Celebration of Light - II

Had posted some shots from the Festival of Light, in my earlier post. In the mean time I did some research on how the fireworks are made and what adds color......a very brief explanation for a layman like me is below. The Grand Finale on last Saturday was really spectacular and Sweden eventually won this years event..... but the only problem was, I had to take up a spot at the beach almost 10 hours in advance, and it took a good 2 hours to get out after the event finished. There were more than 300 thousand people watching.

But it was all worth it, I got some spectacular shots and learnt a lot about shooting fireworks....... have a look and let me know what do you think :-)

About Fireworks

Fireworks use black powder, also known as gunpowder. They are classed as low explosives in contrast to the infinitely more powerful high explosives such as TNT and dynamite.
In pyrotechnics an oxidizer and a fuel react together to produce light.

The colors

In fireworks there are six common colors, made by adding a specific chemical compound.
White is produced by magnesium or aluminum or titanium
Yellow by sodium salts
Red by strontium nitrate
Green by barium nitrate or chlorate
Blue by copper compounds Orange/amber by charcoal or other carbon or iron compounds

Deep blue and purple are the most difficult fireworks colors to create because they have a very narrow band on the color spectrum, requiring the chemical reaction to be absolutely perfect. In fact, the creation of a deep blue flame remains one of the great unsolved challenges to pyrotechnicians. However, blue and green are considered the most dangerous colors to produce.