Nebula On The 4th Of July, July Thunder Moon on the left, explosion of Fireworks on the right, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Daisy On Fire, Star Power, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Dandelion (Blown), Chaos, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Space Between, Fire & Rain, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Sky Dancer, Aurora Borealis, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Point Of Reference, Sky Circles, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Big Sky & Little Sky: Galaxy, Dandelion, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Smiley Face Fireworks, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
July 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey.
All rights reserved.
♦ ∞ ♦ Sky fire and the shape of July at a local park. The July Thunder Moon is in nearly every shot.
♦ ∞ ♦ No matter how much darkness, light is just around the corner.
♦ ∞ ♦ More in the Lightpainting Series on Flickr.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, July 11th, 2009
-related to posts: winter haiku trilogy, PRACTICE – Wolf Moon – 10min, dead of winter haiku (moon trilogy), The 13th Moon, Jupiter, & Venus, Thunder Moon haiku (July)
Great fireworks shots. I had some trouble shooting fireworks with my Nikon SLR but always get nice shots with my Nikon – point and shoot. Thanks for the festive lights.
By the way, was the smiley actually from fireworks?
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R3, great to hear from you. Yes, the Smiley in Fireworks was actually part of the show. You should have heard the oohs and ahs from the audience when they hit the sky. There’s another one, too, that happened right before this one. I didn’t post it here but it’s in Flickr. It’s kind of sideways.
Moon & A Smiley Face (LINK)
I asked Liz and she thought maybe it was the way they shot it up that caused it to lay flat out like that.
I shot these with a Canon point and shoot. Those are the only digital cameras Liz and I have. She’s got a Canon, too. I do think they came out pretty good for point and shoot. But sometimes I get frustrated because I can’t get a little closer.
I know you have a nice camera. How are you liking your Nikon? It’s about a year old isn’t it?
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It has been about a year, good memory. I really like it but am still getting to know it and what it can do. I love the clarity of the shots and it is great to see the shots as I take them. One of my favorite features is the continuous shooting especially when I am shooting my daughter’s color guard performances.
I do sometimes wish some of the features I have on my Nikon point and shoot were on my SLR, but then again if I knew that camera better I would feel more comfortable. I guess I need to get fully over the learning curve hump.
Again, these were great pictures.
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Very cool, QM. The smiley face is amazing. I suppose the challenge withe pyrotechnics in that case was to have them be subdued instead of explosive. I wonder if they can get sunglasses next year. 8)
My favorite is Daisy on Fire. It looks three-dimensional, like a flying saucer. And I like the purples.
But they are all great. And to think they were at a local park. Not sure if I’m picturing this the way it actually is, but seems like a local park would be less crowded than, say, at a big festival park or stadium, yes? We have big fireworks events, but the parking is just horrendous.
QM, it’s a great sentiment, too. Out of darkness comes light. I need to hold on to that right now.
I have been painting most of the afternoon and evening, to keep myself preoccupied and not thinking about a serious illness in the family. I came up for air (and electronics). Really nice to see this post. Thanks.
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I never tire of fireworks displays or photos of them. Love your titles for the shots as well.
My family and I were at one on the 4th and the half hour show whipped by (seemingly) in mere minutes. Can’t get enough of this sort of eye candy.
Thanks for sharing.
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ybonesy, it was indeed a very small park but there were a few hundred people there. And parking was difficult. We actually parked a ways away and followed the locals along a walking/biking trail through the park that ended up on the field where they had the fireworks. Parking near the even was terrible! (I should mention here that Liz often has parking angels at work, so we did find a good spot in the area where we parked.)
yb, we’re thinking about you and your family and sending good energy. So sorry for the illness in your family. So difficult to imagine. I’m glad you are painting and getting a lot done. Sometimes creative endeavors really help to ground. Hope you’ll keep us posted.
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R3, I think it’s a real advantage to have that huge LED screen on your camera. Liz and I both have very small pull out screens. And often, we have no idea in the rush of the moment if what we’ve just captured is actually in focus. I drool over those larger camera screens!
Norm, thank you for stopping by. I’m a fan of fireworks, too, but have not ventured to photograph them much. It was kind of fun to sit there in my little fold-out chair and take a few shots during this event.
What I like about shooting fireworks is that you never know how they are going to come out. I was at a writing event at Common Good Books in St. Paul a few nights ago and Garrison Keillor was talking about writing and photography. About photography, he said the shots he likes best are when people are simply shooting with no intention, shots like street scenes. He likes to see what they capture.
I like that about certain kinds of photography, too. The randomness. Nightshots are often like that for me. I love the contrast of the shadows and light.
Garrison also said that many times when you post photographs with writing, the photographs “eat” the writing. Meaning, though they work together, people are drawn to the visual and it’s sometimes hard for the writing to stand out. He was talking in reference to Susan Marks new book where she wrote the text for a book about historic photographs of Minnesota. It’s something to ponder.
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Hmmm, interesting comment about how photos can eat the writing. But I wonder, is that only in the case when someone is solely drawn to the visual and, thus, wouldn’t be into the writing anyway?
But on that topic, have you noticed that you and I rarely do pure writing posts anymore? I sometimes think that the image has become a sort of crutch for me. That I’ve talked myself into thinking posts have to have an image in order to draw in the reader. I know that’s not true, which is why I say it’s become a crutch.
Oh, I had not commented on how special your shots are given the fact that the moon is in the frame. What I like about the first shot is how the moon and the burst are on the same plane, exactly level, and how they’re both round yet totally different proportions.
And finally, today my youngest and I joined a friend at the annual Lavendar Festival in Albuquerque’s north valley. The weather was hot and still is slightly muggy from last week’s rains. But we found lots of cool spots to be under trees, and it was good to get out.
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QM, the smiley face firework is my favorite! I mean, how cool is that? Great photos of all of them & I’ll share them with Brant. D
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QM, have you ever watched the fireworks at Powderhorn Park? I went there once way back in 1980, and liked it as a venue. The “bowl” shape of the park, down to the lake, meant people could sit all around and see the fireworks just above them. I remember it as very cool–although you know how memory can inflate things.
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Love these fireworks, and can’t imagine how they managed to get a smiley face in one, but seems nearly anything is possible. Even pulling light out of darkness.
Interesting about photos and words, the visuals “eating” the words. I hadn’t thought about that, but considering the frantic pace most people live their lives today, it makes sense. So much easier to glance at a photo than to read all those time-consuming words. Also makes me think about the photos that capture my attention and make me study what I am seeing, evaluate what my reactions are and why. Now those photos can take a lot of time to look at, but I suspect not many people really do much more than glance at photographs. Maybe photographers are different? Maybe not.
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Bo, thank you. I have no idea how they got that Smiley Face in the fireworks either. There were two of them and one was kind of sideways and didn’t land right. For the one in this post, I just happened to click at the moment it opened to the smile. But it’s a little blurry. I just remember this little girl in front of us went nuts over it.
I do think it’s fascinating what Garrison said about words and photos. Words alone — I think they make you work harder. Yet the story unfolds within your imagination. Not tainted at all by the images. Then, like you say, if you study a photograph without words, there is a whole story there by itself, a visual story.
I do think that photographers (and maybe other visual artists) look at photographs differently than the mainstream. It’s a certain amount of spending time with the details and mechanics of how a photograph is made. Especially if we learned old school on silver or Kodachrome or in the darkroom or on manual cameras. You really had to study how to be a good photographer. And you still had to have a “good eye.”
When Garrison said that, part of the room booed. But then he went on to explain what he meant. And since the writer who he was interviewing was adding her words to these famous historic photographs, it made a lot of sense. He kind of played Devil’s advocate. Thanks for stopping by. Always a pleasure to get your thoughtful perspective.
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diddy, thank you. Hope Brant liked the photos. Does he like fireworks? I don’t know many kids that don’t. With a few exceptions who don’t like the noise.
ybonesy, what’s the annual Lavendar Festival in Albuquerque’s north valley? Had you been before? Sounds lovely. Thanks about the moonshots. I had fun shooting and composing the frames just so, to either include the moon or leave it out. I didn’t know sometimes if the shot would be blurry or not though.
Yes, I have noticed that our posts often include images. And they take time to get ready and post. So sometimes it would be nice to go back to just words where you don’t have to futz with formatting the images.
I think most of our non-image posts are Writing Practices and we haven’t done those in a while. They tend to be rawer, too. I have to say though, as an artist and writer, I have always worked with images and words. And often in series. It’s been the nature of my work for a very long time. So it’s not that strange.
When I think about reading a book, no images, just the story, it seems so relaxing to me. When I think about reading pages and pages of words electronically on a blog and in front of a screen with no images or places for my eyes to take a break, it’s another story.
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Ben, you remembered Powerhorn Park exactly right. It is shaped like a big bowl. And it’s a big inner city park with a huge display of fireworks. I’ve seen the fireworks at Powerhorn twice. And it was just as you describe. We were lying back on a blanket and it felt like the fireworks were in the sky just above us. Magnificent.
We were at a small park this year and it was different than some of the bigger city displays. But still beautiful in its own way. We sacrificed the grand, grand finale for the comfort of not having to go into the city. 8)
They also have great fireworks at St. Anthony Main. Liz and I went to the Stone Arch Festival there this year. I’ve watched those firework displays quite a bit because I lived in Northeast Minneapolis for most of the time I’ve been in the Twin Cities. Last year, we watched those fireworks from our studio in the Casket Arts Building. Good view!
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QM, Brant loved the smiley face & kept pointing at the moon in every photo. He loves them & my brother will have some good ones at the party this week. No need to worry, no one has ever been harmed by them.He travels every summer to Ohio to get them & is very safe with the effects. Brant has counted down the days until we go, which is Saturday. It will be a 2 day visit. Good to be going home again so soon & on a lighter note than last visit. D
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Good point, QM, about the difference between reading a book (no images) and reading a blog. I do think the images help break things up, add a new dimension. Not always, but most of the time.
The Lavendar Festival takes place in Albuquerque’s north valley, in a community that has actually been absorbed into Albuquerque (called Los Ranchos, although in reality it is its own separate village with its own governance, but to the casual observer, it is simply part of Albuquerque). Like the area where I live, it was at one time largely agricultural, and there is still a strong farming tradition.
The focus for the festival is on lavendar and lavendar products. One large farm in particular grows lots and lots of lavendar and allows for u-pick-em. But lots of lavendar products—salves, lotions, soaps, teas, lavendar lemonade, plants, wands to put into drawers to smell good, wreaths. You name it, someone makes it. Very focused on the craftsperson and local growers/producers. Nothing made for the masses.
Here is a website for more information. It’s not the best time of year, unfortunately, on account of the heat. We have some great weekend festivals (like the Corrales Harvest Festival or the Balloon Fiesta) in the fabulous months of September or October that I would recommend given the mild weather and gorgeous light and colors.
Los Ranchos de Albuquerque Lavendar in the Village [LINK]
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diddy, you leave tomorrow for your trip? Have a great time. I hope it’s relaxing for all of you. Hard few months it sounds like.
yb, the Lavendar festival looks amazing. It reminds me of the long fields of yellow mustard in Montana. A beautiful site. Thanks for the link. Maybe I’ll get to see it someday.
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