Practice makes…better…

Okay okay.

I’ve seen FOUR fireworks shows this summer, all in Tokyo city limits.  Sumidagawa, Meiji Jingu, Futakotamagawa, aaand…okay maybe just three.  I sort of saw the Tokyo bay fireworks from my apartment.

I tried to take pictures of ’em, but really…nothing I do comes close to stuff like this.

But I try!  Sumida River was round 1 – there was a strong side wind that smudged all the fireworks, and my friends were sorta positioned between a bunch of buildings.  Nice for not being smothered in crowds, not so nice for picturesque shots.

See?

After the fizzliness at Sumida River, I decided to take the adviced of more experienced folks online and get an external shutter release.  Unfortunately, I got the wireless one, which totally doesn’t work for what I was doing.  All the camera registers is “click” versus “sustained click + release.”  So I had to resort to holding breath and not twitching while leaving the camera on bulb mode.

At Futako Tamagawa (which was insanely insanely crowded), the wind was better, and I was sitting along the river bank.  Along with who knows how many thousands of people. It was so crowded, some poor gal collapsed due to … nerves? lack of oxygen?  too tightly tied of an obi?  at the train station.

But I didn’t go to watch people, I wanted to see glowing sparks and cascades o’ light!

I like this one.

This one’s not bad either.  Significant progress from previous smudginess.  Need to make the colors come out better though..

This was the finale. It was huge.  Somehow, scale is sorta lost.

But hey, ya know. You take what you can get.  And really…watching the fireworks is way more fun than taking pictures of them.  At Tamagawa, they had these announcements for every set – “These are for the children’s future!” or “Tokyo will be an Olympic city” or “The World Cup is gonna be awesome!” *

There was also a doraemon firework.  Everyone whipped out their cellphones the second they realized what it was…unfortunately the first one was the only one that was oriented properly; the subsequent rockets ended up askew.

I really like how they ended with straight up showers of golden sparkly awesome though.  Stick to the basics, people. None o’ that fancy mickey mouse business.

*paraphrased from original Japanese