Fireworks and Sparklers

Hope you all had a happy 4th! Ours turned out to be pretty interesting...I will share pics tomorrow of the food stand that caught on fire at the park, but for now I just want to share some fun firework and sparkler shots. :) I have taken pics of the fireworks every year, but this year I decided to try using a tripod for some long exposures. I used the same technique with sparklers, and had my hubby "write" with the sparkler so I could capture the entire word on camera. Here are some of my favorites from the evening:









For these two I had him write normally, then flipped the images in Photoshop so they could be read






















Every year for the past five years, the city has done this giant explosion/flaming wall, and every year I juuuuust miss it! This year I was determined to get a good shot of the flames at their highest, but when it got to the point I thought they were going to do it, I changed all my settings to avoid blowing the flames, and instead they did a whole bunch of fireworks. Bummed to have missed out on the fireworks, I changed my settings back, got a couple shots of those and THEN they did the flames...and I wasn't ready! Boo!!! So, I had to just take what I could get, which was overly bright flames due to my firework settings. Oh well, better luck next year, right?


This is the shot I got of them last year, though I only caught the beginning or the end of it (can't remember which).