2009-07-06 Holiday weekend and camera club meeting

I hope everybody had a fantastic day celebrating the Fourth of July! I had a very full day. I first started by waking up early to go to Lincoln Park in Tracy to watch the hot air balloons launch. This launch has been a tradition for quite some time, but this is the first time I’ve actually gone. I was thrilled to see the balloons fill up and actually launch, because the last two balloon lauches I went to were too windy to launch.

After the balloon launch I went to the downtown parade. There were many participants in the parade, but I especially enjoyed the live music being played from the music store float. They were playing “superhero” theme songs like Batman, Spiderman, and others. All the floats were throwning candy to the kids, so the kids kept running in front of me while I was taking pictures. I’ll have to find a location next year to avoid this.

After a family party in the afternoon we enjoyed the San Ramon fireworks. The last few years we have gone to a location on a hillside to watch the fireworks in San Ramon. The location is decent but each year the sprinklers turn on for about 10 minutes and soak everything down. We decided to try a new location at a park this year. The park was close enough to the fireworks to see most of them and we were far enough away that we didn’t get stuck in the hour of traffic afterwards. As an added bonus, there was a tree that was silhouetted in the foreground, which gave the firework shots a bit of added texture.

That was a busy day!

Tomorrow is the Tracy Camera Club’s monthly competition and meeting. If you are interested in photography I recommend coming down to the meeting to check it out! This month’s categories are “Green”, “Travel”, and “Holiday”. I am putting images in each category for competition. My entries for this month’s competition are on my website:

I hope you have a fantastic week!
Geoff