Blue Rocks Fireworks

or, more fun with the new camera. Tara asked me what kind of camera it is. Nothing terribly fancy - it's an Olympus FE-360 and it is a few steps up from my Nikon Coolpix. I know I could read through the manual (yawn...) but I much prefer, as with many other aspects of my life, to learn by just playing around with something.

Last night we went to the Wilmington Blue Rocks game versus the Myrtle Beach Pelicans with my father-in-law and brother-in-law. We joked that it was a good thing we brought the babysitter along - Willow absolutely adores her Uncle Stewart and she didn't want anything to do with us - she only wanted to play with Stewart. It was a pretty exciting game, too - the first inning lasted over 40 minutes and eleven runs were scored. In the end our home team won 8-6. It was a beautiful night for a game, too - it wasn't hot or humid, the sun set behind us so we didn't have the sun in our eyes, and best of all - I didn't get hit with a ball! (Trust me, as a person who was hit by a foul ball at at MLB game, any time you get out unscathed is a victory!)

We chose to go to this particular game because it was Fireworks Night! We don't live close to the stadium, but the fireworks are usually so loud and powerful that we can hear and feel them at our house (sometimes even see them as well in the distance). My camera has a fireworks setting and I was eager to use it. I have to say, though - in the end it was a lot more difficult than I was expecting. The camera told me it uses a slower shutter speed for this so I knew it wasn't going to be as easy as point and shoot and I would have to time these carefully.

You don't even want to know how many pictures I took to get a handful of half-decent ones...















And just to prove that all this playing and using special settings on the camera can mean absolutely nothing if the shot is right - with the same settings I turned to my left and snapped a shot of Willow:



Okay... keep playing.