FIREFLOWER

 

I have always loved fireworks and have on several occasions attempted to capture the excitement of a fireworks show on film.  To me there is something elemental about the explosion of colour into the black velvet of the night that in some small way reproduces the tremendous bang that I imagine to have occurred at the beginning of creation when God said: "Let there be light!"  It must have been a magnificent sight to see His newly created light burst upon the night and begin its flow within His creation.  Some years after I wrote this poem I purchased a Minolta X-700 single lens reflex camera (which I still have though I use it less, children take a lot of time to raise) and began to experiment in earnest with taking pictures of the celebration of fireworks.  Below is one result taken at a Dominion Day celebration at about the time I bought the camera and with which I am very pleased:

 

 

The crucial trick, I found, was to arrive early enough to get a good location that would offer an unobstructed view of the fire pit and use a wide enough lens to capture both the pit and the upper limits of the trajectory, or for a different type of spectacular use a lens that would nicely frame where the explosions themselves were most likely to occur.  The exposure above was taken through a 200 mm Minolta lens at f4 for about 30 seconds.  I found with the zoom that you could more easily frame the exposure for the type of fireworks that were being done.  The other crucial trick is to realize that unlike the creation which it in some ways imitates the result is entirely random and out of the photographer's direct control, I did not realize what this frame would look like until I eagerly tore it out of the developer's envelope, God knew exactly what His explosion of light would look like, even before He spoke it into existence.