Fabulous fireworks

Saturday evening was spent at Catton Hall's wonderful Festival of Fireworks - it's now going to be a regular fixture in our diaries.

There were four breathtaking displays - each lasting about 10 minutes - by top-class businesses of the kind that win international competitions. Sometimes the whole sky was filled with fireworks and I can't begin to imagine how they created some of the patterns. Dazzling. There was even a short daylight display at about 7.30pm to keep everyone entertained while waiting for dusk - a nice surprise (and surprisingly effective even though it wasn't yet dark).

All in all, the event was highly enjoyable, extremely well organised and well worth the £22 each. The organiser was Jubilee Fireworks, which also put on our joint favourite display of the evening (the other being by Pyrotex Fireworx).

I haven't found much online about the festival yet, though some people at the UK Firework Review - who clearly know what they are talking about - were also very impressed.

Much as we like taking snaps, we didn't want to miss the live spectacle and in any case aren't expert at firework photography (and didn't have a decent tripod) so just tended to keep the cameras aimed vaguely in the right direction and keep pressing the button without checking what was in the frame. I'm hoping that some other people out there will put more professional efforts online in the coming days. Pyrotex has loads of videos on its YouTube channel, as does Alchemy (and no doubt Feerie and Jubilee too) so no doubt videos of last night will appear in due course.

Here are some of the Technomage's favourite shots from his Canon SX20-IS...









My favourite pic from my Sony h5 is this one...



I also like this one even though it doesn't look like in the least like fireworks - more like rolls of some golden gauzey material plus a flower of the same material I reckon...



This is the best from my little Canon A495 snapshot camera in firework mode...



Next year, I'm also going to take my ancient but still very useable Nikon Coolpix 950 as I've got a fisheye lens for it - none of the cameras we had with us had a wide enough lens to get the whole view in.

I also tried a few movie clips - not very successful but they may give a bit of an idea.