When time-lapse isn't quite the right way of capturing an event

A few days ago I paid a visit to Neil and Rebecca in Sackville, NB.  Throughout the visit I saw signs indicating that 2012 was the 250th anniversary of the founding of Sackville.  Not surprisingly, I didn't really pay much attention to these signs as I didn't have any plans to look into the associated events.

That being said, I was pretty impressed that Sackville was so old.  Though I'd been there 4 times previously, I had no idea that the town predated Confederation by 105 years.  (And it's not even on a river of significance).

Anyway, as the sun began to set on Friday evening Rebecca noticed that people began to gather on the lawn across the street.  She suggested that it looked as though people were gathering view something, maybe like a parade.

Of course it being 9:00 PM made it unlikely that people were gathering for a parade.  A little poking around the town's website allowed Rebecca to figure out that people were gathering for anniversary fireworks at 10:00 PM.

Despite the fact that the fireworks were to be set off almost immediately behind our base of operations none of us seemed particularly excited about the prospect of heading outside to see a small town fireworks show.  We didn't hold out much hope for it being much more than rinky-dink affair.

When at about 9:45 PM we heard a quick series of explosions and saw the reflection of these explosions on the building across the street we immediately raced to the building's back porch to check out the excitement.

The quick succession with which the fireworks seemed to be exploding caused us to wonder if we had a San Diego situation on our hands.



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We arrived just as these explosions came to an end and were left wondering if we'd just seen everything that was to be seen or if that first flourish was just some kind of test run.  A city worker we spoke to as the smoke cleared didn't do much to wash away these suspicions when he suggested that this was to be the first fireworks show in the town in about 20 years.

As the next fifteen minutes passed another one or two fireworks were launched, though if these were remnants of a botched show or additional practice runs was not the least bit clear.

Much to our surprise, at 10:00 PM the show proper started.

Almost immediately we knew that we were in for something special.

Not only were we close enough to feel each explosion, the fireworks themselves were quite impressive.

Of course, just before the show started I set up a time-lapse capture to record the event (if there was going to be an event).

While the event was progressing I could see that I was capturing a few of the explosions.  Of course it wasn't until after the event when I could see the full clip that I realized how bad my time-lapse set up was for capturing fireworks.



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Anyway, despite the fact that I didn't get to see a fireworks show where everything was released at once, I did get to see the best fireworks show of my life.  It turns out that our fears that Sackville's fireworks would be rink-dink were completely misplaced.