There are usually dozens of 4th of July celebrations organized in the Los Angeles metropolitan area every year so I drove to Mount Wilson to capture the fireworks from a panoramic perspective. The wind was slow. Actually, at some point, there was practically no wind, so the smoke clouds caused by the fireworks later that evening look dense in the photographs. This provided a nice effect for the time-lapse photo sequence and the scene ended up looking better than I expected.

I wanted to get at least 300 photos so I didn’t set up the camera for super long exposure because the time frame for the fireworks is always short.

Update: the fireworks celebration is featured in our seventh Los Angeles time-lapse video.

Ralph.