Fourth of July

Yesterday, Megan and I decided to go to the College Station Lions Club’s annual Fourth of July Celebration at the George Bush Presidential Library. I’ve heard about this event for several years from my friend Adam, who plays with the Brazos Valley Symphony, but I’ve never made it out due to the fact it usually rains.

When we arrived at 8PM it was over a 100°F, but luckily there was a strong breeze and the temperature quickly dropped to the mid 90s. There were several events for families and kids and various performers on stage. The Brazos Valley Symphony was the last to perform and did an outstanding job. For a small community the fireworks show was pretty good and lasted for almost 10 minutes.

Check out the slide show and leave some comments on my Flickr pages. Below are a few of my favorite shots from the night and photography comments.

 

 

 

For those interested in the photography details continue reading… I had read several blogs yesterday morning that talked about photographing fireworks and most of them suggested using at least a 200mm lens. So Jeremy was nice and let me borrow his Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8; which by the way is one of the best pieces of glass I’ve ever used. The only drawback of having this glass on your camera is the fact it is HUGE. You really draw attention which is something you don’t want as a photographer. After walking around for a bit Megan and I returned to our chairs out in a field next to the parking lot about 100 yards from the main stage. After I set up my tripod and fired off a few test shots we waited for the fireworks to begin. At about 10PM the show started and I was very surprised to realize that 70mm was not wide enough to get most of the fireworks in the frame. I was going to switch over to my 50mm glass but I figured I would miss too many fireworks in the process. In the end I’m kind of glad I stuck with the 70mm focal distance because it helped frame the shots and give the fireworks character versus every shot simply capturing the full firework. I shot all the fireworks at f/11, although the Flickr metadata says f/10, and I kept my shutter on bulb and used my Canon remote switch to trigger the shutter and customize the exposure time.