Hutchfest Fireworks

What better way to follow up the ritual burning of a plastic pig than to head out to a mondo fireworks display? This is actually before the Hutchinson, Kansas, Hutchfest fireworks display began on July 4th, as various folks spent their pyrotechnics near the grain elevator on Severance Street.





Several of these luminous objects floated high overhead. I've never seen fireworks like this. They seem similar to small hot air balloons. If anyone can enlighten us as to these, please comment.



The photo has so much grainy digital noise, being cropped from a full-size version shot at ISO 1000, that it reminds me of a typical UFO hoax photograph.



I discovered as I shot these, that the the Kansas State Fairgrounds Grandstands from which the show was viewed actually vibrate a little bit. I did a number of tripod-mounted time exposures between four and eight seconds, and a few showed camera motion. This wasn't a noticeable in the fireworks as it was in the ground objects.



The actual fireworks show started shortly after 9:45 and lasted about 20 minutes.



Spectators Jade Piros, Patsy Terrell and Mark Reddig watch the show from the grandstands.



Fireworks are easy to photograph. Most of these were done at ISO 100, f:3.7, eight to thirty seconds at various focal lengths on my problematic but still functional Sony DSC H-2.



I know that a general tendency is to photograph fireworks at higher ISOs because they occur at night, but most fireworks are plenty bright enough to allow the better quality of ISO 100.



Yeah, I shot a bunch of these.



Abstract shapes are rendered as the wind blows glowing bits of burning whatever.



These remind me of luminous deep sea creatures.



Mark and Jade have shadows caused by the fact that they moved during the approx. four second exposure. My shutter speeds for these people pictures were guesswork, as I was depending on illumination from aerial fireworks.






This last one looks like some sort of corporate logo.