So this past weekend, my girlfriend and I spent Saturday at Thunder over Louisville, which was held on the Ohio river. We had planned this trip a couple of months ago, but couldn't get a hotel room anywhere near Louisville due to them all being booked up for this festival.
I did some searching around on Flickr and on the web for information and pictures of Thunder and while I found a lot of air show and fireworks pictures, I couldn't a whole of useful information about the event. I searched many times through the official Thunder website, but I couldn't find a map of the event. I think it would have been helpful if a map of the festival area was available for download. We were able to find the lawn viewing and food areas by following the crowds, but it would have been very helpful if we could have downloaded something before driving down to Louisville.
And now a few words about properly packing for the weather. We checked the weather when we left and didn't see a problem with temps in the mid 50's in Louisville. So, I brought a windbreaker and wore a short sleeved shirt. When we arrived in Louisville, it felt a lot chiller than the mid 50's. We had totally overlooked the wind coming off of the river. Yes, it was probably about 10 degrees colder where we picked our spots close to the river. Let me put it this way, the wind was brutal and kept us cold throughout the day.
The overcast skies also prevented the air show from being a normal air show. The planes were unable to do any stunts and could only do slow speed passes. The other downside to the overcast and cloudy skies also meant that the modern planes blended in very well with the dark clouds. It made photographing them very difficult as they all appeared as silhouettes in the sky. I think I have some decent pictures of the jets and WW2 warbirds, but I'm just not certain. All in alll, it was great seeing an F-15, F-16, F22, C-130, C-5,
C-17, A-10, B-2, a few Corsairs, P-38 and so much more. The coolest part of the air show was seeing the F-22 and P-51 perform several formation flybys.
The fun part of the evening started for me after the sun went down. I was anxiously awaiting the start of the fireworks show. Before the start of the fireworks, I moved closer to the water to get better pictures of the fireworks. Did I mention I was cold sitting on the lawn? I was much colder down by the river and was seriously questioning my sanity in moving down the river's edge. After looking at my pictures, yeah the cold was worth it !
Looking through all of the pictures online led us to believe there would only be fireworks shot off from the bridge and from the barges in the middle of the road. What we didn't see were the barges near the Indiana side of the river. Both barge locations and the bridge set their fireworks off at the same time. When I started shooting and seeing the results, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing in the screen. This was by far the best fireworks display I have ever seen.
Despite the crummy weather, I think we had a good time and are already looking forward to a possible return visit next year. The wonderful fair food (loved the tacos!) played a part in making a cold day much better. How about some pictures?
I took about 150 shots of the fireworks and of the planes that were lit up and flying in formations (and one plane was dropping fireworks) prior to the start of the fireworks show. I was able to make some good light trail photographs thanks to the well lit up planes. I'll have to process and post those pics soon. All of the fireworks pictures were shot in manual mode and I used the Bulb mode on the Canon 30d for the shutter speed, the aperture was set to f11 and the ISO was set to 100.
Here are a few pics:
I did some searching around on Flickr and on the web for information and pictures of Thunder and while I found a lot of air show and fireworks pictures, I couldn't a whole of useful information about the event. I searched many times through the official Thunder website, but I couldn't find a map of the event. I think it would have been helpful if a map of the festival area was available for download. We were able to find the lawn viewing and food areas by following the crowds, but it would have been very helpful if we could have downloaded something before driving down to Louisville.
And now a few words about properly packing for the weather. We checked the weather when we left and didn't see a problem with temps in the mid 50's in Louisville. So, I brought a windbreaker and wore a short sleeved shirt. When we arrived in Louisville, it felt a lot chiller than the mid 50's. We had totally overlooked the wind coming off of the river. Yes, it was probably about 10 degrees colder where we picked our spots close to the river. Let me put it this way, the wind was brutal and kept us cold throughout the day.
The overcast skies also prevented the air show from being a normal air show. The planes were unable to do any stunts and could only do slow speed passes. The other downside to the overcast and cloudy skies also meant that the modern planes blended in very well with the dark clouds. It made photographing them very difficult as they all appeared as silhouettes in the sky. I think I have some decent pictures of the jets and WW2 warbirds, but I'm just not certain. All in alll, it was great seeing an F-15, F-16, F22, C-130, C-5,
C-17, A-10, B-2, a few Corsairs, P-38 and so much more. The coolest part of the air show was seeing the F-22 and P-51 perform several formation flybys.
The fun part of the evening started for me after the sun went down. I was anxiously awaiting the start of the fireworks show. Before the start of the fireworks, I moved closer to the water to get better pictures of the fireworks. Did I mention I was cold sitting on the lawn? I was much colder down by the river and was seriously questioning my sanity in moving down the river's edge. After looking at my pictures, yeah the cold was worth it !
Looking through all of the pictures online led us to believe there would only be fireworks shot off from the bridge and from the barges in the middle of the road. What we didn't see were the barges near the Indiana side of the river. Both barge locations and the bridge set their fireworks off at the same time. When I started shooting and seeing the results, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing in the screen. This was by far the best fireworks display I have ever seen.
Despite the crummy weather, I think we had a good time and are already looking forward to a possible return visit next year. The wonderful fair food (loved the tacos!) played a part in making a cold day much better. How about some pictures?
I took about 150 shots of the fireworks and of the planes that were lit up and flying in formations (and one plane was dropping fireworks) prior to the start of the fireworks show. I was able to make some good light trail photographs thanks to the well lit up planes. I'll have to process and post those pics soon. All of the fireworks pictures were shot in manual mode and I used the Bulb mode on the Canon 30d for the shutter speed, the aperture was set to f11 and the ISO was set to 100.
Here are a few pics:
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