On the weekend of July 4, Deb and I traveled north to Minnesota's North Shore--that's where we got the fox shots posted elsewhere.
We also did a lot of hiking, although no canoeing on this trip.
We met some friends who retired to the North Shore for coffee; had a delightful time with them and they convinced us to head over to the town of Tofte (population about 200?) for their fireworks display. I'm not a big fan of fireworks, but Tofte fires them out over Lake Superior and I thought the setting may be so unusual that it would be a fun thing to shoot. Plus this is a real wilderness; northern Minnesota is home to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and nestled as it is up against a provincial park in Ontario, well, it really is a wild place!
Had no idea where to go, but it shouldn't be too hard to find a spot on the rocky shoreline when the town only has a couple of hundred people. It was really cool and we had a lot of fun. The small town atmosphere of a grand celebration was just great. The fireworks were shot off in groups of one to three, which made for good photography and there were always a lot of really genuine ohhs and ahhs. And because everyone seemed to know each other, there was lots of banter in which we were included. Fun, friendly....
Here are some shots I got (Canon 5D, 17-40mm, 100mm, tripod):
This last shot is of the finale. I put the wide-angle back on for this shot because I wanted the shapes of people to be seen on the rocks to the left. I was amazed that this long exposure didn't blur people--I suppose the finale acted, to a certain degree, as a big flashbulb that helped freeze action (especially the boomers). You can even see that one guy has just taken a photo and is looking at the results on the LCD--that's the spot of light on the left.
Anyway, we had a good time and it was really fun to see fireworks in this setting.