Friday night, July 4th, I decided to set up on the West Overpass and hoped for light traffic, so I could shoot the fireworks show at the Fairgrounds. They were set to launch at 9:15 pm, and the timing was nearly perfect, the sunset faded just enough by then to actually give them good darkness. The altitude wasn`t nearly as high this year as it was last year, a few hundred feet lower it seemed like. Last year`s show trumped this year`s show by far, but I still managed to get some good shots and did see a few unusual looking bursts…not sure if they were planned out like that or just flukes, but some of them appeared to be half bursts instead of full bursts. I started out shooting the first few frames horizontally…..

…and as you can tell in the next few shots, the bursts finally did gain a bit more altitude, but still short of the two years before….

…and I believe the next image shows the only red, white, and blue colors I saw in the whole show….

…and here is one of those unusual bursts, half and half, not sure what happened to the rest of it, maybe it was supposed to give this effect….

…and then from there on the bursts were the same colors like this next one…until the finale that lasted all of about five seconds…

..I normally can shoot about ten images during a finale, this time I was only able to capture two and a half….shortest finale I have ever seen in a fireworks show….not nearly as good as last year`s show, folks….I think someone got robbed….

I took a week vacation this year so I could shoot the fireworks at a few different locations…I decided that the first night of the Fair St Louis would be a better time to drive down, find a parking spot, and walk over to the fairgrounds to shoot. Chris Barber decided to go with me and we were going to meet another friend there, but were unable to find him or contact him even, once we arrived there Thursday evening. We did get there early enough to walk around a bit and see some of the prettier areas of the park, like Grand Basin where St Louis Fire Department had erected a huge US Flag over the north end of the Basin, stretched out between two ladder trucks. There were also two huge cranes situated on either side of the Basin, with cables stretched out across it at varying angles…found out later that they were there for a water show that took place on Saturday performed by a St Louis native. After walking around for what seemed like forever, we headed up to the top of Art Hill and set in for the last music show, Band Perry, who were just about to perform for the next ninety minutes, to be followed by the fireworks.

I set up my camera next to a young man who was shooting for KMOV Channel Four News and talked to him a bit before he headed down to the stage area to get some close ups of the singers. Chris headed off to the food vendors to see if he could locate some supper, and while he was gone, I chatted with a firefighter from the Warsaw, Illinois area…Chris came back in twenty minutes, frustrated because the credit card devices were down and he didn`t bring any cash with him. From the folks walking by behind us grumbling, he apparently wasn`t the only one ticked off by it. We settled in for the concert and then soon after 10 pm, the fireworks began, over the top of Grand Basin, launched from the golf course area behind the Basin this year…