Today is Independence Day in the United States, a.k.a. the Fourth of July. Traditionally, a day for parades and picnics and, after dark, of municipal fireworks displays. (This year, some places are holding off the fireworks until the weekend.)
I'm not big on fireworks, but I feel almost guilty saying that. As I cast back over the years of my life I can remember a lot of Fourths and a lot of fireworks-watching, in the company of various friends and at various places. My earliest such memory is of tormenting my "girlfriend" Elizabeth Choi, whose Korean-immigrant parents lived near our apartment block in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (I seem to recall that her mother couldn't or wouldn't speak English—Elizabeth's older brother translated for her.) That would have been about 1962 or '63, and Elizabeth (whose nickname was the Korean word for "beautiful," which I can pronounce but not spell) was an older woman...she was in second grade. I was only in first.
In D.C. I used to walk down to the Mall and worm my way up to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial from the Potomac side. The best place to watch the country's best fireworks display...nowhere else can match the spire of the Washington Monument and the glimpses of the Capitol building in the background.
My most vivid memory of Fourth of July fireworks was from the five years Zander and I lived in our loft in Chicago. We could climb up to the roof deck—our building towered over most of the two- and three-story buildings in the neighborhood. Looking out over the rooftops, you could see fireworks at every point of the compass. (Many of the larger suburbs in Chicago put on their own fireworks displays, apart from the city's main show down by the Lake.) The experience was somewhat tempered by all the small-arms fire we could also hear...I ended up not staying on the roof deck for very long, feeling that a stray bullet could have the unwanted effect of ruining our evening. But the visual effect of the 360° fireworks here and there on the horizon—some nearer, some farther off—was striking, and has stuck with me.
If you're in the U.S. and planning to enjoy parades, picnics, or fireworks, I wish you and your family an enjoyable and safe holiday today. I'm off to Lake Koshkonong for the afternoon, for the first Fourth at my brother and sister-in-law's new place there. Should be fun.
My niece Mari with her parents on the back deck at
Lake Koshkonong, Wisconsin
Mike
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
k4kafka: "Some photos just look better in black and white. This isn't one of them."
Mike replies: It really wasn't up to me. The photo was made with the TOPcam, a Sony NEX-6 which I have had specially modified at great personal expense so that it only shoots black-and-white. The RG(2)B filters were all stripped from the photosites and the demosaicing algorithm was rewritten from scratch. Only one laboratory in the country is capable of doing this intricate modification, which takes months and costs thousands. The TOPcam is not capable of recording color—even when confronted with sunsets, single geraniums floating in a sea of green, or colorful hot air balloons.
I like photos that reveal a connection between photographer and subject - Mari clearly likes her uncle!
Posted by: Jim Simmons | Thursday, 04 July 2013 at 02:18 PM
Enjoy your holiday Mike.
Just a note about the family photo with your post; that is my kind of picture; nicely framed, the kind of picture I'd be happy to have taken.
Posted by: Fred | Thursday, 04 July 2013 at 02:41 PM
happy Fourth to you as well, Mike, from north of the border.
http://robatkins1.blogspot.ca/2013/07/independence-day.html
Posted by: Rob Atkins | Thursday, 04 July 2013 at 02:59 PM
My first thought when I saw it- that's the kinda picture that would only work in... B&W
Posted by: Stan B. | Thursday, 04 July 2013 at 11:26 PM
"Sony NEX-6 which I have had specially modified...which takes months and costs thousands."
I guess I got lucky then.
Mine fell into a bucket of water. Took about $0.00015 cents worth of electricity to run a hair dryer long enough to resuscitate it, and now everything's monochrome.
Apparently the bath it took washed all the dyes out of the sensor.
My sister's name is Mari, but I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Hard to tell about these things.
Posted by: Dave Sailer | Thursday, 04 July 2013 at 11:45 PM
Mike can you said the name of the laboratory to send my ipod 5th generation to demosaicing?
Posted by: hugo solo | Friday, 05 July 2013 at 01:51 AM
Stripped photosites, eh? Lovely answer. Is the TOPcam model a Sony Tri-X by any chance?
Happy Fourth and Fifth etc.
Posted by: m3photo | Friday, 05 July 2013 at 05:14 AM
You should start an enterprise called "Locography", which does crazy things to expensive digital imaging devises. (No disrespect to the wonderful Lomography folks, who do wonderful things with simple equipment).
Posted by: Robert Schellhammer | Friday, 05 July 2013 at 07:25 AM
I, for one, quite like that picture as-is.
Best regards,
Adam
Posted by: adamct | Friday, 05 July 2013 at 09:31 AM
Don't bring the TOPCam to Albuquerque the first week of October then!
BTW, is the "Interior Hot Air Ballon shot" one of the required shots for a portfolio?
Posted by: KeithB | Friday, 05 July 2013 at 10:54 AM
I once had the somewhat surreal experience of driving down the elevated portion of the Kennedy on the 4th as "unofficial" fireworks displays enveloped the roadway in every direction.
Posted by: ginsbu | Sunday, 07 July 2013 at 01:08 AM