{"id":170,"date":"2009-08-29T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2009-08-28T15:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/?p=170"},"modified":"2009-08-29T00:00:43","modified_gmt":"2009-08-28T15:00:43","slug":"practice-makes-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/?p=170","title":{"rendered":"Practice makes&#8230;better&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay okay.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve seen FOUR fireworks shows this summer, all in Tokyo city limits.\u00c2\u00a0 Sumidagawa, Meiji Jingu, Futakotamagawa, aaand&#8230;okay maybe just three.\u00c2\u00a0 I sort of saw the Tokyo bay fireworks from my apartment.<\/p>\n<p>I tried to take pictures of &#8217;em, but really&#8230;nothing I do comes close to stuff like this.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Heart of Satan\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1366\/752319396_5a15216b65.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"222\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">by Stuck in Customs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Waikiki fireworks \" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3662\/3648244225_c65e42d8b9.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">by \/ltus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But I try!\u00c2\u00a0 Sumida River was round 1 &#8211; there was a strong side wind that smudged all the fireworks, and my friends were sorta positioned between a bunch of buildings.\u00c2\u00a0 Nice for not being smothered in crowds, not so nice for picturesque shots.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Sumida River fireworks\" src=\"http:\/\/lh5.ggpht.com\/_hdVsr90J9m0\/SnbzGkdk6lI\/AAAAAAAAZP0\/f9J1RZ05w7k\/s720\/hanabi%2010.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"504\" height=\"337\" \/><\/p>\n<p>See?<\/p>\n<p>After the fizzliness at Sumida River, I decided to take the adviced of more experienced folks online and get an external shutter release.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, I got the wireless one, which totally doesn&#8217;t work for what I was doing.\u00c2\u00a0 All the camera registers is &#8220;click&#8221; versus &#8220;sustained click + release.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 So I had to resort to holding breath and not twitching while leaving the camera on bulb mode.<\/p>\n<p>At Futako Tamagawa (which was insanely insanely crowded), the wind was better, and I was sitting along the river bank.\u00c2\u00a0 Along with who knows how many thousands of people. It was so crowded, some poor gal collapsed due to &#8230; nerves? lack of oxygen?\u00c2\u00a0 too tightly tied of an obi?\u00c2\u00a0 at the train station.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Too many people\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_hdVsr90J9m0\/SpHZLUBo9RI\/AAAAAAAAZxM\/JyJpbhLLxRE\/s720\/summer%2019.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"504\" height=\"337\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But I didn&#8217;t go to watch people, I wanted to see glowing sparks and cascades o&#8217; light!<\/p>\n<p>I like this one.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Clean sparks\" src=\"http:\/\/lh3.ggpht.com\/_hdVsr90J9m0\/SpHY_yoa1lI\/AAAAAAAAZwM\/V5GljEVQxy0\/s512\/summer%2013.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"205\" height=\"307\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This one&#8217;s not bad either.\u00c2\u00a0 Significant progress from previous smudginess.\u00c2\u00a0 Need to make the colors come out better though..<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Futako tamagawa fireworks + people\" src=\"http:\/\/lh6.ggpht.com\/_hdVsr90J9m0\/SpHY53F1grI\/AAAAAAAAZvg\/VFY6rPlJQOI\/s720\/summer%206.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"504\" height=\"335\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This was the finale. It was huge.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow, scale is sorta lost.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Futako tamagawa finale\" src=\"http:\/\/lh5.ggpht.com\/_hdVsr90J9m0\/SpHZCiMFCbI\/AAAAAAAAZ88\/AjCrNtnHhcI\/s720\/summer%201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"504\" height=\"336\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But hey, ya know. You take what you can get.\u00c2\u00a0 And really&#8230;watching the fireworks is way more fun than taking pictures of them.\u00c2\u00a0 At Tamagawa, they had these announcements for every set &#8211; &#8220;These are for the children&#8217;s future!&#8221; or &#8220;Tokyo will be an Olympic city&#8221; or &#8220;The World Cup is gonna be awesome!&#8221; *<\/p>\n<p>There was also a doraemon firework.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone whipped out their cellphones the second they realized what it was&#8230;unfortunately the first one was the only one that was oriented properly; the subsequent rockets ended up askew.<\/p>\n<p>I really like how they ended with straight up showers of golden sparkly awesome though.\u00c2\u00a0 Stick to the basics, people. None o&#8217; that fancy mickey mouse business.<\/p>\n<p>*paraphrased from original Japanese<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay okay. I&#8217;ve seen FOUR fireworks shows this summer, all in Tokyo city limits.\u00c2\u00a0 Sumidagawa, Meiji Jingu, Futakotamagawa, aaand&#8230;okay maybe just three.\u00c2\u00a0 I sort of saw the Tokyo bay fireworks from my apartment. I tried to take pictures of &#8217;em, but really&#8230;nothing I do comes close to stuff like this. But I try!\u00c2\u00a0 Sumida River [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WqcV-2K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.audreyy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}