Couple fireworks photos from last night. Enjoy.
Well, my friends, it is Chinese New Year (春節), I wish everyone happiness, peace, good health and prosperity. Have a drink and celebrate!
This photo is from Chinese New Year back from 20 year ago – 1992, nothing fancy, but a lot of good memories!
It was my first year in China and we went out to celebrate Chinese New Year to one of the local restaurants. As you know China invented gun powder and maybe for that reason or some other cultural reason they go really out of control with fireworks. Back then they were not fancy as far as color or flying abilities, but boy, they were so loud. When I first came to China, maybe on a second or third day after arrival I heard from far away what sounded like an automatic gun, AK47 or similar. I was puzzled to hear this sound, as I knew no one has guns there and definitely not going to shoot it in Beijing. A few days later I discovered that it was fireworks making those sounds. They made belts of them, by attaching each individual firecracker to each other, hanging it somewhere and then lighting it at the bottom. In a few seconds you have couple minutes of intense firepower. The kicker is that those belts came in different sizes – I mean, the power of individual firecrackers in them. I remember some of them being at least one inch thick, like little bombs. Tie them together and let fire one after another, that is some crazy fireworks!
So on Chinese New Year they went really nuts, those belts were hanging on the door handles, tree branches, air conditioners etc, and they lighted them up right around midnight, all at the same time. Talk about deafening damage to your ear drums – I felt like I was going to be deaf after that for sure.
So anyway, I found this photo in my archives from 1992 Chinese New Year. Fireworks at its best.
Couple weeks ago we went to see relatives in Erie PA. Since it was so close to Niagara Falls (100 miles or so), I decided to make a half day trip to it and take a few photos. I was there a few years ago during summer and they had some spectacular fireworks, so naturally I wanted to see if I can see it this time as well. The fireworks are done on the Canadian side and most of the Falls activities are on the Canadian side as well. During winter they only do them once a week on Fridays. This year it was one day before Christmas, so I thought they will have a spectacular show. I made sure I have my passport, put camera in the back seat, and took a short trip to the border.
Usually it takes no more than 2-3 minutes to pass through the passport control. I’ve been to Canada at least dozen times, spent a lot of money there at Whistler/Blackcomb, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Niagara Falls. Not so fast this time. I guess a single driver who lives in NC and happens to be in the area and wants to see Niagara Falls triggers all kind of alarms by the Canadian border control agents. Especially if driver happens to work in software consulting industry. No matter that he works for one of the largest software companies in the world, meaning he is not an independent consultant and don’t do odd jobs. But, according to Canadian border control he must be trying to sneak into the country and steal high paying jobs from true Canadians. So it took about 45 minutes, conversation with three different agents, search of my empty car to convince them that going to Canada to see Niagara Falls and Friday night Fireworks is not such a crazy or uncommon idea and that I have no intentions to stay in Canada.
And you know what? Fireworks lasted about 3 minutes, just about three times short of my expectations, and was nothing what I expected them to be. Maybe those agents knew it and were wondering why would someone come all the way to see 3 minutes of not so spectacular fireworks. Regardless, even though it was short, I managed to hike around Niagara River before sunset, take a few shots of sunset over the Falls and saw fireworks. The trip was totally worth it and I’ll do it again if ever going to be in the area.
If you never been there, to the left is Canada, to the right is USA. The pink on the right is USA side Niagara Falls. The horse shoe Falls is right behind me, just imagine it for now till I process what I have and share it here.
Taking photos of fireworks isn’t easy, I actually never tried it before. Last night was the New Year 2011 night and we were in Miami, close to Brickell Avenue. This photo was taken from the seawall from the Biscayne Bay, Miami business downtown to your left and the little island with what look like residential apartments is on the right. We didn’t know where the fireworks will be visible from our location, I was hoping it will be right in the center of this photo, between those two high rises and much higher. It actually was to the left and not very high. I took a few pictures but most produced nothing interesting. This one was the best of the bunch. From this location we also could see fireworks at the South Beach and bit more north from the Miami Beach, those were quite nice, but they were really far and none produced any good photos.
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