Day 36 (Sun., July 4)

Perseverance pays off. Either that, or you're bound to get lucky if you keep on trying over and over. If you look at the above photo, you might say that it's a nice way to show the beauty of fireworks. To me, more importantly, it's a nice attempt at closing out a very exhausting weekend. As you know, I shot fireworks three times this weekend and also once last week. Every time was very confusing and tough, but I learned a lot, nonetheless. Today's photo was also very tough. I not only had to deal with capturing the light of these great explosions, but also the reflection of it on the water. I was sort of asked for it when I decided to do this lake-front photography. But this photo only shows the finish product. I had a very weird day in making this photo.

First, I showed up three hours before the fireworks were set to go off. I walked around the lake for most of the time, looking for a good location to shoot from. Once I found it, I just looked around and enjoy the scenery. And that's when it hit me! I finally became homesick. As I sat at the lakefront waiting for the sun to go down, I noticed about a hundred families. All of them, having fun and enjoying a beautiful day, that also happened to be a national holiday. I missed my family, I missed my friends. For three hours before the fireworks went off, all I did was shoot around and talk to people, asking them for their names for my photos. But that was it. I had no other contact with them. I felt lonely, I felt homesick. I wanted to go home. I wanted to forget that I had a few thousands of dollars in equipment and just jump into the lake and swim. I wanted to cry, I wanted to run around and light fireworks, too. I wanted to do all of that. But all of that went away when I remember I also wanted a nice firework photo. I have been told that I work too much. My friends back home usually don't get to see much of me because I am always working. So, that pulled me through the evening. Knowing that I would probably be doing the same thing if I was back home, made me realize that I was getting too sentimental and I had to slap some sense into my mind.

Yesterday-Main-Tomorrow