Chicago 4th (3rd) July Fireworks

1, 2, 4 are my favorites- having a great background makes all the difference.

Good job.

I spy a tower crane in the back... interesting. Know the address or name of that building?

oh yeha, and nice captures...

I took huge amount of shots in Kirkland WA.

My PC crashed so can't access the pictures yet, but here's one of the best shots I already had stored elsewhere:

Only resize, no other editings.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

WOW... those are amazing!

BEAUTIFUL!! i just got jealous at how beautiful yours came out. this was the first time i ever did anything, and they arent nearly as beautiful as yours.

Thanks for all of the nice comments. I walked to the planterium rather than try and drive there. There was parkign out there but it seemed pretty busy. Getting out again was probably pretty tricky. I saw a lot of the cars coming out of parking lots by Grant Park being held until the crowds had moved off.

As for getting the colors, there are a couple of things to play with. Firstly, the white balance can have quite an effect on how the shots appear. That can be quite a subjective choice and auto certainly won't be right. Also, there are some types of fireworks that are much more subdued in their brightness and they reproduce better from a color perspective. I found that a lot of them bleached out and left you with white trails. Others had a far nicer color appearance and at around f8 they seemed to record nicely on the images.

As for the crane, there are so many around the city at the moment, I'm afraid I have no idea which one that would be. From the angle, it looks like it is Streeterville but there is a lot of building going on over there right now. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Those pictures are outstanding. It makes me regret my decision to stay away from the downtown fireworks that night due to crowds.