Sunrise 58: Ault Park (Fireworks, Baby Tracks, Sonada Cigars)

My favorite fireworks picture. Turned out nicely.
Gold Fuzzy and Green

Morning Sunrise (widescreen)

This morning’s sunrise was a beautiful hazy one that had a long delay. I believe that I’ve made the mental connection between humidity (manifested as haze) and length of sunrise. The less humidity, the quicker the orange/yellow bright light comes on. On days like today we didn’t get a yellow color until the sun was high into the air, about an hour after sunrise. With the right cloud conditions these late sunrises can make the best picture opportunities! Today was a bit too hazy, the yellow/orange never quite coming into play until the sun was past prime color. I’ve got about 15 or so fireworks pictures at the end of this post. Feel free to skip on through if you want to check them out. About 35 pictures in total today!

The Overlook. A bit of trash that was left over from last night’s festivities. Fast Food containers, old sparklers, wrappers, and even a sealed feminine product. I imagine that was more of a prank than necessity…

A brochure, left behind. There was trash littered all around the trash bins because the raccoons got in and rummaged around. The park crew was busy picking up the debris. I helped out a bit and cleaned up around the overlook.

Plane coming in! The familiar cargo-type plane that I see almost every morning

Sparklers and booty. I scored a new lighter! There was also, interestingly enough, a sunrise metal hunter. He had his scanner out and headphones on, looking for dropped change and who knows what else.

The orange sun starting to come up.

We can see the fog down in the valley. Thick chunky fog.

If you’re on the front page, click to continue. Lots of pictures on fireworks down below. —>

Orange and Blue sunrise

The fog was starting to pull away from Armleder

The sun coming over the ridge in the fog

Sunrise Valley

The sun was starting to get higher into the sky. I always like the look of the silhouetted trees against the atmosphere.

Down by one of the rubbish piles there was a telltale sign of a human baby! I mentally called this “Baby Tracks”. I snaked on a few of these myself over the last two weeks. My nephew had a box of these multi-colored fish. I didn’t taste them to see if they held their crunch over night 🙂

Mist coming through the entrance to the park

The haze was blowing over the trees into the park.

I skipped down to the bottom of the hill in a half-hearted effort to run my bike route through East End. It was a bit later than I had hoped (after I spent some time cleaning up a bit and talking with the park crew. A great job those guys do, seriously). I also realized I’d be coming up the other side of the mountain against commuter traffic at around 8:00am. No thanks! I turned back around and headed up the park to get home.

At the corner of Eastern Avenue and the ramp up to Linwood there is a curious abandoned building. It hasn’t been abandoned long, or the owner keeps it up, but either way it is in great shape. The building has to be old, remnants of an old neighborhood business district. As I bike through Cincinnati I am always excited to find these hidden “commercial zones” that no doubt served the community before cars were a central mode of transit. They likely popped up along rail lines and places of heavy foot traffic.

Smoke Sonada Cigars. How old is this stone work? I can’t find anything online about Sonata Cigars with 10 minutes of searching. I had some leads but it would take more time than I currently have. A post to the cigar forums may be in line. I did find an old Sonata label that may date prior to the 1930s. Did this used to be a smoke shop? Is it a piece of modern art or is it original? From what I can tell Sonada was definitely a cigar company but may have existed in the late 1800s, perhaps it died out before many printed references were created? I’d like to consult some old city documents to see what used to be here. This is technically in “Linwood” I believe, close to the Linwood Public School on Eastern Avenue.

And now for the rest of the fireworks pictures. We went to Ault Park last night and had a seat picked out by 9:45pm. The park was so crowded! This was our first year attending the July 4th fireworks and needless to say Amanda and I both were impressed with both the turnout and the display. I only have one word of advice to future Ault Park 4th of July’ers. The middle lawn, where everyone parked a spot in front of the DJ stand, wasn’t the best spot because the fireworks were launched behind the right lawn! The right lawn was almost empty with people so we grabbed a new location at the last minute. Most people at the event were in family units so there really wasn’t a mass exodus over to the right lawn once the fireworks started.

I played around with the mysterious “fireworks” mode. As it turns out, it wasn’t lying! I started off with “long exposure” shots but then I had a lot of trouble with the pictures being too bright. Fireworks mode, as it turns out, has about a one second exposure time and a really dark exposure filter. You get almost nothing but pitch black except for the trail the bursting fireworks leaves behind. The pictures are neat because they show the “lifetime” of the fireworks. Some of the pictures turned out in ways that I don’t remember because of the way that multiple fireworks change quickly over time. I also figured out that it is beneficial to use a 1-second timer so that by the time the camera is ready to open the shutter, my hands are off of it and the tripod. That made a huge difference in the smoothness of the picture.

I picked several that I liked the most. For a first time experiment I think it turned out pretty good. I understand the difficulty in capturing these fireworks without adjusting the camera too much. It would take some serious skill to be able to get a set of fireworks against a dynamic background, like for example over a city skyline! Especially if you only had a few minutes of fireworks to work with. You’d not be able to make many mistakes.

The crowded center lawn, perhaps an 8 second exposure. This is the first time I’ve had success with the long exposure times. With any more light the picture gets whited out entirely.

Almost time! Check out the “candle parachute” streaking across the sky. Thankfully we’ve had so much rain and humidity in Cincinnati that I’m not worried about the open flame landing in a grassy area and starting a fire. But out west I hear they’re really worried about any kind of fireworks, especially an open flame that floats across the sky!

Fireworks bursting over about 2 seconds.

Palm Tree?

Purple and yellow dual

This one fell like a weeping willow’s leafs.

Green and Red Split

Silver and Red

Orange and Red

Gold Streamers

Purple Tree

Purple and Gold Bursts

Green Burst

The mass of people leaving the park!