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Fireworktacular
September 4, 2007If you missed the July 4th makeup from the city of Wichita Falls on Sunday..... you missed a good show.
Actually, I thought the city did a great job for the most part. There were a few bumps, but there always is.
First off....the problems. And I wasn't there for a long time, so I don't really know how dire a situation it was.
The lines for the beer tent/bbq stand outside the MPEC were fairly long. People were griping left and right it seemed. The rest of the food places were indoors, but in the cramped back hallway to the MPEC. It was like trying to herd cattle through a canyon.
The only other real concern I heard was there wasn't a whole lot of things for the children to do. They had one of those moon bounce things going, but that was about it. Other than the main concert stage, there was nothing for the children to do but run around it seemed.
A bit of an oversight...especially since it was billed as Family Fun.... it was fun for the adults, but until the fireworks show got cracking...the kids were pretty much left out.
Now...the good.
The fireworks were fantastic. A heck of a lot better than I anticipated, especially since it's wasn't a July 4th show. There were some shapes that I hadn't seen before and several of the really huge shells that rattle the windows.
All in all, it was about a 20-25 minute show and worth every minute. The city did a great job of stepping up and making sure they didn't let the crowd down. I have no idea how many people were there, but I'd say several thousand. No telling how many were watching from other parts of the city.
Shooting the fireworks wasn't going to be that much of a challenge for me. They're pretty easy once you get the hang of it. It's always the same setup...use a tripod, shutter speed between 5-15 seconds....and set the f-stop so that the bright explosions won't be too bright.
Easy as pie.... but finding something in the shot to give perspective isn't as easy. The trees and crowd beneath worked out well for me.
These were the first few shells that were fired. It was more of a test exposure to make sure I would get things right, but I really liked how you can still see a bit of the sunset colors in the sky. It wasn't that visable to the naked eye...but with a long exposure, the camera sees a bit more.
This one was actually my fave. of the night. I love the colors and the exposure is just about perfect for the scene. I probably shot 50 photos, moving to 5 different locations in the crowd to vary it up a bit....and came away with about 10 shots that could have ran in the paper.
This one showed the crowd better in my opinion than the previous shot...so it's the one that I used for the paper on Monday.
I scrambled back from a Wichita Mountains camping trip to get home in time for the fireworks Sunday...more about that trip in a bit. You won't want to miss that one.
Posted by Jason Palmer at 2:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Comments
like the pics
