Fireworks FTLComm - Winnipeg Tuesday, July 2, 2002 Fireworks are always something special, mortars lobbing explosives into the sky to explode and shower their burning embers into the wind. A spectacle Over the years I have tried so often to capture the moment, preserve the flash of light the makes us gasp or with a video camera save the sound and light to be enjoyed yet another time. Each and every attempt is a total failure. I had never realised why until today as I attempted to make these images for you to get some sense of the scene. How futile to try and capture the

splendor of a flash of light that can be a thousand feet across and several thousand feet above the surface. These little images, eight inches or six inches across are just a trivial glimpse of the real thing. Only the picture at the top of this page was taken with a still camera the rest are video camera captures and that it was showed me the futility of this process. When is the picture, as the burst begins, as it blooms, as it reflects or somewhere along the way? The answer is that the process is an experience not an image not something that can

be recorded you have to be there. Now with this in mind I thought we would share with you a twenty-eight second video clip of the scene above us. This is a QuickTime video and if it does not appear and play below download QuickTime it is a free and useful enhancement for your computer. Just because it is impossible don't be afraid that you are wasting your time when you point your camera skyward at an exploding pyrotechnic, your photograph is part of the adoration of the event and becomes yet something all of its own.