July brings the Honda Festival of Lights to Vancouver. It is a three-night festival hosted over a week: Saturday, Wednesday, and the following Saturday. In typical years, the organizers invite pyrotechnic artists from other countries. However, in this season of Canadian nationalism, the organizers reached out to Yukon, Quebec, and Nova Scotia to highlight local Canadian performers. We missed seeing the performance from Yukon (one of the provinces I want to explore), so we start tonight with Quebec.

The Canadian Air Force put on quite a show to start the afternoon. I didn’t capture all that I wanted, as I was fumbling with camera settings: manual exposure settings, moving from one shot to servo focusing, and continuous shooting mode enabled. We worked with the camera and skills we had and continue to practice because practice makes perfect. All I needed was a teleconverter or a much longer lens to really get the airplanes up close.

Tonight, the air was completely still. While a mundane detail in everyday life, the still air allowed smoke from the fireworks to build up across the shooting zone. When the fireworks went off, the lingering smoke provided a fantastic canvas to really see the light of the fireworks across the sky.

I really loved seeing the flashes of red, green, orange, yellow, and purple across the sky in addition to the blazing colors of the fireworks.

Saturday night, Nova Scotia comes to town, and I’m curious to see how the photography comes out given heavy cloud cover in the forecast with some wind. Lol summer in the Pacific Northwest. Happy summer, everyone!