Taste the thunder :-D.

Have been meaning to write a post for days. Have enough material to fill atleast about 10 posts and somehow am not able to make time to type one single post :-p. I still don't know where the time goes.

Anyways don't want to waste time (when I'm wondering where time goes :-p). We had been to the Thunder over Louisville event on April 17th and thats what this post will be about. The last time we went there was 3 years ago, before Snugli was born! When Snugli was born, we went to India so we couldn't go and last year it was raining and we had a birthday party to attend, so we chose the party over the event in rain :-D.

We had very fond memories of the event and thought Snugli would enjoy it. But there were some problems, a few of which were mistakes from our side.

1) Not enough warm wear:

We knew the temperatures were not that warm and we did have our jackets with us. And I did carry extra clothes for Snugli, but we didn't expect the wind chill that was there. The winds blew, blew, blew and blew some more. Half the time I could feel my fingers frozen on the camera shutter button :-p.




I'm realizing now that you haven't seen Snugli at all after her mushroom cut (which is so short that it can be called a boy cut) that I got done in India :-D.




2) Not enough portable toilets:

Snugli wanted to use the toilet almost as soon as we landed there and there were hardly 5 toilets for what seemed like a million people. So there was this huge half-an-hour-lasting queue. And after sometime, the toilets were obviously not upto the mark anymore :-p. Boy were we glad that she asked to go only once.

3) Not enough planes:

I have to admit we did go there an hour late (but we did that last time too). The additional thing was using the restroom and losing out on some more planes. But it felt like there were not as many planes as last time. Last time I remember helicopters doing stunts and I was thrilled by a stealth plane. There was more lingering then. This time lots of individual planes and pairs just flew over us and never came back for round two. I hardly have any photos :((.




As you can see, I did manage to take a couple of good ones :-D. This was the FA-18 hornet demo:




There were 2 new additions that I did like this time. The first was a JBS Offshore Racing Boat:




The next was the meijer skydiving team (didn't really see them jump, oh well :-p).




4) Cruise boats:

We sat in an area facing the river (where the fireworks happen) in between 2 cruise boats. We thought that they'd leave and go to the middle of the river when the fireworks would start. As you can guess, they didn't. They didn't matter that much for the air show, but almost all my fireworks photos have a boat mast to the side :-p. We did have the American flag plane and the 6 LIma Lima stunt planes before the fireworks (the same as last time and I have the photos in that post). And then there was the Bill Leff plane that shoots fireworks from its tails :).




4) Forgotten camera plate:

A major major mistake from my side. I have been shouting about how much I have been experimenting in photography, so my experimentation for this particular event was fireworks. So I researched on what settings would be best to photograph fireworks and made sure I had the camera (My canon S2IS with the memory card formatted and ready to go), 2 sets of batteries and the tripod. What I forgot to take with me was the camera plate that helps to fix the camera to the tripod! I feel sheepish even now thinking about it, but the lesson has to be learned sometime :-p.

What I did do finally was to balance the camera on the tripod and try and avoid the shake as much as possible. The photos have come out pretty okay for that (and the boat masts that I mentioned) and Sri tells me they are better than any I have taken in the past, so imagine how good they'll be with the tripod properly fixed and an unhindered view :-D. Here's the total view:




The following 3 I'm pretty proud of, since they somehow manage to capture the brilliance and the shimmer of the colours :).










Just wanted to add that the images haven't been edited in anyway (no manipulating, no cropping, nothing) and the exposure settings (for those who are interested) are Manual mode, Shutter speed (2s to 4s), Aperture (f8.0), Manual focus set to infinity, White balance set to daylight and ISO (50). Here are the last 2 :).







The fireworks was/is totally worth all the things we faced. I have a couple of videos of the fireworks too, but no time to upload :(. If you do get a chance to see this, don't miss it. The fireworks lasted for half an hour and was totally breath-taking. Snugli was clapping and cheering the entire time, so yeah despite everything, we did have fun, until we found the next mistake..

5) Level parking:

There's plenty of parking available for the event. But this time we parked in a building meant for parking in the 4th level! We absolutely didn't realize how big a mistake it'd be. Once the fireworks are over, everybody rushes to their cars and yup, usually there's a huggggggggggge traffic jam. Last time we were parked in a field, still by the time the traffic dispersed it was already 12 AM and we reached home at 1 AM. This time we were stuck on the 4th level for more than 1 hour! We had to wait till not only the streets cleared but also the 3 levels below us! Atleast Sri and Snugli managed to sleep for that hour (Snugli slept throughout from then onwards) while I was checking out my photos :-p. So by the time the traffic cleared and we reached home, it was 2 AM :-p.

Well, we did think of staying in a lodging facing the river, but the rooms were so damn expensive :-p. You have to either sacrifice the time or the money. This time it was time, lets try and make it money next time :-D.