{"id":1152,"date":"2008-07-04T11:59:08","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T11:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2008-07-04T11:59:08","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T11:59:08","slug":"happy_fourth_of_july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/?p=1152","title":{"rendered":"Happy Fourth of July!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"Parachutist\"<\/img>\n<\/div>\n

\nI braved the massive overcrowding at Old Settler’s Park to watch the fireworks. I arrived around 7:30 and parked next to the water park. Strangely enough, with people parking on every available grass location, only a few people parked in this parking lot. I sat on hole 14 and waited. As dusk approached, four parachutists landed on the stage. What that had to do with fireworks, I do not know.\n<\/p>\n

\n\"Police<\/img>\n<\/div>\n

\nThe sun took its sweet time to set. I had to relax and enjoy watching kids run amok — tearing up the construction fencing and climbing up the hills of dirt for the dam. But all was not lost. I saw this police ATV run along the dam after 9 at night. Too bad I guessed wrong and poorly positioned the camera. The shutter speed was 30 seconds at this point.\n<\/p>\n

\n\"Kids<\/img>\n<\/div>\n

\nThe kids weren’t all bad. They did provide me with a photo opportunity. These kids, which you can’t really see (because they won’t stay in one location for 20 seconds), are at least off playing in a safe area.\n<\/p>\n

\n\"Fireworks!\"<\/img>\n<\/div>\n

\nThe single most annoying phrase of the night was “Oh, look. Fireworks!”. No, really. Isn’t that why you came here tonight? Finally, at 9:23, the show started!\n<\/p>\n

\n\"Fireworks<\/img>\n<\/div>\n
\n\"Fireworks<\/img>\n<\/div>\n
\n\"Fireworks<\/img>\n<\/div>\n

\nIt didn’t really matter what exposure time I used. I set the camera to bulb and manually opened and closed the shutter. The tricky part is in guessing when a single firework would explode and how much of that process you wanted to capture. I kinda liked the non-visual ascents. Usually, when the shells were launched, you could see them rise on a rocket exhaust. But some of them were launched like a mortar shell. You could hear them being fired and then, some time after that, they would explode into brilliance.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe fireworks were over quickly this year. I decided to wait in my truck to see if the traffic situation would clear up. It was a solid line of parked vehicles trying to exit the premises. But after an hour of waiting, nothing changed and I decided to stop-and-inch my way out of the park. Even with both lanes rerouted one way out of the park, 79 was the bottle neck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I braved the massive overcrowding at Old Settler’s Park to watch the fireworks. I arrived around 7:30 and parked next to the water park. Strangely enough, with people parking on every available grass location, only a few people parked in this parking lot. I sat on hole 14 and waited. As dusk approached, four parachutists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hamzy.net\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}