Day: July 4, 2022

fences, friends, fun, Home Team, making memories, moments, old dogs new tricks, on closer examination, perseverance, photography, sky, technology, weather

Baseball and fireworks!

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All that was missing was the apple pie! An early 4th of July fireworks display following a Clearwater Threshers baseball game. As you will see, the fireworks took most of my attention, but there were a couple of reasons for that. First, and mostly, it was the new netting that has been erected to prevent injuries from foul balls of the line drive sort. So you happen to see a cute interaction between the Threshers mascot and a cute little old lady in the stands, and you happily shoot a picture, but you get this…

Did I have a clue in the world that the netting was there? No, I did not. And yes, I was disappointed when I put the photos into the computer and lost what I expected to be my favorite shot.
The camera ignored the netting better than I would have expected for this shot. Not quite the ball on the bat, but close.
I might have been tempted to try to take the dark line of the top of the netting out of this shot, but it does illustrate the dilemma.

It was about this time that I noticed that my camera had dropped under a full charge, and I have misplaced my extra battery. And there were fireworks to come. I remembered being disappointed in my actual baseball shots the last time I was there, and there was no netting to contend with back then, so that was the end of my baseball shots. And the thing about fireworks shots is that you make your settings in the camera, setting an 8 second exposure, and every time your camera shows you a completed shot on the screen you fire another one off. Your camera only covers a small portion of sky, and you have no idea where exactly the next display will come up, so it’s a crap shoot. But on this day I got lucky…

And then there was the fiasco of trying to get off of the parking lot. The close in parking spot we were so happy to find when we got there turned out to be a liability when we wanted to leave. But I’m sure you’ve all been there. Fireworks and baseball at the stadium the next two nights in a row. I hope the weather cooperates as nicely as it did for us, and that they win for them, they didn’t for us. God bless the USA!