Respite 

Part of the Niagara Falls, ON Skyline

The intention was to capture fireworks. During the summer in Niagara Falls, its Friday and Sunday nights are illuminated by bursts of green and red and yellow... huge gleaming chrysanthemums and corkscrews reaching out across the sky before dripping back downwards to mingle with the mist. The idea of watching  pyrotechnic paint exploding over this Everest of waterfalls has intrigued me ever since I moved here. And while I have enjoyed the show a few times, I've never ventured out to photograph it, or any fireworks display for that matter!

Doing so required only a little effort and even less patience.. it was relaxing, refreshing, enthralling.. it proved to be a wonderfully effective escape from all the little uncertainties and obscurities that so often infect my brain. Turns out all it took was a different angle, a clear focus on something totally removed from everyday challenges and contemplations. Nothing wrong with a little distraction from time to time!

The exercise taught me so much about extended exposure times and how to make them work for the subject to produce different effects. I also discovered how a flash of light, and as well a series of moving flashes of light, can create a hearty, unique image.. delightfully surprising no matter how expected the result may have been!

As it turned out, our selected location wasn't the best vantage point for freezing multi-hued explosions dancing over hotel alley. But that's okay.. some of my favourite pictures from that evening evolved without any fireworks at all! I devoured the preliminary practise photography as the lighting readjusted itself to suit the setting sun... stalks of hotels with their lucent windows and all of their architectural personalities towering over this famously picturesque but torrent waterfall.. a natural phenomenon only discernable by the ghostly flow of mist rising above its brink.

But since I have mentioned fireworks, I do have some evidence of their occurrence that evening! While I look forward to more practise in the realm of night photography, I do like the display I captured in the following shot.. the suggestion of an erupting thistle flanked by a pair of aurora borealis with a meteor shower to the right....... okay perhaps it is like cloud formations in which each viewer typically sees different creations and now you think I'm crazy for thinking I see these things!! Anyway, however you see it, it was a great experience!