We could see these fireworks from our patio door. I’m not sure who put on this Labor Day weekend display. Looking back at some of my older images, it seems that this is not the first time that there have been Labor Day weekend fireworks that we can see from our patio door. However, I never think of this possibility until after the fireworks are happening.

The July 4th display ( https://pbase.com/britestar/fireworks_over_the_backyard ) was done by the small city to our East. This display was to our West. Over the years, our trees have grown pretty tall. So blasts have to be fairly big to be able to clear the tree tops in either direction. More so to the West because the big trees are closer to the house.

Because this was an unexpected event, I used my little Bridge camera (which had a card in it).
I shot hand held & just hoped for the best. I got a few good shots (like this one). However frankly, I was totally unprepared and missed 2/3 the blasts that cleared the trees. Plus most of the blasts didn't even clear the trees. This shot was near the finale when multiple blasts were set off. I was very surprised to have gotten it so well. The very last part of the grand final didn't clear the tree line.

Although I didn't get a lot of photos, I think this one scene was fairly impressive with a lot going on.

Luck was with me on exposure with the little camera. A lot of my other shots were either under or over exposed with the Bridge Camera. Or else the fast blasts were totally missed because of shutter lag. I shot at AV f/2.8 to capture the random motion hand held. Without a tripod, I didn't have a lot of room to play with the exposure other than to adjust exposure compensation. With this camera, this approach seems to work better (for this kind of situation) than going full manual.