Aerial shells explode over boaters gathered in Monroe Harbor.

East Chicago, IN-based lighting designer, filmmaker, and photographer Guy Rhodes shot the 4th of July fireworks near Navy Pier in Chicago, IL.

Ask anyone who’s known me beyond my recently-accepted adulthood, and they’ll confirm the early existence of my strong entrepreneurial spirit. A fine example of this comes from the summers I spent mowing lawns with my Auntie JoDee between my sixth and eighth grade years. Starting in the spring time, every Saturday morning, I’d pedal my Huffy to her house a block away and fuel up the silver Craftsman grass annihilator. My aunt and I would make quick work of not only her front and back yards, but those of two other homes on Olcott Ave. As compensation, I’d receive anywhere from 10 to 20 dollars, which was a decent chunk of weekly change at age 12.

By the time July 4th rolled around, I’d be sitting on well over 200 hot, hole-in-my-pocket-burning dollars, just waiting to be spent with reckless abandon. Of course, for the kid who loved things that lit up in different colors and gave off smoke, fireworks were the natural choice to satisfy my hankering for sensory overload! Bottle Rockets, Roman Candles, Dancing Flowers, Pop-Up-Pagodas, Smoke Bombs, the little parachute Army men deals, Saturn Missiles, I could go on and on with the lists I’d make. Buy one get one free? I’ll take four! Oh, and don’t forget the punks.

Continue reading and see more photos on Guy’s blog.

This year, as with last year, I experimented by manually pulling focus during long exposures to create abstract images of the fireworks.

Another focus-pull burst, shot at 400mm.

The grand finale wows the crowd!