Fireworks

I had another go the other evening at taking photos of fireworks.  It's harder than most people think, because you need to anticipate the fireworks going off.  For me, I often only get perhaps 1 decent photo out of 20.

One of the problems this time was the lack of wind.  This meant that the fireworks left a lot of smoke lying around and this tended to be illuminated by the exploding fireworks, so many of the shots had a white mist effect.  It is much better to get a clean shot the the fireworks against a jet black background.

But as I mentioned earlier, the difficulty is that you need to use an exposure time of about 1.5 - 4 seconds.  To get a clean shot you therefore need a tripod and a shutter delay so that your finger pushing the shutter release doesn't bump the camera.

This means you have to watch out for fireworks going up in the air, so you can trigger the photo and have the firework blossom while the shutter is still open.  Often, though, you get the timing right, but the firework is out of the frame.

Early morning at the racecourse

It wasn't really early in terms of a normal racecourse day, but somehow it's harder to get up at 6:30am on a Saturday than it is during the week.

We went to the racecourse to look at a prospective new horse and watch it in a gallop.  It's still early days into its training so you only get an indication of performance.

It raced another horse down the straight.  But I wouldn't be surprised if it was allowed to win because we were watching.

Having a shower after training.

National Arboretum

Time seems to have flown.  I'm amazed that I haven't posted anything for a while.

Last weekend I went to the opening of the new National Arboretum.  I've been there before to look at how they were laying out the trees, but this time they were opening up the human-side of things such as the visitor's centre.

It seems that when they constructed the amphitheatre (see below)  they also created a big wind-tunnel that is great for flying kites.  Kids were encouraged to make their own kites and decorate them.  Surprisingly, they seemed to be made of some sort of un-tearable paper and metal sticks that survived multiple crashes into the ground.

The kids seemed to like it, but I don't know if they were a help or a hindrance at getting some of the kites in the air.

 A sculpture in the distance. It says "wide brown land".

Here's a panorama I took with my phone from what looks to be a restaurant under construction.  This is the view looking away from the Arboretum towards the lake.