Alexandria, VA Fireworks Photos

We attended the Alexandria fireworks last night at Oronoco Bay Park to watch the fireworks and listen to the Alexandria Symphony. We can walk to this event, which makes it a lot easier than the National Mall fireworks and they actually have vendors selling lemonade and stuff, which for some reason the Park Service does not permit at Iwo Jima where we saw the July 4th fireworks. As I suspect others will write, this was not a great year for the fireworks. For some reason the fireworks kept starting and stopping, to the point that when the music stopped for good someone came on stage and said the crowd needed to wait because the fireworks were not over yet. Fireworks should be a logical progression toward a finale, not a series of 5 - 10 minute pauses to watch planes fly by (which seemed to be the reason for the delays). We don't remember the air traffic control causing problems in the past, and if that was the reason it was not well planned for, because the choreography between the music and the fireworks was not as smooth as in prior years.

Will was generally is a bad mood, but one understandable issue that really set him off was a nearby cigar smoker. I think a letter to the city will be forthcoming about banning smoking at public events. Cigar smoke smells foul, and I can't comprehend the level of selfishness and bad manners required for someone to smoke one in a crowd, especially a crowd of mostly families with children. A number of people sitting near us were also disgusted. The smell eventually drove Will to leave early.

The constant delays and my bad choice on where to stand made photography challenging. I thought shooting over the bandstand would create some context for the photos, but it was not a good angle and the bandstand was too bright in relation to the fireworks and is over exposed. I had initially thought of shooting near the water, and that would have been the right move, except I did not figure it out soon enough. I also had my tripod packed up when the music stopped and people started to leave, and had to scramble to get it set up again when the announcer finally said the fireworks were not in fact over. I do think the last couple of photos I took over the water, while not great, were the bast of the evening. All of these photos are processed with Photogene on my iPad. It is GREAT software. It is not as powerful as Aperture (by a wide margin) but it is a lot better than 'good enough' for quick edits. I did try one of the Photogene pre configured 'effects' on an overexposed photo, and I like the result.

Via iPad