Saturday, July 5, 2008

Happy 4th of July!


Today was Fourth of July and I went out to do some typical American things. I went up early to prepare my trip to Coney Island because I wanted to see Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Competition. I have been looking forward to doing that for really long.

I thought that there would be a lot of people when I would arrive but it wasn’t that crowded actually. I didn’t get a very good spot though but I could see a little and I was able to take some photographs by sticking my camera in the air.

It was a very intense competition and the former American champion Joey Chestnut broke even with former six time Japanese champion Takeru Kobayashi. They all looked very full but because they broke even with each other, five new hot dogs were brought to them for a sudden death match.

Chestnut finally won and everyone was cheering and screaming: “USA,” and “Go Chestnut.” It was amazing to be there and experience that. Everyone was happy about the results and it took a while to get out from the crowds.
I later took the train home and spent some time there. At about 6 PM, I went out to go to the promenade in Brooklyn Heights. I wanted to watch the fireworks but I was afraid I wouldn’t get a good spot because they said on the news that there already were thousands of people.

I brought my tripod and camera and was crossing my fingers that I would get a good spot and I actually found one, even though there were a lot of people there.

I had to wait for about two hours because I arrived at 7 PM and the fireworks started about 9.30 PM. I have never seen anything like that. They shot up a lot of fireworks and the bangs were really loud. People could actually feel the sound wave going through their bodies.

Many people were surprised about how good it was and I really loved it because I have never seen anything this big before.

The only thing that was a little bad was that it started raining when they started shooting the fireworks. I brought my umbrella and I tried to cover my camera because it doesn’t handle water that good. It got a little wet but everything went fine and I took a few amazing shots.

This was the first time I shot fireworks with my new camera and I was a little unsecure about what settings to use. I got everything right though because the pictures look great. There were a lot of people at the promenade so it took me a while to get home but it went surprisingly smoothly.

The police in New York are really good with organizing people and it really worked this time.

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