Fireworks - show me 10 people who describe themselves as being a photographer and I will show you 9 people who have tried their hand at photographing fireworks, at least one time. Photography is wonderfully suited for fireworks. It allows you to see things that you couldn't otherwise see, by capturing a time lapse movie and recording it as a single image. You see each burst individually, but the camera captures them all and combines them in to one image.

Instructions for taking pictures of fireworks are readily available on the internet, and all are virtually identical. Mount your camera on a sturdy tripod; use a lens with a focal length somewhere between 35mm and 50mm, focused at infinity; use a cable release; use an aperture of f/11, ISO of 100, shutter on bulb, and expose for 3-5 seconds. Oh, and try and find an interesting foreground so you can tell your photo from your friends photo. Follow those instructions and you are almost guaranteed to get a good picture of fireworks.

But what if you could suspend yourself within the space where the fireworks are exploding? What new and wondrous things might you see then, setting aside the matter of personal safety, of course? Taking personal safety in to consideration, what if you used a telephoto lens instead of the wide to normal lens that's always recommended? Something like a 200mm or 400mm lens. Will you be able to see things you haven't seen before; will the structure of the explosions look different; is there an inner beauty to fireworks that usually goes unseen? Absolutely!

What you will see is a world of feathered filigree; a world of tumbling lights that seem to flash on, then off, then on again; sea oats and distant galaxies; atoms smashing together in a particle accelerator; lights that corkscrew across the sky or burst into a thousand tiny points of light; brilliantly colored smoke, illuminated by nearby explosions. You will find an inner beauty to fireworks that you have never seen before. Give it a try.