My father worked in the photo industry until it evaporated with the rise of hi-res digital cameras. As a consequence I grew up around cameras, photographers, and film. We had all of the film we wanted, but each roll had a finite quantity of shots.

Now I have an eight gig SD card in my camera, and for all intents and purposes, I can take as many photos as I want… but I usually forget that.

Many people, myself included, continue to treat pixels as a finite and rare commodity like film once was.

On July 4th, I finally used my digital camera as a digital camera.

My parent’s neighbors always put on an incredible fireworks display. Every year they become more efficient, sophisticated, and spectacular; this year was no exception. I decided to play with my camera a bit and see what would come out. I set it to “continuous” and pointed it in the general direction of the explosions.

The initial results were mixed.

Then I made a mistake, shaking the camera as I crushed a mosquito that was biting my arm. It turned out that the continuous shooting, delayed exposure, and shaking of the camera created a really cool streak effect.

Then I started to experiment by shaking the camera in different directions, and at different speeds; I am delighted with what I captured.

I took about 700 images and maybe 275 of them are worth a second glance, but that’s OK, because pixels are recyclable.

It’s going to take me a while to crop all of these and make them look presentable, but when I do they will go up on Facebook & Flickr. I will post a link when they are available.

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