Barnabus the Barbarian: Hey, why is all this gear being brought into my house?
I'll post fireworks pictures if they come out. I'll probably post them even if they don't come out. Taking pictures of fireworks is rather cliche, but I hadn't done it before, and it was an interesting challenge. I hope I learned something (well, I hope I learned something more than 'don't leave the shutter release behind', and how to swear properly at a recalcitrant tripod. ;) ) They'll go well with my silvery cherry blossoms and Seattle skylines - cliche but necessary.
As always, I was impressed with the ingenuity designing shells - we had the smiley face fireworks again this year, and some really beautiful ones that look like an hourglass with a couple of floating rings, and a neat new type - a quintifolium (that is, r = cos(5/3 * theta), a rhodonea curve) - a five-petaled flower, outlined in red sparks. Very aesthetic, mathematically and visually. Mmmm.
This image edited from the large image here, because I'm too lazy to boot to the other OS to generate it myself. Hopefully I'll have some good pictures of these.
In conclusion, pyrotechnics are a land of many sparkles, and I want to design them when I grow up.