Happy 4th of July all! (For those outside the U.S. reading this, July 4th is the day we celebrate our independence from British rule).

I’m particularly grateful for the blessings I’ve received as part of living in this country - have a safe and fun weekend!

If you plan on going to see some fireworks, why not also take some pictures? If you’ve never taken any before, check out Scott Kelby’s brief how-to here. The one thing he didn’t mention that I found useful was to set my lens to Manual focus instead of automatic. If you open your shutter before the firework actually explodes, it won’t have anything to focus on. If you switch to manual focus and focus out to infinity, though, you should be good to go.

Click the image below for a gallery of my shots from a fireworks show I went to last night.

All shots are directly from the camera - I didn’t have the time to combine multiple fireworks into one collaged shot. I’ll try and do that in the near future and post it.