red... white... and BOOM!

Columbus Ohio likes to celebrate the Fourth of July in a big way... on top of all the local suburbs having their own fireworks on the fourth, on the third of July every year, Downtown hosts Red White and BOOM! It is a crowded mess of crazy downtown on the third, to try to see fireworks at the river front. But they are some amazingly cool fireworks. It's a really big show, and worth seeing in person at least once in your life.

Lucky for me, I have a fabulous aunt (this one Aunt Jane) who lives near downtown, and up the street from her house is a business with a parking lot, and a decent view of the top of the fireworks show (which is impressive in it of itself.) So while most families probably do their grill-out/family fun time/fireworks on the fourth of July, we do it all on the third. Aunt Sue did point out multiple times the children were being cute, and insisted I take photos of that, so there are some photos from Aunt Janes backyard. And of course the actual fireworks were my first ever that I photographed.

But Aunt Janes house first... Haley had just gotten back from vacation at Universal Studios, and the girls missed her greatly.

Olivia was very excited about all the 'hairplanes' that were circling


And now that she is in panties, she's learned of the dreaded wedgie... and has no shame in picking them


For my day photo, I caught Claire trying to put her hands into a cement block of Haleys hands from when she was a toddler... very very cute

183 of 365: This Hand is Your Hand


And Claire spent a lot of time with Aunt Ellie on Red White and BOOM! Let's face it, the two adore each other. Claire actually 'watched' the fireworks from Aunt Ellies lap (watched is in quotes because I'm pretty sure she spent more time counting the stars on Aunt Ellies shirt... but its all relative right?)


Now like I said, this was my first time actually taking photos of fireworks. So in the beginning, it was a little rocky. Aunt Ellie was actually sitting near me, and I'm pretty sure she was completely amused by my not so quiet grumblings and cursings when things weren't working the way they were supposed to. But once they were working, I was having a blast. I randomly had strangers behind me commenting on the shots I was getting (they could see the images popping up on the lcd of my camera) which was a bit weird to me, but I was too excited about it all to really care. One point I should make before showing the pics... the view isn't the greatest. Don't get me wrong - its a pretty great view... but there's powerlines. And the tops of warehouses. And the fireworks are pretty far away. But still pretty awesome.



(these are my fav kinds of fireworks... the ones that drag down and stay in the sky for what seems like forever... they remind me of weeping willows, and even though they're not colorful, I just adore them)

So I was bummed about the powerlines, but it was great practice for the next day. Plus, since this was such a big show, they shoot off tons of fireworks at once, so its hard to get that shot of one crystal clear firework from takeoff to exposion. But so many pretty colors!!