Monday 7th November: I like fireworks, I have done so since I was a small boy. When I was young my brother and I would be allowed to choose a small box of fireworks each and sometimes we would have a bonfire. Sometimes a few families would have a joint bonfire. We also went along to where my Dad worked as they also used to have a fireworks display.
Now my Mum and Dad were firm about certain rules, we kids weren’t allowed to light the fireworks and we always had to stand at a reasonable distance from the fireworks and the bonfire.
I can’t recall any real mishaps, at least not any injuries. We did once have the end branches of a tree catch fire and one of the Dads climbed the tree, crawled along the branch and buckets of water were passed up to put the fire out.
Mind you I have seen a few fireworks misfire, mainly at large displays. Catherine wheels were never that reliable. I have also seen a mortar just explode in the ground. So whilst I like fireworks I also know they have to be treated with respect.
It also seems that there is a trend away from “village/school” displays towards town displays but also there seem to be a few more home displays. Although I would happily buy lots of fireworks and my wifes like to watch them she is also concerned about safety. So what I do is buy a small number of quite expensive “cakes”. That way there is only a small number of ignitions, but quite a few bangs and whees. Since most problems occur around the time of lighting the firework. Another name is single ignition fireworks.
I also, being a creature of some habit, buy a particular brand of fireworks – Kimbolton Fireworks. They are a local company and I’ve always found their fireworks to be reliable whilst putting on a good show. (As the person who lights the fireworks reliability is pretty important.)
In the end I bought four fireworks with around two hundred different tubes. along with quite a few sparklers.
I also take pictures – this year they weren’t as good. It was my fault, last year I set up the camera in the light and adjusted the field of view and focus beforehand. This year I forgot and it was dark which made it much more difficult to get right. So here they are (well some of them anyway)
That is a large tree in the background which gives you some idea of just how much force there is when a firework shoots into the sky. I should have set the lens at a wider angle as well.
This was a good firework. These were all taken using a tripod
After the fireworks came the sparklers, now this bit could of course have been more dangerous since it involved waving them around – but no humans were hurt in the taking of these pictures.
We didn’t use the tripod – these were handheld – but I did use auto-focus.
If you look carefully you might see words being spelt out.
Some of them were back to front as the sparkler wavers hadn’t realised that they had to use mirror writing.
We also hadn’t realised how tricky it was to get spacing between the letters.
This was one of the better ones – but I still can’t quite make out what was written.
Again not bad, even if I say so myself. A pity I got some of the letters wrong.
This time the letters were pretty much ok, but the spacing was too tight.
I was one a roll – the one on the right – but the shutter closed before the last two letters were written.
If I had to mark my overall picture taking efforts – could do better.
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