Photography 365 Project: (Day 211: Festival of Lights)

Ever since I moved down to the coast just over 5 years ago, we have had a summer tradition of going to  one night of the Festival of Lights, which is an international fireworks competition held in our city.  We did miss last year due to the craziness, but we're back on track this year again.  Some people that live here don't want to go because of the insane crowds, but we've got a system fully in place now to deal with the 250,000 people that cram onto the beach each night.  

We arrive right after work around 5pm.  We go to one of the Wednesday night competitions as one of us is usually working on the Saturday night ones.  We stake out our territory early with a blanket, and one of us runs to get some food.  Now, this is the mistake most rookies make - a mere blanket is not enough.  People will walk on it.  They will move it.  They will crowd you.  We go and find a nice log which takes care of behind us.  But we still have three open sides.  Not a problem.  We drive into the city, but we park our car about 20 minutes away and pull our bikes out of the back.  Then we use our bikes to form a barricade on two of the remaining open sides.  Now we just have one opening.  We pile our bags and set up a tripod on the last open side.  Gear is hard to walk on, too, and we can watch it best if it's right in front of us.  And tada!  We have a little island of solitude in the midst of the masses :)  Also, biking is the fastest way to get back out when the crowd disperses :)

It's still early.  All those open sandy spots will be gone in another hour:

Within a few minutes, the sky was filled with smoke from the breeze and all clean shots were hopeless.  I grabbed a few more creative ones, and then turned the camera off to enjoy the last 20 minutes leaning up against my husband :)