4th of July Celebration

We hope and pray everyone had a safe and fun 4th of July this year. We pretty much kicked back and did a bit of nothing, Jeanene’s brother came in to town with his son for the day and we went to lunch and then headed to Mom + Dad’s to watch the fireworks in Bedford. Over the years we’ve typically had a great view of the show but over the last 15 years or so the trees have grown up a bit so the vantage point is not what it used to be. This was the first time Sebastian my nephew really got a chance to enjoy fireworks, he was a bit scared at first but then gave forth to ewws and ahhs and it was all worth it. Even the heat was bearable this evening with the breeze we had, I remember in years past where we would melt on the sidewalk but it was rather pleasant tonight.

Here are a few images from tonight. A few tips for taking pictures of fireworks….1st leave your flash at home, you would think people would know this but alas, people still try to take pictures of fireworks with flash. 2nd get a tripod, long open shutters are necessary to get fire trails. 3rd use a release cable if your camera has the ability to use one. 4th, I find that an f-stop of f8 to f16 as a good starting point for longer exposures. 5th, fireworks are bright so to keep the images as clean as possible, use as low an ISO as you can, mine were shot at ISO 100. 6th, it’s all in the timing, depending on your f-stop you may have a range of half a second to 20 seconds, you can also use a black card between explosions to overlap explosions. Above all else, enjoy the time you have with family and friends!