Fireworks
We went to NYC for the 4th of July this year again. I’m not sure if it was because of fear of some terrorist incident or more people taking advantage of the extra day to take vacation, but the city was pretty empty, or at least the traffic was nonexistent! That was nice, and made getting in and out of the city a lot easier than even on a regular weekend.
As a kid, we used to go to the East River to watch the fireworks launch from big barges. We lived right near the 34th Street Heleport and so would watch from around there or occasionally as far down as the Waterside apartment complex in the 20’s. The view was spectacular so I got spoiled early in life as far as fireworks are concerned.
Not wanting to struggle through thick crowds this year, we took advantage of the fact that where I grew up and where my mom still lives, Kips Bay Towers, is only a block or so from the river. Although in between Kips Bay and the river is NYU Medical Center (or Tisch Hospital as it’s known now), you can still see a lot. Kips Bay consists of two big buildings with a courtyard in between. There’s another courtyard just east of the northern building, and that’s the area that’s closest to the river and thus has the best view.
We headed downstairs only 15 minutes before the fireworks were set to start, bringing just our lawn chairs and some cameras. Other residents had spreads of food and drink, but we had come from a party at my brother’s just a couple hours earlier at which we had stuffed ourselves, so of course did not need to even look at any food for quite a while!
I took a bunch of pictures with my Canon S50. I did not have a tripod with me, so had to try to hold it steady on the back of my chair, which was itself sitting somewhat unstably in spongy grass. I started off with some longer exposures trying to get more artistic (as opposed to realistic) shots, and then eventually punched up the sensitivity (ISO) and opened the aperture up so that I could get shots that were short enough to provide more realistic images. Here are some of the ones I think look the best:
