All I have to say is: Thank goodness for extreme bracketing. I only got 12 pictures worth scanning out of both rolls. I was basically guessing the exposure times as I went along (the film's packaging helpfully provided me with the correct f-stop, F/16), and the only pictures that came out were the longest ones I took.

We'll start off with just about what you'd expect a fireworks photograph to be. This is the sort of photo that both the Seattle Times and the P.I. had on their front covers (above the fold, no less) the next day. I wouldn't think that a yearly exploding-things event would be all that newsworthy -- they don't splash Halloween costumes or Christmas trees on the top half of Page 1 -- but there you go.

People, I think, have come to expect "fireworks" to mean those plain, round, often colored jobs that produce a ragged orb of sparks. Those are the images we get fed of fireworks, year after year, but I'm glad that the real shows don't stop there. Fireworks like these ones seem far more interesting.

Some of the fireworks exploded into hunks of debris that shot out showers of smaller sparks. I thought this one had a neat effect. Unfortunately, I jarred the camera. (Look at the city lights at the bottom.) The best tripod in the world doesn't help if you mash the shutter button a little too hard.

Taste the rainbow. That dark triangle in the upper right of the photo is the awning of the building that the three of us were watching the show from. We were extremely close -- closer to the show than I thought we'd get, and probably even closer than the intended audience at Gasworks Park -- but I miscalculated the angle to the show, and didn't set my camera up in perhaps the best position to get the full arc of activity.

Some of the fireworks had some really neat effects. These particular blasts sent their components corkscrewing through the air. Look at the larger version of the picture; you can tell by the city lights that the camera was perfectly still, and yet the trails (especially of the lower lights) are in wonderful little spirals.

They also had fireworks that exploded into happy faces, and some that became little menorahs floating slowly down to earth, but my pictures of those didn't come out. Some of those suckers were bright, though, bright enough to cause lens flare on my hapless little $3500 camera. I swear, they must have developed those from retrofitted Army flares.

At times, it seemed like the sky would fill completely with light. It was like watching the biggest mating ritual of the biggest fireflies ever. There was movement everywhere you looked.

I could probably invert the colors on this one and call it "The Secret Life of Dandelions." The weird red halo in the center is a smoke cloud from the previous firework, illuminated by the huge light flaring in front of it.

Speaking of flowers: At quite a few points during the show, they shot low-altitude fireworks off of the barge that ended up looking basically like short, persistent streams of white light. When I developed the pictures, the combination of these lights and the smoke clouds of their expired brethren reminded me strongly of some sort of ... I don't know. Luminescent underwater seaweed. I took several shots of these fireworks, and the results feel like some sort of mirror-universe still life.

Doesn't this look like a flower arrangement? Doesn't it? The long stalks, bursting with some sort of underwater pollen, and their frilly, pigment-less "leaves." I love the way it just fades out to a pure black background. Gives the whole thing a haunting centerpiece feel.

Another "flower arrangement." If you've ever seen heavy algae growth in relatively calm water, you'll understand why the thin, ragged clouds are so suggestive of plant life.

We'll end with this one; the thumbnail really doesn't do it justice. I happened to catch a perfectly timeless moment of fractal light patterns, spiraling down into mathematical infinity. Completely unretouched, I swear. (Not that any of the rest of them were manipulated, either.)

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