As most of my followers know, I am a certified pyrotechnician. The fourth of July weekend is always a big weekend for the company I contract with. I was able to run three shows over the weekend, one being at my church, which I published a post on earlier in the week. On Friday, July 4th, I did a large shoot for the Church at Cane Bay in Summerville, SC. It was just my friend, Travis, who is also certified, and I that did this show. We had some set up help from Richard, who is in the training stages of becoming a certified pyrotechnician. For this show we shot close to 500 shells ranging in sizes from 2.5″ to 5″. It was a great show, other than the finale. The finale fired far too fast. Because the company was so busy with shows, we had to hand fire everything. Because of this, I sticky matched the entire finale together to be lit from one visco fuse. Unfortunately, that did not work. It turned a minute and a half finale into about 12 seconds. It was a huge disappointment, and lesson learned for future shows.
On Saturday, July 5th, we shot the show out at Rocks Pond Campground in Eutawville, SC. This was a smaller show, but still had a lot of elements. For this show we had more help. Our trainee, Richard was back, and the owner of the campground is getting certified, so he assisted in the setup and shooting of the show. We shot this show from the shore of the lake on a peninsula. It was a great show that lasted about 20 minutes. The guys were able to hand fire 2.5 & 3″ shells, and I was able to electronically fire the finale, and it went far better than the night before.
All in all it was a great weekend. Here I write this on the following Friday and I am still trying to catch up on sleep. If you enjoy watching fireworks remember this the next time you watch one. For every minute of show you see, it took the technicians an hour to set it up. So that equates to a 10 minute show possibly taking up to 10 hours to set up. Enjoy a few pictures below from the weekend.
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