As promised, here’s a series of photos of last night’s happening. For the fourth itself, we went west of here to a little berg called Lyndonville. Those pics are here.
For this trip, we went a bit east… a town called Far Haven, which is basically north of Syracuse, about 90 miles to our east. It’s a harbor/resort town, perhaps 20 miles west of Oswego.
We had some time to kill, on the way there, so we stopped about 15-20 miles the other side of Oswego and a little up I81, to a little town called Selkirk Shores. Here we found one of the few remaining old style like houses on the great lakes, The Selkirk Light. As it happens, this is the oldest Integral lighthouse, and was built by Jabez Meacham back in 1838.
The guy managed to make the whole thing out of fieldstone. The Birdcage style lighthouse cover is one of only a half dozen of this design to survive from that time… and it survives despite the fact that it was deactivated in 1859. in 1989, a new lens was installed, and after 130 years of being dark, the light was alive once more, where it is, today. The current owner rents the place out as a guest house. Last I heard, the owner was trying to sell the place, and retire… he had it listed at about $1.25m. (Ouch!) I never heard if he managed to sell it or not. (Drill each pic for the full version)
While looking around, I was rather taken with a family of ducks… 8 little ones, who were spending their time feeding on the algae that grows on the dock pontoons.
It was getting dark, so some dinner in nearby Oswego, and then back to Fair Haven.
The place is typical northeastern small town. Fairly tightly knit, with its own ways and traditions. Fair Haven, makes a weeklong celebration of July 4 , usually culminating in the weekend. They have the usual rides and carnivals and parades and such, but being Harbour town, they go one step further. On the last night of the celebration, they do a traditional Lake of Fire, which is essentially accomplished by lighting a few thousand long burning red road flares on the shore of the harbor. The effect is spectacular as all that fire reflects off the calm waters of the harbor, and into the fast-approaching night.
The center of the shot, is out into the lake, right over the sailboat, to the center right. I’ve opened up the mid tones on this shot a bit, to bring up the flares a little.
I know, it’s a little off angle. It’s a little difficult to shoot out the window of the truck.
At this point we went off in search of some place to park the truck so that we could see the fireworks display that had come to see. Turns out, they drop quite a crowd, from all around. I setup my tripod, and fired off a couple of shots of the crowd just to get an idea how many people were around.
Again, we’re talking typical small town, here. Surprisingly ill equipped to handle that kind of crowds that that kind of event would draw, and yet there were no problems, everyone knows everybody, and nobody gets out of line. Visitors, (such as myself and my camera and tripod ) are viewed tolerantly, and with some amusement.
Right on time, The first big bang announces the start of the show. And of course, the first shot is very very bright, for two reasons…
First of all, what I’m shooting is very very bright, indeed… the people orchestrating the show apparently wanting to attract attention to themselves , and idiot me still has the settings enabled to shoot the lake of fire.
A few shots and a few adjustments later, and we’re pretty much dialed in. One of the things I’m finding with his camera, the Cannon Sure Shot A95, is that the amount of time necessary to write whatever you’re shooting to the memory card that I have in it, (2GB) prohibits you from taking large numbers of shots in a hurry. This is particularly true if you’re running high res. It takes perhaps ten to fifteen seconds for a shot to be written to memory. For most things, that works out fine. But for fireworks.
Another problem, is that you really need to be fairly close to the show so that you don’t end up with a case of the jiggles. You’ll see a little of that in some of these shots. (Particularly the first one… notice the non-linear motion of the projectiles) I was a little further away from the show then I would like to have been, mostly due to the idea that I had no stinking idea where the show was to be shot from, and thereby no way to know where to set up optimally.
Show done, back down 104 to I-81 and I-90 to home.
I do have some nightfall shots at the local ballpark I’m touching up for posting. This week, sometime.
Tags: Bit's Travels, BitsBlog
