I met a guy named Cornelius. He let me take his photograph. He was a pretty awesome dude!

Meet Cornelius.

Sometimes, when the sun is high and the day is warm, little pugs like to swim in little blue pools!

I have proof if you don’t believe me…

Without much doubt in my mind, my favorite holiday is the 4th of July. Every year, I try to capture the beauty of the fireworks as best as I can and generally come up short in some way.

At the very least I’m stuck wielding an awkward device trying to snap pictures while I should be enjoying the show. The pictures I get are usually lacking in some way and I sometimes resort to video which is a bad idea. I scream during the show. A LOT! And then the device usually runs out of memory. SIGH.

This year, I was determined to try with the T3i and did ample research before the show. I went on the second night to test my theories so that I could go during the final night fully prepared.

Tripod, low ISO, big aperture, and bulb mode for manual shutter control. I shot the second night mostly in portrait mode and the third night in landscape. The second night really saw some GREAT results, though I do regret taking nearly all of them in portrait. The third night also had some spectacular images but there was a bit of a hullabaloo with setup a few minutes in and then DUN DUN DUN! The T3i’s battery took a poop. The poor thing had been running with the LCD screen on the whole night and what more could I expect? Lesson: learned.

Enjoy!

Night 2

Probably my favorite even though there aren’t any fireworks!!

Night 3