For a few years already I was planning to do some fireworks photography and today we finally managed to go to the Independence Day festival in Knoxville with a camera and tripod.

Seems some amount of practice is needed for best results, but even for my first try I have some interesting shots.

We arrived to multi-story parking garage near a bridge from which the fireworks were planned to be launched about 1.5 hours before the start and there were still plenty of adequate spaces. Too bad ugly wires were blocking a lot of the river view so we decided to go to the very top with limited view of the river, but less wires.

We also have found some nice spot on the other side of the river with nothing to block the view, but it was in a construction zone and local security asked us not to use it. Pity.

That's a view of the bridge about 40 minutes after we arrived.

A bit later fireworks started to go off somewhere far away.

Finally first shot from the bridge, started about 5 minutes later than promised.

From this point on I have about 50 more pictures of the fireworks that I deemed acceptable from the batch of about 150 pictures taken.

The final salvo.

Overall the fireworks were pretty limited. We have been to the Knoxville Boom's Day (on a labor day) in 2008 and it had much more spectacular fireworks display.

When the fireworks ended a huge cloud of smoke was left.