J u l y    1 ,   2 0 0 6   -   C a n a d a   D a y    F i r e w o r k s

I decided to stretch my photography skills, and figure out how to play with my digital camera a bit (i.e. shutter speed), while at the same time seeing the Canada Day Fireworks at Ontario Place. Definitely a bigger thing than Victoria Day, which is kind of sad for Victoria Day, because what else has it got?

Here's where Earth 1 and Earth 2 are out of phase. Or i found out my tripod jiggles easily.

If i crop out the bottom, maybe sides, i'd get a better shot.

Hard to see - needed to hold it longer than 8 seconds - but ahead of the dark crowd in front of me, there's the open waters of Lake Ontario. The row of lights is a parade of boats lined up to see the fireworks from the other side.

I started off at 8 seconds, later went to 4, 6, back to 8. They don't look much different - just recorded more or less.

I played with zoom - this is the widest. I had to adjust the height, not knowing beforehand how high they would go.

The umbrella really makes this shot, and it's also the clearest so far.

Either i accidentally jiggled it, or there was a gust of wind. It had rained earlier in the evening, and i was fighting off sprinkles of rain - a few times i pulled out my umbrella over top the camera.

Three nice 'flowers'.

With those streamers, you can really tell the direction of the prevailing wind.

After each shot, the camera took 10 seconds or so while it processed the shots (because of the huge amount of digital data for such long shots), and who can predict when the bursts will tail off or start up again?

Like rockets over Baghdad.

A beautiful shot that would look better in closeup - just to tell you, these are all 600 x 450 pixels, but the real photos are closer to 3000 by 2000.

Those stars are amazing.

Jesus Christ!

I like this one.

And this one - nice frame with the crowd.

Needs cropping.

This next bunch are all pretty good.

Weird finger-like things. Or bean sprouts.

I have no idea what the blue streak is.

Blip.

Almost looks like a Hubble shot of stars being born in a nebula.

You can see rain drops on my lense now.

If i'd known there were rain drops, i would've wiped them off.

The tail-end.

As soon as the fireworks ended, the rain started happening in earnest. I tried to get a shot of the structure in silhouette, but the raindrops are annoying, and the street lamp is too intense.