about as good as it got.

Here's another attempt. This one was red. I thought this one turned out interesting because you can see how the shell started to burn before it exploded, generating this electrified palm tree image.

Here's one of the kids watching the blasts. The interesting thing about this is I tried to capture them in the light of the fireworks (no flash), but the neighbors behind us were shooting off some REALLY big ones and the light looks like I used a flash but it's really a boom from one of their big shells.

What's the 4th without some sparklers? I hate these things because every year someone ends up burning their hand or foot or something. But... well, here we are. These turn out some really interesting images if you set for a longer exposure. The only problem is that the people end up looking all fuzzy, but you can see the patterns the kids are making. Here Derek has an interesting figure 8 thing going.

Here's probably the best one I got of the night. Destiny is standing really still and making a big circle with her arm. She kind of creates this frame of light that lets you see her really clearly.

So, anyway, that was our fun. We also had Bob's famous barbequed chicken. I must have eaten like 43 pieces. Thanks Bob for making me fatter than I already am! (Just kidding, love ya big guy!)

Happy 4th.