やっと、Fireworks!

Go here for the gallery!

Okay, this post a lot more pictures than I have anything to say, because you can only say so much about fireworks. I mean, they're pretty and all, but how many times can you say "I thought this one was particularly pretty" before that's worn out?

Pretty much the same thing goes for yukata: they pretty much all look good, so it's silly to say "Oh, this one was pretty!" Some of them look really good, but I had issues deciding. I was basically running in a zigzag up the street, trying to keep up with the people I was with while taking pictures of people left and right.

Now, since I took about 250 pictures that came out reasonably, and it seems like a shame to just let them sit on my hard drive, I'm going to post all of them up in a gallery once I'm done with this post. But unless you really like fireworks, I wouldn't bother. I've got most of the shots that came out nicely in this post already. Or I will by the time I'm done. So my plan is to just mix in pictures of fireworks completely at random in the text until I run out. As you can see.
On the other hand, there are 17 pictures in this post and 201 pictures up in the gallery, so if you want more, you know where to get 'em.

A surprisingly small number of people actually declined having their picture taken. If I asked about 80 groups of people, I think about four asked that I not take their pictures. One of them had a headache and didn't want to cope with the flash, and the rest were just like "Uh... No, it's better if you don't." My response in each case something along the lines "Oh, okay. Well, I understand. Excuse me..." and I would run off to the next group.

I'm not sure if this is clear or not, but it was very hot. And muggy.
No, no. It was very muggy. And very hot. If you look at me in the picture at right, you will see what I'm talking about. Actually, any of the pictures of me show it, because I was silly and wore an unpatterned shirt.
That said, the next one doesn't show it nearly as much, though, which is nice. All but two of the pictures with me in them were taken by Ana, and a bunch of the fireworks pictures were, as well. Figure the middle 1/4 or so.

Anything where the fireworks are doing things they shouldn't be, like this green one at right, is one I took. I wanted to play around a little so I wouldn't have all of the pictures "Look, uh... a firework. Whee?" Now they don't do that till you've looked over 350 of them three or four times.

While we were watching the fireworks, I kept thinking "Wow, if just one of those big ones, like, fell over or something, we'd have an entire beach full of people covered in light clothing that it would be pointing at. I also kept thinking "So one of those probably costs $100, at least. They just launched three in a burs - Ah, make tat fifty in a burs- Or two hundred. So that's... A lot of cash." and then i would give up and go back to taking pictures.

I would occasionally glance back at the buildings. I mean, as silly as this might sound, it seems like the perfect time to do something untoward to a crowd of people is something where there are bright flashes and everybody's night vision is screwed, and 95% of people are going to be looking towards the bright flashes anyway. With the random explosions and random talking noise, you could set up just about whatever you want anywhere behind the crowd completely unseen.
Maybe that's just too many movies.

Okay, I also got this picture at right. Guess at what I did?
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I got the shutter-opening noise confused with the shutter-shutting noise and moved the camera when it was exposing instead of when it wasn't. Kind of a cool effect, though, isn't it?


I especially liked this shot because it was of a family. It was the only group with kids that I recall seeing there, which is too bad. The kids looked really happy with the whole thing, and the parents seemed to get along well.

Extra link to the gallery, in case you still haven't looked.