Fourth Firework Fun

On the fourth of July, We had friends over and we can see the city fireworks they shoot off a nearby mountain from our front yard. We put out chairs and blankets and watch the fun. 
 
I don't usually spend much on fireworks as most of my neighbors do BIG shows and we get entertained by them. The girls do like to do sparklers and smoke bombs and snaps so I usually purchase some of those. 

I got 12 boxes of sparklers for the night not sure how many friends they would have over and now I wished I purchase more but I promised them I would buy more so we could have more fun and explore more things to "light up." 

The city show is a bit longer than I can sit so I usually take pictures while it is going on as you can see by past posts.


Here is a post about fireworks in past years. 

I messed with the settings on my camera and put it to celestial/stars setting. I have never used this setting before other than the lunar eclipse so it was new to me. 

At first, I just used it while the girls and friends wiggled the sparklers around. The third photo is my neighbors fireworks with my tree in the way so you can see the top of the tree and the fireworks over it. 

Then Princess Five got creative and tried to write something. The first one was all over itself so we learned more and more about moving herself a step left each time she did a letter. 

 
Princess Four then made the heart one which was a bit blurry and not as clear. From that we learned that you need to use markers for how high you will go, where the bottom is etc. The heart top center will be your nose height and the bottom of the heart will be your belt buckle etc so you always hit that same spot so the shape is more consistent. 


They got better and better as you can see and she would write names of friends and "smile" etc.

The last thing we did was take four sparklers and have four people light them at the same time and outline something. We did the car out front. We had one take the front bottom, one take the back bottom, one take the top front and one take the top back. This way, they could outline it several times making it light up more. 
 
I showed them before doing it that they needed to make the wheels and go around them so they would look like they were round and there. I told them to overlap some so there wouldn't be a hole in the center and you can see that on one pass, they missed the center so you could have spots that don't have light if you forget to overlap.


Anyway, the girls and friends had a blast and we will be doing it again for sure. Thought I would share that so others could try it. I had the "shutter" open for 14 seconds each time. It worked well.