4th of July with Family

July 5, 2009 at 11:12pm

Holly and I split the 4th of July between our local parents. We started at her folks house in the early afternoon for a BBQ and time to get caught up on Holly's parents recent trip to Denver to see Brett and Megumi.

Holly and I took a bit of time to sneak away to the beautiful backyard and shoot some maternity photos of Holly at 5.5 months. I think we got several good shots and we may return to shoot some of the next ones there as well.

We chatted for a bit and then sat down outside to eat some hamburgers with all of the fixings. It was a proper 4th of July feast complete with red, white, and blue fruit pizza for dessert. I took lots of dessert photos in an attempt to practice up for the current strobist boot camp food photography assignment that is due this Saturday.

With our bellies full we headed south and up 101 to my mothers house. We stopped along the way to pick up fireworks to light at my mothers house. With a $30 dollar budget we left the stand with a small bag of fountains and sparklers. We arrived at my mothers house just before dark in time to watch my Mom finish squeezing the last of 20 lemons for her very fresh lemonade.

After dark we spent way too much time having way to much fun laughing at and taking photos of our tiny fireworks display. We started with "Sun Bursts" these birthday candle sized fountains that would shoot sparks about 1 foot in the air for a few seconds. This caused much laughter and then we moved on to the slightly larger and somewhat more impressive fountains. We had a good time watching and laughing at and taking photos of the fountains.

Next with my camera mounted to my tripod we attempted to do some drawing with the sparkelers. After a few attempts Holly got a pretty cool signature and We were able to try for the classic heart with the two of us standing in the center. I may try this technique after some practice at an wedding that I'm shooting in August.

After we ran out of fireworks we headed to the backyard to make some s'mores around the campfire. And at 1:30 after three rounds of marshmallow toasting I was done for the night.